Btb Guest Author: David Perry

The Trainer’s Diary published in the First Train magazine provides me with much amusement and often confirms how little expertise is out there when it comes to doing role-plays amongst other things. In the trainer’s diary in the June edition we hear that the trainer – Monica, isn’t a big fan of role plays and comments that people feel they have to perform or act. Reading this article gave me a clear understanding on why that is.

We learn that “after months of development, research and design, the course was ready”. Heavens forbid! Months?? ? I’d expect an experienced trainer to knock out a one day ‘managing meetings’ course in a few hours even if they’d not run one before. Running meetings is not rocket science and the requirements of an effective meeting can be scribbled on the back of a medium sized stamp.

We read of role-plays so complex the trainer has to get colleagues to act out the role play so she can better understand it herself. Then we learn of participants who are given ‘characters’ and to perform a role completely different to that they normally perform.

This sounds more like something that goes on in the Abbey Theatre when they audition for new actors.Then we learn that the very first thing the poor participants have to do on the course is a role-play! Done like this no wonder role plays get such a bad press from participants and trainers.

Role plays are an excellent method of training participants in many skills which cannot easily be learned otherwise. I have used them countless times to teach the skills required in counselling, assertiveness techniques, and negotiation. There is no better way. Although I’ve never taught sales people, I couldn’t think of a better way to teach people effective 1:1 selling skills.

Role plays are also an excellent way of enabling participants to learn about their emotional response to others behaviour. For example good body language is very important in many situations and not getting it right obviously can have a negative effect but you’ll never know until you are exposed to this. I often pair participants up and get one of them to talk to their partner whilst the ‘listener’ gradually ‘switches off’ and demonstrates poor listening skills.

The feedback & learning generated from this simple two minute exercise is far more effective than that possible by any other method I’m aware of.

They should be kept simple. Very simple. That way even the trainer will manage them without rehearsals. More importantly the participants will learn from them and not come to fear them.

It is not necessary to tell people they are going to be doing role plays. At the appropriate time I’d simply say to a group that we are now going to do an exercise.

I would never use role play at the start of a course anyway as there may be issues of trust between participants, and participants and trainer if they have not previously met.

Role plays can of course be more involved – but still kept simple. I’ve used them to train participants in disciplinary hearings and employment law where you may have a number of different participants experiencing different roles. These have to be thought through carefully to ensure that participants learn what you want. Inexperienced trainers often turn these into long acting skits where more attention is placed on the acting than on the learning.

If you have to struggle to pull out what learning should have taken place in a role play, then you are not doing it right. No wonder trainers and participants often find role plays difficult. After reading this article now I know why.

In another post I’ll go through how I set up and run role plays with some real examples.

Tags: business courses, Business training Ireland, business training methods, role play, role plays

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 1:28 pm and is filed under business training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.