Role play NOTES

1. Organiziation role play
• ROLE PLAY:-The changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social
role
Objectives:-
• to assist in finding solutions, making decisions, and assuming
responsibility for personal social-emotional problems;
• to assist in affective education, increasing feelings and
emotions, and improving communication skills;
• to assist in solving problems associated with normal child and
adolescent development;
• to facilitate group cohesiveness;
• to facilitate experimentation with adult roles;
• to aid in the conceptualization of abstracts in subject matter
such as language and science;
• to offer entertainment and recreation opportunities; and
• to offer the teacher opportunities to observe students in various
situations.
role play observation and feedback
• Allow the other participants to observe the role play and give
their comments afterwards. Observers are hugely beneficial to
the participants' learning. How often in life do we get the
opportunity to gain from such focused attention? We not only
have our own response to the role play; we can also benefit from
our fellow role players' observations, and tutor's point of view,
and the feedback from the observers.
• For the observers, explain clearly what you want them to look
out for. Again this should be in line with your objectives. The
language of feedback is also very important. Feedback should
broadly follow SMART principles (Specific, Measurable, Agreed,
Realistic, Time-bound). Role play feedback should describe
specific things that the observer saw and heard, relevant to the
exercise and to the person(s) doing the role playing. Role play
feedback should not contain subjective judgements or
comments based on personal knowledge or assumptions.
Feedback should be meaningful and specific - something that
the role player can act on. Role play feedback isn't helpful if it
suggests that the role player should 'get a new personality' or
'be nicer'. Remind participants that the purpose of the role play
is for the development of the person or people doing the role
play. Objectivity facilitates learning.
• The order of feedback should be participant or participants first
(that way it's untainted by others' views; it also recruits them
into their own learning experience - people 'buy in' more if they
are themselves expressing what happened and why). If others
give feedback and participant(s), wait till the end, they may feel
they've been bombarded by a lot of 'tell', without initial space to
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2. Organiziation role play
compose their expression of what it was like to be inside the
experience. It's best to hear from them without the pressure of
someone else's views first which may then colour their own. It's
worth asking what went well for them and why.
• If there are professional role players involved, the role player(s)
can make their comments after the participant and observers
have expressed their observations. It often happens organically
anyway (once you have set it up) that once the participant has
formulated out loud what happened for them, the observers will
start to offer their feedback and in the process will include the
professional role player. It is important though that the (non-
professional role player) person or persons involved in the role
play go first.
Role play rules are basically simple: role plays must be focused; the
objectives must be clear and understood; instructions must be clear
and understood; feedback needs to be specific, relevant, achievable
and given immediately. Crucial to learning and developing options of
behaviour - knowing what works, what doesn't work, the range of be-
haviour available to an individual - is the opportunity to go back and
have another go or several goes at bits of the role play and/or the
whole role play. This flexibility needs judging and managing on each
occasion, so as to provide a more comfortable experience, and to dou-
ble the learning value. Aside from which, when you plan and run prop-
er role play sessions, participants will often tell you they actually en-
joyed the experience; that they forgot it was a role play, and found it
the most powerful learning they've ever experienced!
This free article is aimed to help non-professional role play trainers
and facilitators (ie., those without an acting background) to create and
provide effective role playing for training and development, and in-
cludes the same principles that professional role play facilitators use in
designing, writing, and delivering specialised role playing training ac-
tivities.
Example:
a software company learns that customers are unhappy with customer
support and this is causing a loss of customers. In order to improve
customer support, the company decides to use team role playing. A
trainer brings together a group of 12 software developers and cus-
tomer support representatives.
The trainer introduces the problem and encourages an open discus-
sion in order to put all the relevant issues on the table and get partici-
pants thinking about the problem in depth prior to the team role play-
ing.
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3. Organiziation role play
While discussion is still relatively lively, the trainer interrupts, divides
the participants into two groups. Participants should be randomly as-
signed to groups, such as by having each person pulling a paper, indi-
cating group membership, out of a hat. It is important that the partici-
pants do not divide themselves into groups. Getting people who do
not normally work together to do so creates new synergies which
should promote greater creative thinking.
Group A (playing the role of a customer support person) receives a
card which states:
"This customer is very influential. To lose them would be highly dam-
aging to the company. You must do anything within reason to retain
them"
Group B (playing the role of the customer) receives a card stating:
"You have seriously overspent your software budget and while you are
not unhappy with the product, you must convince the customer sup-
port person to take back the product and refund your money. Since
you cannot admit the actual situation (as it would clearly not be legiti-
mate for a refund), you must find problems with the software suffi-
cient to legitimise the return and refund."
The groups meet separately for five to ten minutes to discuss strategy
and who will be the actor. Then the two actors go to the centre of the
room to perform the role play. At any time during the role play, the ac-
tors can look to their teams for advice. Likewise teams can offer unso-
licited advice. Normally the teams are physically separated from their
actors. However, each team can call one "time out" to have a private
discussion of strategy.
In a lively role-play, a team member may very well offer advice to the
actor of the other team. There is nothing wrong with this and the train-
er should not prohibit it, although the teams themselves may do so.
Eventually, a solution of some sort will be found. If the conflict is not
apparent to both sides and there is still sufficient enthusiasm in the
teams, the trainer may ask the teams to find another solution.
Once it is clear no more solutions are to be found, the groups are
brought together and discuss the role play, their strategies, their solu-
tion, relevance to real world situations, and alternative solutions.
Optionally, each team can draft a short "lessons learned" paper about
the role play. The papers can be combined an copies distributed to all
role play participants and any other staff who might learn from the
role play.
In a situation similar to the example, there would probably be several
team role playing sessions with different people and different con-
flicts. In addition, some conflicts would be specific to the company's
product or procedures.
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4. Organiziation role play
Role play
is a simulation in which each participant is given a role to play.
Trainees are given with some information related to description of the
role, concerns, objectives, responsibilities, emotions, etc. Then, a
general description of the situation, and the problem that each one of
them faces, is given. For instance, situation could be strike in factory,
managing conflict, two parties in conflict, scheduling vacation days,
etc. Once the participants read their role descriptions, they act out
their roles by interacting with one another.
Role Plays helps in
· Developing interpersonal skills and communication skills
· Conflict resolution
· Group decision making
· Developing insight into one’s own behavior and its impact on others
There are various types of role plays, such as:
Multiple Role Play – In this type of role play, all trainees are in groups,
with each group acting out the role play simultaneously. After the role
play, each group analyzes the interactions and identifies the learning
points.
Single Role Play – One group of participants plays the role for the rest,
providing demonstrations of situation. Other participants observe the
role play, analyze their interactions with one another and learn from
the play.
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5. Organiziation role play
Role Rotation – It starts as a single role play. After the interaction of
participants, the trainer will stop the role play and discuss what
happened so far. Then the participants are asked to exchange
characters. This method allows a variety of ways to approach the roles.
Spontaneous Role Play – In this kind of role play, one of the trainees
plays herself while the other trainees play people with whom the first
participant interacted before.
Conclusion:
During training workshops and routine reviews, role playing games are
an effective method of increasing awareness, enhancing participant
analysis of field situations, and familiarizing participants with the
roles, aims, perspectives and positions of people whom they will meet
in the field. While not directly participatory in the sense that they are
real situations, they are participatory in their implementation, and pro-
vide considerable and valuable benefits in a training programme.
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