Role Play Preparing for Difficult Conversations and Situations | Julian Caesar Blanco

Julian Caesar Blanco is from California, United States. He is so passionate about past history. Julian had done so many plays that were based on historical movement. Think back to the last time you prepared for an important meeting. Perhaps you needed to convince a  prospective client to do business with your organization. Or maybe you had to present to executive board members, and you knew that they would be peppering you with questions about your proposal.

Whatever the situation, chances are that you were nervous about the meeting; and practicing in front of a mirror may not have helped you overcome your anxiety, especially with respect to answering difficult questions.

This is where role-playing can be useful. In this article, we'll look at what it is, and we'll see how you and your team can use this technique to prepare for a variety of challenging and difficult situations.

Uses and Benefits

Role-playing takes place between two or more people, who act out roles to explore a particular scenario.

It's most useful to help you or your team prepare for unfamiliar or difficult situations. For example, you can use it to practice sales meetings, interviews, presentations, or emotionally difficult conversations, such as when you're resolving conflict.

By acting scenarios like these out, you can explore how other people are likely to respond to different approaches; and you can get a feel for approaches that are likely to work, and for those that might be counter-productive. You can also get a sense of what other people are likely to be thinking and feeling in the situation.

Also, by preparing for a situation using role-play, you build up experience and self-confidence with handling the situation in real life, and you can develop quick and instinctively correct reactions to situations. This means that you'll react effectively as situations evolve, rather than making mistakes or becoming overwhelmed by events.

You can also use role-play to spark brainstorming sessions, to improve communication between team members, and to see problems or situations from different perspectives.

How to Use Role Play

Step 1: Identify the Situation

To start the process, gather people together, introduce the problem, and encourage an open discussion to uncover all of the relevant issues. This will help people to start thinking about the problem before the role-play begins.

If you're in a group and people are unfamiliar with each other, consider doing some icebreaker exercises beforehand.

Step 2: Add Details

Next, set up a scenario in enough detail for it to feel "real." Make sure that everyone is clear about the problem that you're trying to work through, and that they know what you want to achieve by the end of the session.

Step 3: Assign Roles

Once you've set the scene, identify the various fictional characters involved in the scenario. Some of these may be people who have to deal with the situation when it actually happens (for example, salespeople). Others will represent people who are supportive or hostile, depending on the scenario (for example, an angry client).

Once you've identified these roles, allocate them to the people involved in your exercise; they should use their imagination to put themselves inside the minds of the people that they're representing. This involves trying to understand their perspectives, goals, motivations, and feelings when they enter the situation. (You may find the Perceptual Positions   technique useful here.)

Step 4: Act Out the Scenario

Each person can then assume their role, and act out the situation, trying different approaches where necessary.

It can be useful if the scenarios build up in intensity. For instance, if the aim of your role-play is to practice a sales meeting, the person playing the role of the potential client could start as an ideal client, and, through a series of scenarios, could become increasingly hostile and difficult. You could then test and practice different approaches for handling situations so that you can give participants experience in handling them.

Step 5: Discuss What You Have Learned

When you finish the role-play, discuss what you've learned, so that you or the people involved can learn from the experience.