Why role-play?

Role-play has long been a much-used training method among organisations which want to ensure their colleagues are equipped to be effective in a range of situations.

Customer-facing staff, managers and communicators benefit from working through scenarios; all are empowered with the knowledge they can deal effectively with situations and challenges.

Over the last few years, it seems role-play has been incorporated more often in business training curricula, and for good reason. For example, sales teams that continually engage in role-playing are more likely to outperform their non-role-playing competitors.

Here are just a few of the benefits of using role-play as an integrated part of training:

• Building confidence: When a team role-plays, a wide range of situations can be worked at. Role-playing provides a safe environment to encounter scenarios for the first time, which builds confidence in team members that can help them in their day-to-day roles. Using professional actors in the process makes the experience more realistic, relevant, and engaging for the participants.

• Developing listening skills: Good role-playing requires good listening skills. In addition to understanding the words the other person is saying, it’s important to pay attention to body language and non-verbal clues. Working through scenarios with experienced coaches helps teams develop these skills instead of whilst they are trying to perform in the real world.

• Creative problem-solving: No matter how outlandish a situation you create in a controlled environment, generally, something even more bizarre is bound to happen on the job. Role-playing gives a team the chance to build experience in handling difficult situations and in developing creative problem-solving skills, and actors with role-play expertise will ensure that usable solutions are developed.

Getting an authentic role-play experience from your team is difficult to do on your own. Bringing in consultants and professional actors makes sessions relevant, realistic, challenging and more engaging for the participants – and gives your team gets the training experience they deserve.

Drop us a line at The Group for ideas and information on how we can create a tailored role-play training experience for your organisation.