Role Play Training

What role play training is

Role play training, also called role playing training, is a method in which the trainee performs a work situation in front of someone who plays the other party in it, and what happened is discussed as soon as the scene ends.

What is reproduced in role play training is an exchange between two people, not a workstation: words that are said, an objection that is answered, and a decision taken under the pressure of another person being present. That is why it suits what cannot be learnt by reading, such as how a difficult conversation is opened and how it is brought to a close.

Why explanation cannot replace role play training

An employee who has heard a thorough explanation of how to deal with an angry customer knows what should be done, but nobody yet knows whether they can do it. The distance between knowing and performing shows in the first real situation, and there its cost falls on the customer or on a colleague.

A scene adds what an explanation does not: hesitation, speech that breaks off, and a silence the trainee fills with a sentence they did not mean. These are points for training that cannot be described in advance, because they appear only in performance.

That is an argument about how the method works. We found no published measurement of the effect of role play training on performance compared with other training methods on which to base a claim, so the argument is not a statement about the size of that effect.

The elements of a role play training scene

• A situation taken from the work, not from a general example: a complaint that actually happened, a request for a discount that has come up repeatedly, or the communication of an unwelcome decision.
• One aim for the scene. When a scene is meant to achieve three things, nobody can tell in which of them the trainee fell short.
• A counterpart who keeps to the role, neither adding difficulty nor making things easier out of sympathy for the trainee.
• A written standard consulted after the scene. Without it, the discussion turns into opinions about the trainee’s personality.
• A short duration. A long scene drifts away from its aim and is harder to analyse.

Three roles in one role play training scene

A scene with two people produces a performance but not a reliable observation, because each of them is occupied with their part and cannot see what took place. For that reason the exercise is built on three roles:

• The trainee, whose task is to handle the situation as they would at work, not as would look good in a training room. Someone who performs an ideal version of themselves has practised nothing.
• The counterpart, who plays the customer, the employee or the manager, and keeps to the situation and the ceiling of difficulty written for them.
• The observer, who says nothing during the scene and writes down what was heard and seen, in the words actually used: when the speech broke off, which question went unanswered, and at which sentence the conversation changed direction. These notes are the material for the discussion after the scene. Without them, people discuss what they remember rather than what happened.

Rotating the three roles in later rounds adds a second benefit: someone who has played the angry customer once can see the effect of their own words when they return to their usual position.

How a role play training scenario is written

A useful scenario is asymmetric: what the trainee is given is not what the counterpart is given. The trainee receives what they would know in reality, meaning the file, the context and the purpose of the meeting. The counterpart receives all of that and, in addition, a motive they do not state: why they object, what they fear, and what they would accept if asked the right question.

This hidden motive is what allows the scene either to succeed or to fail. A scene in which the counterpart has nothing but objections ends in a confrontation that teaches nothing, whereas a scene with a door that a particular question opens teaches the trainee that a question is a tool, not a courtesy.

The scenario also sets a ceiling of difficulty: how far the counterpart escalates, and when they stop. Without that ceiling the scene varies from one trainee to the next, and their results cannot be compared, because they did not face the same situation.

In role play training, the feedback is the training

The scene produces the material, and the learning happens in what follows it. Three things make this stage useful. It begins with the trainee, who says what they were trying to do. What happened is then described in terms of what was heard and seen, not as judgements about the person. Finally, the scene is performed a second time with one specific change.

The repeat is the element that is easiest to leave out. A scene that is performed once, discussed, and then set aside for the next one leaves the trainee aware of the mistake but unable to do anything different.

Where role play training fits

• What an organisation calls soft skills, meaning the abilities connected with how a person works with others and with themselves, as distinct from skills tied to a tool or a specialism.
• Preparing interviewers before a hiring season, including interviewers who will run a structured interview, so that the manager practises asking the question and listening to the answer instead of talking about the company.
• Communicating difficult decisions: a low appraisal rating, a refused request, or a change of duties.
• Front line roles in sales, support and reception, where the same situation recurs in different forms.

In the sources we reviewed, we found no provision that addresses role play training by name, so we describe it neither as required nor as prohibited.

Timing a role play training session

One thing that can undo role play training is misjudging its time, because the planner counts the scene and not what follows it. The realistic unit for each trainee has three parts:

• The first scene: 5 minutes.
• Notes and discussion: 8 minutes.
• The repeat with one change: 4 minutes.

The total is 5 plus 8 plus 4, which is 17 minutes per trainee. A group of 8 trainees needs 17 multiplied by 8, which is 136 minutes, before adding the introduction at the start of the session, the summary at the end and the changes of role in between. A session booked for two hours, which is 120 minutes, for eight people is therefore 16 minutes short before it has begun.

Two practical limits follow from this arithmetic. The first is that the size of the group decides whether the method fits the session, because the time grows in direct proportion to it. The second is that when time is short, the repeat is the easiest part to cut, and it is the element that nothing else replaces. Without it, the same eight trainees need 13 multiplied by 8, which is 104 minutes. That leaves 16 of the 120 minutes for the introduction, the summary and the changes of role, so the repeat can be removed without the timetable appearing to suffer. Where the timetable has no room for the repeat, it is better to reduce the number of trainees in a single session than to remove it.

The arithmetic shows how the time grows with the number of trainees, but we found no published limit on which to base a recommended number of trainees for a single session. The four minutes given to the repeat are likewise an estimate for building a timetable, as is the advice to repeat a scene soon afterwards; we found no published optimal interval between a session and its repeat.

Role play training is an activity within a session, not a shape for the timetable. In massed practice it is one of the things with which a block’s time can be filled, and the 17 minutes per trainee are what it takes from that block.

How role play training differs from coaching

Role play training can be confused with coaching, and the difference lies in both the tool and the time. Coaching is a limited engagement in which the coach works through questions rather than prescriptions until the employee reaches an agreed goal by themselves.

Role play training is a session in which a situation is performed before it happens and corrected on the spot, and it can be used inside a coaching engagement as one of its tools. Coaching is a relationship that extends over time, whereas role play training is an exercise that takes place inside that relationship or outside it.

What role play training cannot replace

Just as explanation cannot replace a scene, role play cannot replace explanation. An employee who does not know the policy they are applying, or the limits of what they are allowed to promise, is not helped by practice in phrasing, because what they lack is information, not performance. Performing a situation without knowing what is permitted in it produces skill in saying things that will not be honoured.

This is where the two cases separate. If the aim is for the employee to know what to say, the route is a written statement they can refer back to; if the aim is for them to be able to say it under pressure, that is the place for a scene. Mixing the two spends the time meant for performing on delivering content. The choice is made part by part: the design stage of the ADDIE model is where the method for each part of a programme is set, whether explanation, practice on a case, or role play training.

When a role play training result is used in a decision

The results of a scene may be used in a selection or a nomination, and when that happens the trainees’ behaviour can change: the useful mistake disappears, each of them performs a safe version, and what the exercise was chosen for is lost. For that reason the two uses are kept apart: a scene for learning, whose observer’s notes are not taken outside the session, and a scene for assessment, which is announced as such before it is performed. In selection, the role play is one of the exercises an assessment centre can include, and there it requires the actor to hold to the same script for every candidate.

A worse case is an exercise announced as learning whose notes are then used in a decision. The damage goes beyond that one situation to what follows it: trainees may stop performing their real version in later sessions.

What undermines role play training

• Performing it in front of the whole team without agreement. The exercise then becomes a public test that people avoid by playing safe, and nothing is learnt from a safe performance.
• A counterpart who exaggerates until the situation stops being realistic, so that the trainee practises for something they will not meet.
• Discussing personality instead of behaviour. “You are hesitant” is a judgement; “you stopped speaking at the second objection” is an observation.
• A scenario written by someone who does not do the work. It produces tidy situations that do not resemble what happens.
• Running it once a year and stopping there. A skill built in an hour needs to be practised again soon afterwards, or the person can slip back to what they were used to.

Role play training at a distance

A situation that will take place in a video meeting is practised in a video meeting, not in a training room. The skill needed there differs from the skill needed in a room: the sound drops, speech overlaps when two people start at once, and some of the cues taken from the other person’s face are lost. Someone who practised in a room for a conversation they will hold over a screen has trained for an easier situation than the one they will face.

The observer’s role stays the same, but there is more to record: the length of the silence after each question as well, because that is the point at which the trainee fills the gap with talk that was not needed.

Before a role play training session is planned

An organisation planning a session can write down, before booking a room, the single aim of each scene, the hidden motive and the ceiling of difficulty given to the counterpart, who observes and what they record, and the time each trainee needs with the repeat included. A session planned around the scene alone has planned less than a third of each trainee’s time.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Massed Practice
• ADDIE Model
• Assessment Centre
• Rotational Training
• Blended Learning