As they say “Practice makes progress” – so if you want to improve your communication skills, leadership skills, or any other soft skill, you need to exercise them in various workplace settings. Soft skills cannot be solely taught in theory as it needs practicing through interactions with other people.
Understanding
role-play
Roleplay
is an effective manner to practice your skills in a simulated and safe environment.
It is like a gym for exercising your soft skills and improving them. Role-play
activities allow participants an opportunity to practice how to think off their
feet and respond to real-life situations. This is done in a simulated
environment, so it is safe to learn by making mistakes and improvising.
For
role-playing to be effective, the situations and scenarios must be realistic.
The most significant advantage of these activities is that they can reveal
multiple solutions to a single problem. The debrief after the roleplay about
your responses for a particular situation can yield different approaches and creative
solutions to the specific challenge or issue.
The
best way to make the role-play situations realistic is to evoke real-life
emotions and express a realistic behavior. This heightens the learning
experience and makes the person feel like they have gone through that specific
experience. It helps to learn and imbibe the same traits when facing the actual
situation.
The
importance of soft skills
Whatever
your specific job role is about, most of you will interact with other people. If
your role pertains to dealing with customers then effectively communicating
with them is critical to your success. According to Convert More, customer experience is
everything - that is what converts a website visitor into a customer and that
is how e-commerce grows.
One
of the ways to improve your team’s soft skills is through situational
awareness. It implies recognizing verbal and non-verbal cues and appropriately
responding to them. For this, role-playing exercises can help tremendously. The
same approach holds for leaders. For a team
to be productive, leaders must know how to communicate effectively, listen
to the team members, respond to their feedback, and give feedback in a way that
will enable their team members to move forward and make progress.
Benefits
of Role-Playing
The
most significant benefit of using role-plays is improved performance and
effectiveness. It happens through:
·
Facilitated
practice of various behaviors
·
Discussing
specific issues and concerns
·
Active
participation through a lifelike set-up
·
Accelerated
feedback through debriefs
·
In-the-moment
training when the emotions are being felt
How
to start implementing role-play
1. Get everyone on board - the key ingredient
for the success of role-playing is participation. Encourage
trial and error and explain the importance of ‘fail small and fail fast’.
2. Create a conducive
environment for learning - use activities and icebreakers to bring
participants together as a group.
3. Focus on one situation
at a time –
use one scenario at a time to completely practice the required skill or
behavior. Don't try to cover everything at once.
4. Monitor and improvise - Monitor how participants
interact and accordingly decide to intervene if need be. Guide and keep them on
the right track.
5. Feedback – Provide the
requisite observations for them to correct
negative behaviors. Offer constructive criticism and point out areas for
improvement.
Bottom
line
Role-playing
is an effective method for helping your team members increase
their self-awareness and gain confidence. This improved confidence in their
communication and other skills can have a significant impact on the entire team.
