Improving your soft skills using roleplays

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.