Tips, tricks and techniques to facilitate successful role-play sessions online

Role-plays are firm favourites with learners and trainers, but only if they’re run properly. You’ll be familiar with how to work them in an on-site class situation. Small groups with a coach are ideal; the fishbowl lost its allure.

Here’s how you can mirror your success with role-plays using the online approach.

Pre Setup

Embrace positivity in your naming conventions. I like to call them Skill MOTs or Skill Services.
Remember the acronym POD. Pre-brief first, then observation, and finally, debrief. These are the steps of a field visit for a sales manager.
The context is MEDIC. Motivate, explain, demonstrate, imitate and coach. These are the steps a sales manager carries out when training salespeople on new skills and techniques. Role-play appears as the 4^th step – imitation.
The demonstration is essential before any role-play; otherwise, they won’t know what good looks like. If they’re new to the role, provide an exemplar: a video clip or a demo from you.

Choose the one thing that makes all the difference. The first domino that’ll knock the rest over

Groups

If you train a large group, you’ll want to break them down into smaller cohorts. Triads of three learners per group is ideal. Each group will need a coach to run the group. Use breakout facilities with your platform – Zoom and Teams both have them.
With more experienced groups, a group “leader” would be needed rather than a coach and teach them how to coach and give feedback. The group can choose a leader, or the person with the most experience typically cuts it.
One coach per three learners. Create a grid so that each person plays alternate parts, i.e. role-player, customer and coach.
With presentation practice, you’ll need an audience; this gives everyone else a purpose to play.
Instead of a large group broken down into smaller triad teams, change your timing so each triad is brought online in their hour slot rather than occupying everyone for three hours.

Recordings

Recordings are precious aids to learning. Provide them before or directly after your coaching feedback.
If the clips are short, then you could email them. Sometimes an MP3 version is enough to have rather than the MP4 video file, a whole lot smaller too.
Email links using your cloud storage.
You could ask them to record locally on their computer. Teams and Zoom allows for this.

The Players

The person who plays the “customer” can be a colleague or ANO.
ANO or any other could be an actor paid to appear at a particular time online or a colleague within the business who is not participating in the role-play. Anyone can rock up online; that’s the beauty of it.
Create your scenarios carefully and send them to all participants to prepare.

Coaching

Coaching and feedback is the crucial aspect of role-plays.
Self-coaching can be achieved via watching a recording.
Use “hot seat” coaching. This is where you stop the role-play halfway and offer feedback before continuing.
Teach everyone to self-assess themselves first
Shower the learner with positives from their role-play. Keep to the ratio of 5:1. Five positives for every improvement piece. Suggest alternative ways rather than what you think they did wrong.
The actor can give a first impression and no more. Ask them for an overall appearance that the role-player made.
SPAM is the model – self-discovery, positives, alternatives and meaningful overall impact.
When choosing the alternative to suggest, attempt one of many. Choose the one thing that makes all the difference. The first domino that’ll knock the rest over.
When you’ve done all the feedback, ask them what they want to keep/change for next time. Make a note for when you revisit them.

Observation Aids

You need notes to observe and give feedback
The easiest method is the T Bar. Take an A4 blank sheet and draw a large T. The left is positive, and the right is suggested alternatives. That’s all. Evidence is vital if you’re compliance checking.
Once finished observing I like to take a red pen and circle all the positives and the alternatives, ensuring I stick to the 5:1 ratio.