I am running a final session of three, helping Prefects from a local school with communications, assertiveness and, on Wednesday, interpersonal/leadership skills. I am doing it for free, as my kids go to the school. Thinking that they would hate it, I suggested a role play for the last session - and they jumped at it!
What I want is some sort of exercise that will help the students play out some form of situation in which they have to use interpersonal/human relations/leadership skills.
Does anyone have any ideas? I am happy to write a scenario, if anyone can give me an idea of where to start.
Tony Willson
Partners for Training Ltd
Telephone - 01206 366100 or 366001
E-mail tony.willson@partnersfortraining.co.uk
Tony Willson
5 Responses
Rebbeca Rae
This has been used quite a lot as a role play in interviews for Managers at companies I have worked with.
“Rebbeca Rae is a member of your team who is constantly arriving late, taking longer for her lunch break than allowed and generally behaving in an unacceptable manner. You have arranged to have a 15 minute chate with her to raise these issues, but also to get to the bottom of the reasons for her behaviour. Your overall objective is to address the problem & agree a way forward.”
People management & addressing performance are probably the most essential skills in the manager’s role today – So I hope this helps you.
Natalia Colman
Role play for the prefects
We teach a number of candidates in this age group who are in work and find that relating facts or role play to their familiar ground works best.
We use money related issues like obtaining funds for a worthy cause using their negotiating skills. The role play also works best if recorded on either video or tape so they can analyse some of their own responses and improve presentation further. This also will assist the school as it can use the video/tape as evidence in key skills.
We have tried business models but find they seldom achieve switch on at this age group due to lack of experience. They all do respond to interviewing techniques role playing and this is a great ice breaker as well as helping them for the future.
Getting them to analyse the job description and skills needed for a job for some fictional company supported by all the members of the”board” doing the interviewing is one of the best result areas we have had.They are learning about HR and asking questions of people at the same time as personal development. We have had a lot of fun with the youngsters at this level as well as learning from them their own perceptions of good interviewing techniques.
We have used our experiences with this age group to discuss with others and it has been a two way learning process.
Have fun and the best of luck.
fooling the kids?
After reading the comments related to your question I noticed that: yeah these ideas are great but kids won’t want to get involved in anything unless they can see the skive factor or that what they are going to do will be fun.
I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons for 16 years which is a fantastic role-playing game that forces you to “role-play” with other people to problem solve in an adventure type setting.
You don’t have to use this game in particular, any role-playing rule system would do but this is a good one. At first when I was 15 I didn’t realise that learning quite an extensive rule system and interacting with other people would have any use later in life, why would I? I was having fun doing it. Thinking about it now the whole thing could have been developed into fooling kids into learning. You have to constantly perform mathematics in your head as you play. Study a rules system and become proficient enough to use it to your advantage in the game and above all learn the skills of the characters in the game and apply them to solve the problems that face the group as the adventure unfolds … sound like fun to you??
Role play in Space
I use role play in varying situations within groups I work with. One of the role plays that would fit in with what you are doing is one that is used quite widely by other trainers in my locality. It is, apparently, one used by NASA in their training programme.
The situation is that you and your team are crashed landed on the moon. You have to reach a ‘mother ship’ but only fifteen pieces of equipment have survived. You and your group have to rank each item in order of importance and use for your trip. You do this individually first, then as a group. Comparing the differences. At the end of your task you are then given what the correct answers and compare them. The facilitator will be looking for the people who are strong, week or indifferent in group work. If you wish for the full briefing and worksheet, then please email me and I will send it.
Role play exercise for youngsters
Tony, how about role-playing a court case if you have enough prefects to play all the parts – judge, jury, prosecution barristers, defense barristers, witnessess etc.