Course: Career Communication

Workplace Meeting Scenarios/Role Play Group Assignment

Your team will take what you have learned and create and perform a Workplace meeting.

How to set up a role play

Follow the five steps below.

Step 1: Identify the Situation

To start the process, gather your team together. Each team will be handed a theme of the meeting. Create the problem or situation for the meeting, and encourage an open discussion to uncover all of the relevant issues. This will help people to start thinking about the problem before the role-play begins.

Step 2: Add Details

Next, set up a role-playing scenario in enough detail for it to feel "real." Make sure that everyone is clear about the problem that you're trying to work through, and that they know what you want to achieve by the end of the session.

Step 3: Assign Roles

Once you've set the scene, identify the various fictional characters involved in the scenario. Some of these may be people who have to deal with the situation when it actually happens (for example, salespeople). Make sure you have a meeting leader assigned role. Others will represent people who are supportive or hostile, depending on the scenario (for example, an angry client).

Once you've identified these roles, allocate them to the people involved in your role-play exercise; they should use their imagination to put themselves inside the minds of the people that they're representing. This involves trying to understand their perspectives, goals, motivations, and feelings when they enter the situation.

Step 4: Act Out the Scenario

Each person can then assume their role, and act out the situation.

It can be useful if the scenarios build up in intensity. For instance, if the aim of your role-play is to practice a sales meeting, the person playing the role of the potential client could start as an ideal client, and, through a series of scenarios, could become increasingly hostile and difficult. You could then test and practice different approaches for handling situations, so that you can give participants experience in handling them.

Step 5: Discuss What You Have Learned

When you finish the role-play, discuss what was learned, from the experience. We are using this as both a communication evaluation and how to act in a workplace meeting. So can you identify not only the communication success or barriers and what could have made the meeting turn out better.

Further Tips

Some people feel threatened or nervous when asked to role-play, because it involves acting. This can make them feel silly, or that they've been put on the spot.

To make role-playing less threatening, start with a demonstration. Hand two "actors" a prepared script, give them a few minutes to prepare, and have them act out the role-play in front of the rest of the group. This approach is more likely to succeed if you choose two outgoing people, or if you're one of the actors in the demonstration.

Another technique for helping people feel more comfortable is to allow them to coach you during the demonstration. For instance, if you're playing the role of a customer service representative who's dealing with an angry customer, people could suggest what you should do to make things right.