Role Playing

The aim of role playing is to create a realistic situation and then have the trainees assume the parts (or
roles) of specific persons in that situation.

One such role from a famous role-playing exercise called the New Truck Dilemma is presented above
when combined with the general instructions for the role playing exercise, roles like these for all of the
participants can trigger a spirited discussion among the role players, particularly when they all throw
themselves into the roles. The idea of the exercise is to solve the problem at hand and thereby develop
trainees’ skills in areas like leadership and delegating.

Role playing can be an enjoyable and inexpensive way to develop many new skills.

With the New Truck Dilemma exercise, for instance, participants learn the importance of fairness in
bringing about acceptance of resource allocation decisions. The role players can also give up their
inhibitions and experiment with new ways of acting. For example, a supervisor could experiment with
both a considerate and autocratic leadership style, whereas in the real world the person might not have
this harmless way of experimenting. Role playing also trains a person to be aware of and sensitive to the
feelings of others.

Role playing has some drawbacks. An exercise can take an hour or more to complete, only to be deemed
a waste of time by participants if the instructor doesn’t prepare a wrap- up explanation of what the
participants were to learn. Some trainees also feel that role playing is childish, while others who may
have had a bad experience with the technique are reluctant to participate at all. Knowing your audience
and preparing a wrap-up are thus advisable.

Behavior Modeling

Behavior modeling involves (1) showing trainees the right (or “model”) way of doing something, (2)
letting each person practice the right way to do it, and then (3) improving feedback regarding each
trainee’ performance. It has been used for example, to:

1Train first-line supervisors to handle common supervisor-employee interactions better. This includes
giving recognition, disciplining, introducing changes, and improving poor performance.

2.Train middle manages to better handle interpersonal situations, for example, performance problems
and undesirable work habits.

3.Train employees and their supervisors to take and give criticism, ask and give help, and establish
mutual trust and respect.
The basic behavior modeling procedure can be outlined:

Modeling, first, trainees watch films or videotapes that show model persons behaving effectively in a
problem situation. In other words, trainees are shown the right way to behave in a simulated but
realistic situation. The film might thus show a supervisor effectively disciplining a subordinate, if
teaching how to discipline is the aim of the training program.

Role playing, next the trainees are given roles to play in a simulated situation, here they practice and
rehearse the effective behaviors demonstrated by the models.

Social reinforcement. The trainer provides reinforcement in the form of praise and constructive
feedback based on how the trainee performs in the role playing situation.

Transfer of training. Finally, trainees are encouraged to apply their new skills when they are back on
their jobs.