In-service meetings are a great time to really focus on role-play. Each in-service should include at least one round of role-play.
Role-play is very important in the Pregnancy Center ministry for the following reasons:
- Role-play keeps volunteers skills sharpened
- Role-play gives volunteers an opportunity to practice various scenarios outside of their time with clients.
- Role-plays let someone explore how they could have interacted differently with a client they has in the past.
- Role-play enables center staff to see volunteers’ strengths and weaknesses and plan accordingly to help them.
- Observing role-plays gives center staff good ideas for needed topics for future in-services.
- Role-play is a good time for exercising vulnerability and learning which is a key concept for volunteers who work directly with clients.
- The more your do role-play the less scary and awkward it becomes
Addressing Role-play Fears & Anxiety
Often there is a lot of fear surrounding role-play. People come up with all sorts of excuses not to participate. Center staff/trainers need to be ready for this and ease people into role-play.
Allowing trainees and current volunteers to practice together with one other person is important before you are doing any role-play in a group setting. Setting up role-plays with clear instructions and the purpose and focus of the role-play will create safety. Establishing guidelines for feedback is essential. Creating an environment of “We are all learning here,” and “This is where it is okay to make mistakes and learn,” helps volunteers relax and focus more on the learning and less on their performance.
Be A Role-Model
Utilizing realistic role-plays and showing volunteers how it is done by being the “counselor” in a role-play, shows how important you believe role-play to be and are being vulnerable to your group of volunteers. We cannot ask others to do what we are unwilling to do.
Use Role-play Early and Often
If you build in role-play from the very beginning during the initial training and continue it throughout your on-the-job and in-service training, volunteers will learn to expect it and become more comfortable with the process.
There are a variety of role-play formats that can be used:
- A “scripted” role-play that is determined ahead of time between two people and the other participants are instructed to watch for specific things like good skills or bas skills, different client and volunteer reactions or behaviors, etc.
- Groups of two (dyads) where all groups are given the same role-play scenario and given time to play out the scenario. In this situation it is important that each person in the dyad give feedback to the other person focused on the purpose of the role-play
- Small groups of three (triads) where there are three roles: client, volunteer and observer or coach. The role of the coach would help either party if they got stuck and the role of the observer would be to stay silent and give feedback to both parties when the role-play ended. Every triad would be doing the same role-play so the processing at the end would apply to all triads.
- Round-robin role-play where two people start the role-play in front of the group. When one person playing the “counselor” role gets stuck, they call time, discussion about the difficulty is worked through, and then another volunteer takes the “counseling” chair and the role-play resumes from where it was left off or stopped. It is best for center staff to play the client or someone who is very good at role-play and can move in and out of the role-play easily as well as facilitate the discussion.
- A variation on the round robin above is that two volunteers are in the role-play and the staff person facilitates the discussion when one or the other of the people in the role-play become stuck or when the staff member chooses to stop the role-play for a teachable moment.
- A volunteer shares a personal scenario that they encountered with a client and asks for someone to role-play with her to see if she could have possible done something different in her interaction with the client. As a second option she might ask two other volunteers to play out the scenarios to observe how another volunteer might have handled the situation.
Creating Role-play Scenarios
I have created a list of short scenarios that might be helpful when planning role-plays for your in-service trainings. It does not matter the scenario as long as it is basically realistic and a volunteer would be able to identify with the scenario to be authentic in the role-play. Almost any scenario will do because role-play is an opportunity to practice using the Seven Fundamentals and receive feedback from others who are trying to recognize and utilize the same skills. The focus should be on the volunteer’s use of the Seven Fundamentals and not on the client’s story.
Your client documentation should give you a plethora of client scenarios to draw from if you want the role-play scenarios to directly relate to the clients you are seeing at your center. When writing the scenarios give just enough information so the person playing that role can use the information but not be restricted by it. Set the stage and then let them use their imagination to put words and feelings into the role-play.
Drop me an email and let me know what you struggle with when facilitating role-play in your trainings and I will try and help in future blog posts.