The idea of role playing is to simulate an interaction for the purpose of practicing specific skills. It's useful when we have discrete interaction skills to practice and master, like presenting specific kinds of information or asking specific kinds of questions.
When we want to help people learn more than mimicry, we use Scenario Mapping. We use selected scenarios to map out five key interaction elements.
- What to expect and prep for
- What to listen for
- What information and questions to share
- What could go wrong and responses
- What to follow up and follow through on
This helps people form a mindful and agile approach to new, complex and challenging interactions in their work. The most important part of the process is the learning based critique following live practice in real interactions. A learning based critique is structured around 6 questions:
- What went well and why?
- What was unexpected?
- When did you feel most and least confident?
- What do you know and assume about how well you did?
- Could you get better feedback on how well you did in the future?
- Based in what you learned, what would you do or try differently?