Leadership Toolkit

Role plays

Why not develop a set of role plays with leadership issues or conflicts at their centre.  Interactive role plays are risky, and not for the faint-hearted, but they are a very valuable way to teach students how to see problems (and in particular, the leader's role), from different perspectives.  We suggest that the exercise below could be used in tutorials in most disciplines.  It could be assessed, provided that clear criteria were developed first; but it could be used simply as an informal learning task, if time permits, with one group of students performing the role play, and the remainder observing it and giving feedback.

Guidelines for using interactive role plays

The lecturer's responsibilities include:

• establishing the storyline, e.g.:
  • choose a controversial issue that is current and relevant (e.g., the water crisis in drought-stricken Australia);
  • make sure that it has scope to involve the leaders of multiple stakeholder groups with different viewpoints in a conflict situation (e.g., a meeting between five leaders of stakeholder groups and one political leader or Minister is ideal);
  • outline the main 'sticking point', or controversial issue (in the example above, the issue might be associated with dams or recycled water);
• allocating roles to students (each role should be a leadership position,eg., the leader of an  environmental group; a union; a political party in opposition; a property owner; a construction company, and so on;
• setting and monitoring time limits for presentation of the role play;
• briefing the students before they start the role play;
• debriefing the students after the role play, e.g.:
• allow at least 10 minutes to debrief the performers:
  • ensure that you bring them 'out of character' so they can step back from the performance aspect to focus on the leadership aspects (e.g., how did they represent their group of stakeholders; and how did they feel when the unexpected happened);
  • ask them what they have learned about leadership from taking part in the role play.

The responsibilities of the students acting out the role play include:

• researching the background and the current state of play in the issue;
• being aware of the points of view of the other stakeholders and the political leader with whom they meet;
• giving their 'character' credibility - (e.g., a background context such as their own motivation for leading their stakeholder group, their family, their interests, vested or otherwise, if relevant);
• giving their 'character' a personality with some defining features - (e.g., facial expressions, speech patterns, accent, gestures and body language); 
• scripting their own part in the role play;
• acting out their part and responding, where appropriate, to the dynamics of the role play as it unfolds.

 

The responsibilities of the students observing the role play include:

• commenting after the role play on the strengths and weaknesses of the content and underlying logic of each character's script; and
• giving suggestions on how the role play itself could be improved.

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