Actors' five unique skills for corporate roleplaying

Roleplaying has been a regular component of training courses. Usually, candidates take turns in roleplaying situations so their colleague can explore solutions, play with their ideas and have some fun. But it is a powerful tool in actors’ hands, after all they are in the business of ‘playing roles’.

Why use actors?

The art of acting is a lot more than learning lines. Actors are expert improvisers, and create believable characters and in-the-moment performances. When we watch actors on stage or film, we can be transported to places that seem real and believable. It’s easy to forget we are watching actors act.

The same applies when actors take on a corporate roleplay scenario. The person they are interacting with quickly forgets they are with an actor, as the situation comes to life. When these roleplay scenarios are being used to assess training the actor combines a realistic situation and reaction to the candidate, with a consistency each time to ensure the assessment for each candidate is fair and comparable.

In summary, the actor’s five main skills in roleplaying are:

Actors are able to take on the traits of an individual customer or personality type to enhance sales and negotiation training.
Actors are comfortable with heightened emotions whilst improvising in response to the participant and within the scenario.
Actors create ‘real’ situations in imaginary circumstances so that participants practice inter-actions as if they are real.
Actors can articulate meaningful, honest feedback based on what their character felt and experienced to assist the participant to better understand their own experience.
Actors can deliver repeated, consistent performances to support reliable and fair assessments in training and recruitment situations.

Next time you are assessing candidates or want to improve the results of your training and development days, contact Roleplay Australia here.