Role Play as Essential Tool in Soft Skills Training

Soft skills are key to effectiveness in life.

From self-confidence to communication skills and emotional intelligence, they all play a significant role in determining a person’s success and happiness. 

Per the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs” report, emotional intelligence, creativity and people management will be the top skills required in 2020.

However, 'soft skills training' is always challenging since it requires people to change their habits that have been developed over a lifetime. Hence, for any training to be effective in the development of interpersonal skills, it has to allow for repeated practice and provide extensive feedback.

Roleplay with professional actors is a medium that has all these as built-in mechanisms.

What soft skills can be honed using roleplay?

1. Self-Confidence: Roleplay helps to build self-confidence by encouraging participants to practice difficult situations and try out different strategies in a safe to fail environment.

2. Verbal and Non Verbal Communication: With bespoke or scenario based roleplay, participants learn to speak more clearly, precisely and with more confidence, while learning how to vary their pitch and tone. They also learn the power of pause, the impact of body language, and how expressions play a prime role in communication.

3. Listening Skills: Listening is a skill that is usually hard to teach through any other form of training, but by listening to others’ dialogues effectively, paying attention to body language and intentional pauses, roleplay can make a difference.

4. Stage Fright: Roleplay-based training helps participants overcome their fear of being vulnerable in front of others – helping them feel more comfortable in front of an audience.

5. Self-Development: Through self-discovery, observation and learning from their mistakes, participants are more aware of their key development areas. Roleplay encourages to overcome their fears and improve their abilities. They also stretch themselves based on the roleplay scenarios, thus discovering their undiscovered potential and talents.

6. Emotional Intelligence: Roleplay helps in enhancing emotional intelligence. It puts people in touch with not only their own emotions but also the emotions of others. It helps them to see their impact through various roles, enhancing their empathy and their capacity to handle emotions more effectively.

Roleplay based training is a methodology for training to enhance many competencies, including leadership, communication, creativity, team building, and emotion management skills.  

It has a great impact besides increasing engagement. It brings change, joy and... a true return on investment.