Role Reversal

A Role Playing Exercise to develop new perspectives on a problem. Putting yourself in the others shoes to empathise with their point of view. Developed from the ‘empty chair’ technique from Gestalt.

What is it?

• Practicing this situation can increase your confidence going into a difficult scenario and reinforce positive behaviour. Preventing you from backing, helping you stick to your guns.
• Prepares you for different variations in which the scenario might play out.

When to use it?

When you/the client are telling your story. It allows the development of new perspectives and challenges blindspots. To test out new ways of negotiating Practice being assertive

How to use it?

• Play: Ask yourself a typical scenario with Person X, where there was some difficulty in the past. Or think about the situation you would like to rehearse (e.g. interview, salary negotiation)
• Describe exactly what X is like, what the y might say, how they might feel & what they might do.
• Use your coach/partner to role play the scenario. You as yourself and the coach partner as person X. Give enough time for the typical responses of person X to be voiced.
• Debrief: what happened? Was X portrayed accurately? Was there any learnings about both parties from the role-play?
• Re-Run: try the scenario again. Try out some different responses.
• Reverse: you play person X. this can help you empathize with them and give you an edge, an idea of how they might react and why.