Scenario 1A: Unmotivated Employee Seeking a Change
This scenario involves an employee who is unmotivated in their role as a designer at Suttonberry Interiors and decides to speak to her manager about how she is feeling.
Role-Play Scenario
Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash
Addison, a homewares designer has worked at Suttonberry Interiors for 5 years. Suttonberry Interiors is a high-end business that sells luxury homewares that are proudly designed and manufactured in Australia. Since joining the company, Addison has designed several homewares that have resulted in large sales due to the items being loved and shared by several celebrity clientele. Lately, Addison has been feeling quite unmotivated in her role and hasn’t felt inspired each day at work to create new homeware designs. Due to the creative nature of her role, being creative is essential and she is quite concerned that she has lost her spark which she is proudly known for. She has been feeling this way for a few weeks now and it is starting to have a big impact on her output. She has started looking for a new job as she feels a change is what she needs. The thought of working at a new organisation is quite exciting which reinforces that perhaps it is time for her to move on from her role at Suttonberry. She decides to have an honest conversation with her manager, Michael (Suttonberry’s Head of Design) about how she is feeling.
- Organise participants into groups of 3 and allocate roles (Designer Addison, Head of Design Michael, observer)
- Ask participants to read the role-play scenario information
- Suggested role-play time is 50 minutes
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- Preparation time: 10 minutes
- Role play time: 20 minutes
- Debrief time (observer to also provide feedback to role players): 10 minutes
- Group debrief time: 10 minutes
As the observer, your role in the scenario is to observe the relationship and conversation between the two role players. Part of your role is not to make judgments or interrupt the role play, but rather take notes on the conversation. Taking observation notes will be a critical part of the debrief, where you are able to provide the role players with your perspective on how the conversation went. To assist with taking observational notes, here are some questions to consider:
- What skills did Michael display in the conversation?
- What non-verbal cues were utilised by Michael in the conversation?
- Did the conversation end in a resolution? If so, what and how?
- What skills could have Michael utilised to assist in the conversation?
Post Role Play Debrief Questions
At the conclusion of the role-play, it is imperative that the participants are given the opportunity to debrief with each other and other role-playing groups. It is also important for the observer to provide the role players with feedback on what they observed in the relationship and conversation between the two role players. The debrief should be prefaced by first outlining the importance of feedback in the spirit of learning through action and reflection and not seen as the opportunity to highlight weaknesses or communicate criticism. The following questions can be utilised to guide the debrief process, with the ability to include further content-specific questions on the counselling process and/or skills in accordance with your curriculum.
- How did you find the role-play exercise?
- What went well in the role-play?
- What did you find difficult about the role play?
- What skills were evident in the role play?
- What would have helped improve your experience in the role play?
- What would you do differently next time you engage in a similar conversation?
