Agent Provocateur Role-Plays® & Real Life Rehearsals®
"If trainers and teachers aren't using Real Life Rehearsals, with its important component Agent Provocateur Role-Plays, then what are they using? Some are probably using nothing but some are probably using traditional types of role-plays with all their shortcomings. In both cases, it's extraordinary!" (Mark McPherson, 1986, 2009.)
Traditional types of role-plays have too many drawbacks - at best not effective enough, at worst counterproductive!
Many education and training programs include what Mark calls traditional, or old-style, types of role-plays. In a nutshell, these role-plays typically involve the participants: Getting into small groups; taking turns at acting out the role of Person A, Person B, the Observer, etc in a scenario (the actual role-play); expressing their feelings about their delivery and giving feedback about the delivery by others; and sometimes delivering the role-play in front of the whole group. In addition: sometimes the scenario is devised by the participants and sometimes it is given to them by the trainer; and sometimes a script is used and, if so, sometimes it is devised by the participants and sometimes it is given to them.
Mark was introduced to these old-style role-plays about 35 years ago and quickly realized that, as a training and teaching tool aimed at helping participants develop their communication skills, they had some very serious flaws. So Mark did something about it; he developed a new activity which, admittedly, was more complex and more time-consuming, and required the teacher, trainer or facilitator to be completely involved, to use more skills, and to be more energetic than they needed to be when using traditional types of role-plays. The first version of this new activity was called the Panel of Experts. It later became the Pooling Your Wisdom technique and is now called Real Life Rehearsals®.
Introduction to Real Life Rehearsals and Agent Provocateur Role-Plays.
Real Life Rehearsals is a 10-step teaching (training, education or learning) activity divided into 2 major parts. Part 1 helps participants develop the strategies needed to successfully handle a given social situation and Part 2 helps participants develop the social communication skills to implement those strategies in the real world through the use of Agent Provocateur Role-Plays. Just for the record, Agent Provocateur Role-Plays are nothing like traditional types of role-plays - see below.
Real Life Rehearsals is a vital ingredient in courses and programs that are concerned, at least in part, with helping participants improve some aspect of their interpersonal communication skills. Real Life Rehearsals has a natural home, therefore, in any course related to: assertiveness training; job interview skills; people skills; developing and maintaining rapport; active listening skills; sales training; customer service; telephone techniques; reception skills; workplace communication; dealing with difficult people; dealing with harassment; refusal skills (typically a component of school-based alcohol and drug education); etc.
Find out more about Real Life Rehearsals and Agent Provocateur Role-Plays.
Check out what courses Mark is offering on How to use Real Life Rehearsals.