Week 7: Role-Play Exercise 1 (For Discussion)

Week 7: Role-Play Exercise[1] (for Discussion)

The following two scenarios, “Managing the Unhappy Employee” and “Managing People,”provide the background for the role-play exercise you and your partner will engage in this week. By engaging in this role play, and then providing feedback to each other, you will have the opportunity to enhance your own skills at handling difficult conversations. Complete this exercise before participating in the Week 7 Discussion forum.

Each scenario is described from two perspectives: that of the employee (“Role A”) and of the leader/manager (“Role B”). In this role play exercise, you should take on Role A (the employee) for one of the scenarios, and take on Role B (the leader/manager) for the other scenario, so that you and your partner each have a turn at enacting the employee role once and the leader/manager role once. Note: It is important that you do not read the other person’s instructions for their role prior to engaging in this exercise. Read only the role you are going to play for the exercise.

It is recommended that you conduct the role play and follow-up feedback by phone, or even in person if this is feasible, but this exercise can be effectively conducted by email or through online chat session(s) with proper planning.

Finding a Partner

By the beginning of Week 7, pair up with another individual from the class and make arrangements for engaging in this exercise. You may wish to use the class email list or Class Café area to identify and contact your potential partner. As soon as you have found a partner, you or your partner need to inform the instructor that you will be working together. If you have problems connecting with a partner, contact the Instructor.

If there is an odd number of students in the class, it will be necessary for three students to work together. In that case, Student 1 and Student 2 can work together on the first scenario, and Student 2 and Student 3 can work together on the second scenario. Student 1 and 3 can then work on either of the scenarios, making sure to take on a different role from the one they enacted earlier. Each student should have an opportunity to enact the leader/manager role once.

Role Play Instructions

1. Decide with your partner which role each of you will take in each of the scenarios.
2. Read only the role you are going to take for the exercise. Do not read your partner’s role. Spend some time thinking about your selected character’s point of view. What does he or she want? What does he or she think or feel about this situation? Try to understand this character as well as you can before beginning the role play. This will help you and your partner to create a believable exchange and a meaningful learning experience. Consider also the negotiation strategies you have learned in this course. Which ones might you usefully apply in this situation?
3. Engage in the role play exercise with your partner. This means that you should discuss the problems outlined in the scenario as if you are the character in the role. Use the first-person pronoun when expressing your character’s views. So, for instance, if you are enacting Role A in Scenario 1, you might say, “I am disappointed that this project was not assigned to me, and would like you to reconsider this decision.” There is no time limit for this conversation, but allow the role play to continue at least for 15 minutes for each scenario, so that there is ample time for you and your partner to articulate your thoughts and feelings about the situation, and to negotiate a resolution that is satisfactory to both of you, if possible.
4. After concluding each role-play, give each other feedback, allowing at least 15 minutes for this part of the exercise.

• What were the main tensions and competing goals in these situations? What obstacles did you uncover in your dialogue and how did you overcome them or get stymied by them?
• Identify the negotiation and other strategies you thought your partner was employing, and which ones might have been effective, and explain why.

1. When you are finished, return to the Week 7 Discussion forum and respond to the questions about this exercise.

• What did you learn from this role-play?
• What did you do effectively, and in what ways might you improve as a leader/manager in resolving conflict?
• Would it be easier or more difficult to take on the leader/manager role in person?

Scenario 1: Managing the Unhappy Employee

Role A: The Disgruntled Employee Role

You are a long time employee of the company/organization. You are about to meet with your supervisor, who has asked for this meeting.

You are glad to meet with your boss as you feel s/he has been avoiding you lately. You are very unhappy that a project/opportunity you feel should have been yours was given to a colleague, Jo, with less experience or education. The colleague is highly competent, but it was a very juicy and visible assignment that you were sure was going to be yours. You feel it was a personal slight that it was not given to you, and given your track record of success you can’t understand why leadership would have made such an insensitive decision. You have been highly innovative, perhaps a bit too innovative at times, but you’ve never had a major failure. You feel you are at the peak of your career and ability, but you are not being treated as such at work. Your morale is at an all time low. You would consider looking for another job but your family is imbedded in the community here, which would make a major move very unpopular at home. Although you have tried, you have not been able to get a satisfying answer to this situation. You have had many discussions with colleagues and peers about this issue—pretty much everyone knows how you feel and you make no apologies for that. You have developed very close personal relationships with external stakeholders/clients over the past years and you have given them excellent service. They are more than happy with your performance. You have even sought enlightenment from some of them who you know very well about this issue and what they think of Jo’s abilities and performance. You have a cool relationship with Jo since s/he suspects that you are unhappy, and has given you a wide berth of late. You did some early on mentoring with Jo and feel s/he has “stolen your best ideas and run with them,” which has left you with a sense of betrayal and mistrust. You didn’t mind mentoring a junior person but not if they were going to take your opportunities and present ideas that you came up with in the first place as though they were theirs!

You are going to meet with your boss and you hope to have this important project reassigned to you. It if were not handled well it could have devastating impacts on the company/organization’s bottom line. Right now, you can’t see how you are going to be happy here with the situation as it currently stands.

Scenario 1: Managing the Unhappy Employee

Role B: The Leader/manager Role

You are the leader of the organizational group. You have 15 people who report directly to you. They are all highly skilled and educated specialists who handle a variety of projects, many of which generate important revenue for your Department or have a great deal of visibility. Your relationships with your customers/stakeholders are critically important to your future success.

You have a small core of people who have led the group for some years; however, you realized that left you with a very shallow “bench” of skills upon which to draw. You have been actively working to build the capacity of your group to strengthen the bench by developing and mentoring others with stretch assignments, coaching, and regular performance feedback. From a management standpoint, it was not functional for a very few people to hold a great deal of power in the organization when they did not also hold similar authority. Because they were the only ones who could provide critical services, they virtually controlled the schedule of production and became very demanding about how they were treated, what they were paid, etc. The organization made many concessions to them of necessity, which led you to realize that investing in a greater bench strength was not only part of the growth strategy but also a part of realigning their role and power in the organization. While these are wonderful people, they do not have the perspective or the same information they would if they filled management or leadership positions.

Today you will meet with one of you best and brightest long term employees. S/He is highly valuable, but has had a hard transition to the broadening of the bench. You had asked them to mentor Jo, a younger, less experienced or educated team member, last year, which they did well. Jo learned a great deal, which made him/her ready for their current assignment. However, your more senior employee is now obviously unhappy that Jo was given a choice assignment. You have complete confidence in Jo and are eager to see what s/he produces. However, your current concern is that this other employee has been very verbal about his/her dissatisfaction—talking to peers, colleagues, even clients! S/he has been very critical of Jo and his/her performance, although not directly attacking his/her competence or ability. The employee often comments on the low morale around the organization, how things used to be so good but they are “going down the toilet” now. You suspect that s/he is feeling a real loss of real power, even if that is not at a wholly conscious level, and is feeling a great deal of suppressed anger from that.

Your critical issue is that this employee needs to stop badmouthing the organization both internally and externally. The impact of his/her attitude on others on the team is visible and it could damage revenues and future opportunities when it comes to clients. He/she is a highly valuable employee—you do not want him/her to leave the organization, but you would like him/her to be happy, productive, and a team player, without making unreasonable demands about differential treatment based on seniority. Ideally you would like this person to become a senior thought leader who is willing to grow, teach and mentor younger team members even if that means that s/he will take on a less public role in the future. You are pretty sure that would be a tough sell to this person, who has long enjoyed the spotlight and the approbation from peers, management, and customers for his/her excellent and innovative work.

Scenario 2: Managing People

Role A: The Social Glue Role

You are JJ, a productive, energetic people person. You are highly competent in your area of expertise and have done well in the organization. You are part of the social glue that connects the organization and the people to one another. People respect your genuine concern and care for them and they often come to you with their problems, particularly their interpersonal problems in the workplace. You are happy to lend a sympathetic ear—you really care about people and can feel very personally involved in their struggles. You believe in fairness, honesty, openness and justice. When you see these principles violated you feel very uncomfortable. You have been with this organization a long time and you plan to stay here—keeping it a great place to work is of key importance to you. When you feel you can play a constructive role you try to facilitate communication among the team members about the problems at hand. Thus you find yourself, at times, talking to your colleagues about what one person or another said in an attempt to clarify the situation and to get things resolved between them. When you feel administration or others have wronged an individual or a group, you feel it is your duty to advocate for the injured party. You spend a good portion of your time connecting with others at work, via email, face to face conversations, phone, etc. A couple of times the “grapevine effect” has frustrated you when you hear a part of a conversation that got back to you—much embellished! While you would never stretch the truth, you realize that people sometimes have faulty memories for the details and this can happen. You really feel the whole organization would be much healthier if everyone just opened up and talked about the real issues.

However you are realistic. You are very aware that decisions are often made by “back door deals” or by private conversation that leads to agreement before decisions are publicly made. It’s just the way things are done around here—people lobby for what they want before the dye is cast, much like in politics. You know how to play the system and can capitalize on the good interpersonal relationships you have with others to put your lobbying skills to good use when needed.

Scenario 2: Managing People

Role B: The Leader/manager Role

You manage a diverse group of professionals who are highly energetic, intelligent, competent and successful. The organization is a complicated one where many individuals have a great deal of responsibility and authority with (at times) little oversight. It is a challenge to keep the organization moving in a unified direction, yet the highest levels of the organization expect exactly this—plus excellent productivity records that demonstrate success.

But you have a problem. There are many issues that compete for available resources, including time, money, energy, advertising, space, etc. It is impossible in an organization such as this for everyone to be happy all the time. Indeed, most of the highly productive, highly competent “leaders in their field” employees see only their own areas of concern. Very few consider the needs of the organization as a whole. As such, they tend to feel neglected or slighted when resources are not allocated as they desire and some react as though these decisions are personal. When this happens (and it often does) there are a core of folks in your organization who rely on one another for “moral support”. Unfortunately the effect of this “moral support” is a tirade of “he said, she said” gossip that gets people upset, makes them lose focus, and results in lower productivity. The organization can literally spin its wheels when the emotions run high over this gossip.

Today you are meeting with JJ, who is a highly productive, energetic people person. JJ is highly competent in his/her area of expertise and has done well in the organization. You could say that JJ is part of the social glue that connects the organization and the people to one another—but as such is one of the main people that those who feel “wronged” run to. They seem to be able to get JJ to lobby for their perspective, which often causes more unrest than it does resolution.

You don’t know why JJ gets so involved in other people’s issues, but you feel it has a toxic effect on the moral fiber of the team. It is this moral fiber that you are most concerned about. You like JJ and respect his/her contribution to the overall productivity of the team, but you need to do something about the destructive gossip machine that is harming the organization and the people in it.

[1]These scenarios are reproduced with permission from the author, Claudia Fernandez, DrPH, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.