- Whether the role play is for personal relationships, business communications or sales effectiveness, it is important to set up scenarios where you have a message that you need to convey to another person. Create the scenario where obstacles will be met, disagreement or objection for the other party, and work to remain clear and concise in your language. The objective when being the speaker is to not go on and on and to limit emotional outbursts.
- For those who are afraid of losing your train of thought, let's be real about what happens when we are listening. If you are emotionally engaged in what is going on, your mind races from thought to thought as you desperately attempt to get thoughts, objections and arguments in quickly and poignantly. Remember a court room, people cannot speak out of turn. If you need to, keep a notebook to make notes about items you don't want to forget. If you think a notebook isn't necessary, simply listen and take in what the person is saying. You will have an opportunity to speak and relay your opinions, and they will always be better formulated when you have listened to the other person. As with speaking, allowing yourself to have emotional outbursts (even in your own mind) can destroy effective communication.
- As the listener, we describe how courtrooms allow only one person to speak at a time. This isn't how normal life and normal communications work. People who are engaged in effective communication have a give and take. This means you speak while I listen and when a complete thought is finished, it allows the other person to speak and relay his thoughts about what you just said. In role playing, this may be awkward at first, but try limiting the time one person is allowed to speak; this time limit will help you get used to finishing a thought and not the whole conversation before the other person speaks.
