Clip 17: Value of role play

Catherine:

Well, the challenge is that you are actually putting yourself on the line, and you have to be pretty brave to do it. And that it’s actually quite hard to be Model II, especially in those tricky situations. And you can actually uncover things about yourself that you don't necessarily like that much. But it is really useful because you learn yourself through doing that.

Michael:

It requires a person to question some ways of being that are often very very deep for them. And that is never comfortable for any of us. It requires them to engage in a learning situation that they have no idea of what the outcome will be. They don't know what parts of them that it’s going to tap when they go into it. And they ... so I said earlier that I was delighted when Catherine or others come and say, “I've got a problem, I've got an issue out there.” Because it shows that they are prepared to meet that challenge, and also that they have a degree of trust over the process itself, that it will prove sufficiently safe for them to be brave enough to engage in.

Allan:

When you first are involved in role play, you feel quite awkward and self conscious about that. But the more you do it, the more relaxed you become, and what I find is I do actually slip into that role – so slip into the role of Jack. And I have no idea what Jack is like in person, so the question I guess I'm asking myself when I'm involved in role play is, “Is this a genuine-type response that I'm giving – or the way I'm thinking about what Catherine is saying – is that a genuine way of responding to it?”

So I think role play has a number of benefits – and limitations as well. But I think if you understand those, then it works well. Firstly, I don't think that through role play you can expect to go out to a school and work with a teacher and for the conversation to work exactly as it did with that role play. It pretty much never will. But what it does do is it gives me a chance to examine my theory of practice in a completely risk free environment, and just test it out. So if I suggested that, the response from the teacher is okay – you know, if they respond that way, I can handle that, at least I'm being honest about it. So I think there’s the big value, is in examining how my theory about how things work actually happens in my practice.