Our roleplay and real play development solutions maximise participants' learning through practicing, testing, gaining confidence and also receiving invaluable 1st-hand feedback from the "other person" in the business relationship played by the business roleplayer. We know of no other development tool that has this level of lasting impact and is as safe and supportive, dynamic, stretching and fun.
We are proud to have created and delivered innovative and dynamic solutions to many behavioural development programmes:
- Performance management
- Leading others through Change
- Influencing
- Negotiation
- Diversity in the workplace
- Partnering Relationships
- Disability and Discrimination
- Redundancy Management
- Sales Success
- Customer Service
- Stakeholder Management
- Call Centre
- Personal Impact
- Communication with Confidence
- Consultancy
- Competency-based interviews
- Team focus and re-building
- Effective Networking
- Talent Development
- Succession Planning
Here are some case studies with participant and client feedback:
Case Study #1: O2 Change Leadership. A 2 x 1-day modular programme using Forum Theatre, Bespoke "Real-play" scenarios
Client's objectives:
- To enable senior managers, team leaders and department heads to understand their own motivators and to be able to harness them for effective leadership change.
- Recognising others motivators and responding effectively to build strong relationships during change.
- Understanding the importance of engagement in successful change and the behavioural skills required.
- To gain an understanding of how to lead teams through change
- To understand the change journey including the emotions of change
- To plan how to "keep the plates spinning" – managing the day job successfully whilst role modeling and leading change
- Module 1: A series of Forum Theatre sessions to bring alive the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) model and the concept of developing a working hypothesis when observing others' behaviours. Linked into these sessions were key skills such as building rapport, managing conflict, challenging upwards and setting your people up for success. All these were set in a real-life change environment of a leading telecoms organisation.
- Module 2: A Forum Theatre session highlighting the need for clarity of communication, questions and quality feedback in leading others through change. The afternoon was spent exploring individuals' bespoke real play scenarios - challenging real-life situations that the participants wanted to examine with the business realplayers help.
It was so good to see each scenario acted out by professional actors, it was so much more powerful and realistic than if it had been done in house. I would like to attend any other courses like this if possible.
The actors were really brilliant, I don't know how they can take a hand written brief, ask a few questions and then make the person they are playing come alive in the room. It was so realistic. I leaned so much on this course, thank you.
What our client said:
We have used Corporate Drama's Business Role Players to bring alive key learning experiences and real business scenarios. The innovative use of Business Role Players and their amazing skill of understanding significant commercial issues have allowed us to deliver a truly world-class change leadership programme and assist us in driving home the behavioural changes required. This learning has not only increased the impact of the message, but has helped prepare our operational teams for tackling a major business transformation. Thank you Mark and team. Natalie Beckerman, Head of Customer and People Experience. O2 Telefonica.
Corporate Drama's business role-players ability to bring alive and respond instantaneously to the scenarios our learners experience on a day to day basis is so powerful. It completely dispels the notion of "traditional role play" being unrealistic, and creates many opportunities to preview new techniques in a safe environment. Without doubt it has increased the learning experiences of our people. Lisa Coggan – Employee Journey Consultant. O2 Telefonica
Case Study #2: Barclays Internal Audit Academies. A 2–day modular programme using 1-2-1 scenarios, forum theatre.
Client's objectives:
- For the various grades within Internal Audit (Audit Seniors, Audit Managers, Audit Lead) to understand how to build partnership relationships with all stakeholders in the audit process: customers, direct reports and senior managers.
- To understand and demonstrate the behavioural techniques when building rapport
- To understand and demonstrate influencing successfully
- To know how to manage conflict with a stakeholder
- To understand and know how to use assertiveness when managing a relationship
- A series of 1-2-1 auditor/stakeholder roleplay scenarios built around a fictitious credit card company undergoing an audit. Here the participants were able to practice and demonstrate the appropriate behaviours when building the value of the stakeholder relationships. Individual business roleplayers worked in collaboration with observer coaches with each participant.
- A forum theatre exploring the behaviours associated with behaving assertively
- A series of interruptions to the participants during a "day from hell". The objective was to see how each participant would react to a non-technical challenge involving a member of their team. These were run on an ad-hoc basis, allowing the business roleplayer to catch participants off guard.
The business roleplayers were excellent. They were very knowledgeable and very good at making you think on your feet. I have been on similar courses before that didn't use actors and they were really dry and boring. This was so different; we learned the theory and then put it into practice with lots of support from the actors and our observer coach.
10/10 for the roleplay actors, I have to admit I didn’t like the idea of roleplay but your team made it very realistic, challenging and safe. I’ve role-played with colleagues before and it's just not the same. I learnt so much about how to behave and how not to in these types of situation!
What our client said:
We wanted to make this programme very different from anything we had experienced before - Mark and the Corporate Drama team developed this idea using forum theatre and conventional roleplay scenarios. This brought a unique participant experience to every event! Many thanks. Jill Robinson. Organisational Fitness Manager, Barclays Finance