Example of role play that worked well!

This week I participated in a work training delivered by an external trainer. The topic was on personal impact, the trainer came from a theatre background and did really well compressing her session down into 3 hours because of a certain football match!
After a number of warm up actor type exercises we were split into 4 groups each with a different scenario - I was a head nurse! As well as roles, picked out of a cup we each picked a playing card between ace-10 (there were no duplicates). Ace represented weak power and 10 the strongest power with regard to communications; so in my scenario the "consultant" picked a 10 and the "cleaner" was a 1. I was a 6 in the middle of the power stakes. The point of the exercise was to understand all those comms signals we take for granted and to understand how you can influence the interaction.

In the main the role play went well there were a couple in  the group who are introverts that looked terrified. One said afterwards she was glad she went first to get it over and done with. Another said if she had wanted to be an actor she would have gone into the theatre! I was reflecting why it went so well when the trainer had only known the group for less than 2 hours. I would only attempt something like this at the end of a residential weekend however, I decided it worked because as a team all the participants knew each other and we work together, so it didn't really matter that the trainer didn't really know her audience that well. In the main feedback from participants was that they enjoyed it.