Yes everyone hates role playing ..... and

I just read this post Everyone Hates Role Playing by Frank Roche.

Frank suggests that as everyone hates role playing, trainers should forget experiential learning as a way of embedding the learning points all together and try teaching instead! He goes on to argue that people learn from teaching, and visual learners learn from books. What do you think?

I disagree with Frank's view of how people learn. We learn mostly from experience and reflection. I have yet to see a baby pick up a book in order to learn how to walk! They try it, fall over, try it again, and again until they have mastered it. In work, studies show that people learn from experience (70%) role models (20%) and books and courses (10%)(Centre for Creative Leadership)

As a trainer I leverage this by using work related experiences, examples and stories and follow the training up with work based learning opportunities such as projects, experiments and tasks.

As far as role play goes, I want to distinguish between role play (acting - not good) and real play (real life scenario's - good) Employees may also hate the idea of real play but we never learn to do anything differently without stepping out of our comfort zone. My job as the trainer is to make this step as safe as possible. I hate exercise but that's not a valide reason to avoid it.

I'd love your views:

Have you been on a training programme which used role play or real play?
How have you learned to be the manager you are?