We should all do more role plays - in our polarized organizations and society, they cultivate empathy

Have you ever joined a role play? Role plays are about putting yourself in the shoes of somebody else - in an organisation or in a society, especially in actual or plausible situations of change or crisis - and reflecting, listening, negotiating and making collective decisions with others that take other roles different from their usual selves.

Over more than 10 years, we have been organising role plays in management courses and business school programs - especially in entrepreneurship, organizational behaviour and leadership courses taking a systems thinking and systems design perspective. We did so first at Wageningen University & Research and now at Chaire COAST | MBS School of Business (in memory of Helen Etchanchu) , in our Master of Science program and with companies, incubators and multi-stakeholder initiatives.

What role plays are all about

So how do role plays work, exactly? First, we (as role play organisers) develop a rich, compelling, critical case study (short, visual, and hyperlinked): one of those cases where, by reading it, you feel the tension between the dilemmas that all organisations and societies nowadays face - especially in this period of crisis. For instance, at Wageningen University & Research , we developed cases on how companies like Unilever, John Deere or Friesland Campina deal with water scarcity or methane emissions challenges, but also about societal issues like the nitrogen crisis and fair trade dilemmas in cocoa or cashew supply chains. In France, we now work with cases of companies like EDF dealing with the energy crisis, 达能 seeking to reduce methane emissions or Veolia coping with the water crisis. We chose these cases because they are all embedded in systems of extreme strategic importance for our region and beyond: energy, food and agriculture, and water that provide vital means to all of us. The pictures that you see in this piece, for example, are from our MBS School of Business Master of Science (MSc) students' role play on Veolia in March 2023.

Participants first immerse themselves of the case and form their own thoughts about it. Then, right before the role play actually starts, participants collectively discuss the case in teams of 3-5 people and together prepare and deliver a pitch in just four minutes around four key points:

?? 1. Systemic issues that, in the case, need to be tackled: if the case is about an energy company like EDF , for example, the systemic issue might the global energy crisis, as well as its linkages with issues of extreme water scarcity and overuse of natural resources;?

?? 2. Organizational issues that need to be internally tackled: for example, how that energy company needs to change internally, in evolution or in transformation relative to the present time, to structurally tackle the systemic issues;?

?? 3. Organizational, technological and strategic changes recommended to the company to address these organizational and systemic issues;?

?? 4. The novel partnerships and networks, either within or between a company (or both), which needs to happen - not just in terms of actors involved, but also of resource flows - to enact these changes.

Some pitches stand out over the others, and role play organisers are called to make their own judgement. For example, some pitches show more analytical precision, more innovative yet also realistic ideas, as well as more creativity and energy in articulating how the envisioned change could effectively address the issues at hand.

What we assess to be the team who performed the most compelling pitch becomes the "CEO & Board of Director Team" in the role play. Or, if the case involves a societal issue and not a company, the team with the best pitch becomes the "Mayor's Cabinet Team" or the "Prime Minister's Team" - depending whether the issue in the case is tacked at local or national scale.

Here the role play actually starts. While one team acts as the "CEO & Board of Director Team", all the others uptake other roles - in particular, roles that are likely to embody different perspectives, incentives and values around the issue at stake. For example, in the pictures you see here, participants embodied the following roles within the water company:

?? Chief Finance Officer (CFO), taking an overview perspective on budgets, revenues, costs, investments and relationships with shareholders.

?? Human Resource Management, taking an overview on integrating workforce and managers, capacity building, salaries, and diversity and inclusion issues;

?? Digital Transformation Officer, taking the perspective of technical experts in the company seeking to update and upgrade information technology systems;

?? Marketing Managers from a recently merged company, seeking to reposition and integrate themselves into the organisation after its merger.

?? Trade Union Representatives, representing the rights and conveying the voice of employees, managers and experts within the company.

?? Municipal Customer Service, taking the perspective of managers that are in direct contact with municipalities, which represent

?? Sustainability experts - especially in the domains of water reuse, waste and water waste management, and flood prevention - providing interdisciplinary views on what the company should do to address the systemic issues from a social and technical standpoint.

So, as everyone self-select or is assigned in these roles, the role play starts. It is an iterative, dialectic and dynamic process. The "CEO & Board of Directors Team" prepares and gives an extended 10-minute pitch to all the other teams; right afterwards, each team makes explicit their perspectives and demands to the others in just 1 minute. Here things get visibly complex and tense (and fun, if you like multi-lateral negotiations)! While the CEO and Board of Directors expound their change plans, usually all other stakeholders bring to the fore different languages, agendas and visions; these stakeholders need time to even understand each other's requests in depth and, once things are a bit clarified, negotiate a reasonable way forward despite the limited knowledge and uncertain future ahead.

Informal negotiations at the core of role plays

Now, how can the different stakeholders' team start understanding each other and foreseeing reasonably solutions ahead in role plays? Well, as in real life - with a combination of informal, emergent negotiations in an open space, alternated with a formal time where the stakeholders' teams make formal statements and requests to each other.

The informal negotiations are particularly important. The Board of Directors team needs to truly connect with each stakeholder, actively listen their requests and incorporate their requests in their updated change plan. This is not easy at all, because time is short, stakeholders are many and, most importantly, their requests are sparse and often conflicting. So, their engagement needs to be authentic and bold, making it clear that choices - often challenging choices - have to be made. You can see in the pictures how our Board of Directors truly put an effort to convey every stakeholders' demand, and convince them about the current plan. These informal negotiations usually last between 20 and 40 minutes, and the room is buzzing with energy.

After two iterations of formal and informal negotiations, it comes the time of final "GO" or "NO GO" decisions to the Board of Directors' change plan by each stakeholders. So, how did it go this year? After presenting an updated plan that took into deep account all stakeholders' standpoints (see picture below), the Board of Directors of the water company was able to receive the consensus (i.e. the "GO") of almost all stakeholders. This is impressive, as they were able to advance a plan that gave sufficient trust to sustainability and water management experts, trade unions, former managers, and municipal water services' customer services. Just one year before, in 2022, the majority of stakeholders gave a "NO GO" decision to a similar change plan. While the 2022 Board of Directors made a stronger plan from a technical standpoint, they failed to actively listen to their stakeholders.

Why role plays matter in polarized contexts

After reading all this, do you perhaps see role plays as cute and a bit silly school exercises? Or maybe a 'nice to do', but not really a 'need to do' thing, because more 'real-impact' actions should be taken instead of role plays? Well, if you think so, please dig a little bit more behind the surface and give it a second thought.

To fully grasp the importance of role plays, let's focus on how polarized our organizations and societies are today.

Societal and environmental issues are not just as complex and divisive as usual; they are also becoming more and more divisive. How do we fight inequality, burnout and anxiety in our workplaces in period of high inflation? Which energy sources we should invest in this context of crisis? How do we reduce water use and stock water across sectors and water basins as it become increasingly scarce? How can we reconcile biodiversity preservation and urban development? How can we prepare and manage mass migration induced by climate change? How should we take position as a country in the mounting global geopolitical tensions?

All these issues increasingly polarize us. They are so urgent and blown in our faces that we feel there's no more time to talk about them anymore - it's just time to act. This urgency make us feel that those with a different perspective from ours are a threat. If we are convinced that 'taking action now' is a way to save our planet, then we might also well believe that postponing action to discuss with others taking opposite actions in our organisations and societies might be a waste of time - a waste of time that will end up destroying our planet.

So, here is the paradox: the more we engage in this rhetoric of "taking action now", the less we are propense to take the time to coordinate with others with different perspective than ours.

While our actions - uncoordinated from others that we perceive distant from us - may help us to feel that 'at least we are doing something', thus might be somehow anxiety-reducing, ultimately the outcomes on our planet depend also - and mostly, in fact - by the actions of those others we have no time or interest anymore to speak with.

Don't take me wrong, "taking action to save the planet" is a wonderful intention. But if you "take action" while you close eyes and ears to those that are taking different actions that yours, then maybe you are not really helping to accelerate change. You and your closest circle of like-minded peers - at work or among family and friends - may feel good about yourselves, and rightly proud of your efforts. But, are you really behind the curve in your organization or society? Are you really making any impact at scale? I would say no - others different from you, outside your social circle are working for opposite goals than yours, and - when looking at scale - the actual impact of your efforts will be vane.

So, how do we get out from this paradox? How can we take meaningful action while, at the same time, remaining open to understand people other perspectives? Especially the views of those taking actions clashing, or even opposite, than those that you are taking? Understanding others different from you has the perk of making you more able to change their behaviours - through dialogue, which may often be unrealistic, through carrot or stick tactics or, if necessary, even by building coalitions strong enough to neutralise their negative behaviours. So how can you do all this?

Here is where role plays come into play - in education, but also in teams and projects within or between organisations.

Cultivating and embodying empathy

In role plays, participants practice, develop and reflect upon our empathy - a fundamental competence needed to adapt and transform our polarised organisations and societies. Empathy is about being able to step into another person's perspective and feeling how life looks like from their viewpoint. As you can see from these pictures, in role plays you need empathy, and you are called to build empathy: once you are in them, it takes a matter of minutes to realise. As a top manager, have you tried to live - at least for a few hours - the life of a middle manager with two kids who feels scared of being fired after her company has been bought out? As a middle manager, have you imagine how it feels like for a human resource manager to communicate unpopular decisions every day to their employees?

Similar questions could be asked nowadays about several key stakeholders taking opposite stances in our polarised societies. For example, looking at the recent conflicts risen between farmers and activists in France (around water use) or in the Netherlands (around nitrogen emissions and pesticides): farmers, can you put your feet into activists' shoes? Activists, can you put your feet into farmers' shoes? We are not enemies. We are just trying to cope with very complex and uncertain crises, and picking different actions to cope with the same fundamental issues - sharing water and limiting climate change.

So, don't we all need more role plays?

What schools, companies and organizations should do with role plays

If your organization faces a complex problem - such as a societal challenge, an ecological crisis, or anything that needs to change in your workplace - then you would probably benefit from a role play. Engage with our MBS School of Business students, or with us as faculty working for the Chaire COAST | MBS School of Business (in memory of Helen Etchanchu) , to develop a "living case study" about your organization and we'll work it out with you.

To be very clear: we are not seeking for funding to do that - as, luckily, we already have sufficient sources to fund our research and teaching, and maintain our independence and critical eye on the issues we study. We instead seek to transform both our education and your organisations in ways that are meaningfully grounded upon systems thinking and empathy.

Domenico Dentoni , Co-Director of COAST Chair

P.S. Huge thanks to all 2022/23 students of the Master of Science (MSc) course "Organizational & Systems Change" at MBS School of Business (including Romli A. , Ghassen Dkhili , Martin Etchevers , Juan Diego Flores , Keyla M. Galarza López , Christofer GHANTOUS , Louis Nouqué , Jonathan Rubiera , Haslin Santana , Leonard Sperl , Romen Tieleman , Hoa Tran , Jingyi Wei and Beibei Zhu ) for making a huge difference through their passionate work, in this role play and beyond, and inspiring the writing of this article!