Roleafing

Roleafing is a facilitation technique in which participants assume defined roles during a discussion or exercise to explore perspectives, test responses, and surface constraints. The approach is used in workshops, design sprints, and educational settings to structure interaction and encourage active participation. Roles may be tied to stakeholders, job functions, customer archetypes, or policy positions, and participants typically stay in a role for a timed interval before rotating.

Process typically involves: establishing roles, presenting a scenario or problem, running timeboxed cycles where participants act in their roles, followed by a debrief to extract insights, then rotating roles and repeating. Debrief questions focus on decisions, information asymmetries, and trade-offs encountered in each perspective. Ground rules and safety considerations are standard to keep portrayals respectful and non-identifying.

Common uses include policy discussion, product design, service delivery planning, conflict mediation, and organizational change initiatives. Proponents say roleafing fosters empathy, surfaces blind spots, improves communication, and accelerates consensus by making perspectives tangible. Critics caution that roleplay can become performative or oversimplified, risk reinforcing stereotypes, or confuse participants if roles are poorly chosen or poorly facilitated.

Origins of the term are unclear; roleafing appears in contemporary facilitation and experiential learning literature as an emergent practice rather than a widely codified method. It is related to role-playing, scenario-based design, and participatory design techniques.

See also: role-playing, scenario planning, participatory design, simulations.