experiences with role taking and role conflict

 

A.     Role taking- Putting oneself in mentally / imaginatively in role of other to regulate own behaviour

 

My personal experience with role taking was when I was preparing for interviews for colleges. I used to put myself in place of the interviewer and prepare for every possible questions that the interviewer could ask. I even anticipated all the cross questions that the interviewer could ask. I even  watched various you-tube videos in order to correctly assume the role of interviewer . I was successful to a great extent . as in almost all the interviews I was asked the questions that I had already prepared for whilst role taking.

 

Another time was when I was doing an internship. I was in a dilemma regarding one of the tasks that was assigned to me, and during that time I could not ask my mentor that how I should go about it because they were preoccupied with something. So instead I tried to put myself in their position and tried to solve my problem .I just anticipated their actions and tried to regulate my behaviour accordingly and I was ultimately able to solve the problem, with the help of role taking.

 

   B. Role conflict – Role conflict is experienced by individual at the time of role playing , this happens     when :

1.Two levels of role conflict:

a.      Within his own role

b.      Between his roles and other roles

2. when there is discrepancy between his perception of role and actual role.

3.This can lead to intense group tensions and individual discomfort

My experience with role conflict was when we were assigned a project of coming up with a start-up idea. The project was to come up with a  sales pitch to convince an investor . Me and my group took up role taking in order to anticipate all the questions that the investor could ask and also to mould our pitch so that the investor likes it ,but we were unsuccessful in doing so  as there was a discrepancy in our understanding of the role and actual role. We thought that the investor would ask us about figures and numbers where as he asked us about the basic idea of the pitch. So our group project was unsuccessful ,but we learned from our mistakes .