Geschreven door Marijn de Geus | April 20, 2012
Webcam interaction assignments enable participants to train their soft skills. After a short introduction how this works, you'll find a couple of tips for the content developers.
How does it work?
A participants reads a short instruction (you're in a conversation with...). Then he or she is confronted with a real-life situation. For example: a bored customer, an important sales opportunity or an angry manager. When the actor stops talking, the webcam records the participant's response. He or she will view his or her own response, try again or ask feedback from peers or trainer.
Some examples
A. You are a salesmanager in conversation with client Bob. Bob withdraws his prior buying signals. Try to find out why.
B. Your prospect Emma gives you a buying signal. Respond using the OPS method you learned earlier in this course.
C. The company you work for is going through a rough time, including the inevitable layoffs and anxious atmosphere. Due to your commercial responsibility, this puts a heavy emphasis on your contribution to the bottom line! In this case you are talking with one of your relations about a possible new assignment. Good luck!
Tip 1: Pull people into the situation right away.
A case instruction should leave no doubt about the context and the role the participant has to play. Usually it is short and factual. A lot of text and context, like in example C, usually distract and invite the participant to imagine all sorts of extra details. Try to keep it short and simple: 'You are a salesmanager.'.
Tip 2. Give a clear and assessable assignment.
When used for training (and not assessment), the webcam interaction tool is about experimenting and grinding in new behavior. You can literally 'script' it with our autocue/teleprompter. A step further is suggesting new behavior (in example A: try to find out, in B: use OPS method). You want the participant to transfer new behavior to the workplace. That means that for the self-reflection of the participant and feedback from peers and trainer, it is functional to have clear assignments that allow them to assess if the desired behavior is actually shown. With targeted assignments such as A and B, that's possible. Example C however, will probably trigger the participant to behave 'natural'. This is interesting for tests or an intake but allows too many options (for the participant and the feedback giver) to really focus on grinding in new behavior.
Tip 3. Customize to your client
It is really easy to create a webcam interaction assignment: you type in the assignment and record the video in a couple of minutes. This means that customizing assignments to clients is a real opportunity! One of our clients was training account managers for a pension fund. They had to combine telling bad news ('you are going to have to contribute even more') with renegotiating the contract. Together the trainer and account managers collected the hardest responses they expected, recorded these and plugged them into an online training module. With this tailor made approach, the account managers could prepare themselves optimally for the conversations ahead.