Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant Communities - ILRC

Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant CommunitiesJanuary 2003E. The group discusses other ways to convince somebody to host a meeting.F. The leaders participate in the role-playing exercise. The leaders pair off. One person in eachpair plays the role of a leader trying to convince someone to host the meeting. The other personplays a potential meeting host—a minister, priest, nun, employer, teacher, etc.) who needs to beconvinced to host a meeting.G. Trainers and leaders critique each other on what worked well during their practices and whatcould be improved.Before doing a group critique, please review the following rules on critiquing fellow leaders sothe critiques are helpful and serve as an aid to improvement. The trainers should be instrumentalin making sure these rules are strictly followed. The rules on critiquing others are:• First, give the leader who made the presentation a chance to critique himself orherself.• Always start with the positive—What was good about the role-playing? As manygood things about the performance as possible should be discussed.• Then talk about what could be improved. Avoid using the word bad. Only two orthree improvements should be mentioned so the person is not overwhelmed and canwork on improving his or her performance.• All input must be specific rather than general so the leader can learn from it.• No personal attacks are permitted.Please note: Since time is limited, half the leaders should practice doing role-play A and theother half role-play B (see below). After role-play A is complete, the trainers can switch groupsif they want so they can be with a different group during role-play B. That will allow participantsto receive input from a couple different trainers. The trainer can do a similar switch before roleplayC, as well.§ 5.5 Role-Playing Exercise B: How to Convince Community Membersto Come to a MeetingThis is the second of three role-playing exercises on outreach. This role-play is designed tomodel how to convince community members to attend a meeting or presentation on a topic suchas the importance of applying for U.S. citizenship through naturalization. After a model roleplay,which the trainers perform for the leaders, the leaders take turns role-playing the samescene. This exercise should take about 35 minutes or longer, depending on how many leadersand trainers are participating.It is important to note that although the role-playing exercises in this chapter are about applyingfor U.S. citizenship through naturalization, trainers should create their role-playing exercises onwhatever topic is most appropriate for their leaders. The skills will be applicable to any topic.5-4