The Conversation Underneath the Conversation
A Singapore boardroom where a $4.2 million account is on the line and nobody mentions Marco. A coaching room where a sharp strategy consultant has been sitting on a job offer for six weeks. A WhatsApp group of five old friends who have already half-agreed to a Greek island none of them quite chose.
Three rooms. Three conversations. In each one, the work isn't what's being said. The work is the conversation underneath - the one most people never get to.
Three scenarios, free throughout June on RolePlays.ai.
After Marco
You are a senior consultant at Sun Consulting. Marco - the partner who built and ran your second-largest APAC account for four years - left six weeks ago for a competitor. He took two of your senior associates with him. The account is worth $4.2 million in annual fees, and a board review is coming in six weeks.
Tuesday in Singapore, you have four back-to-back meetings with the four people who decide whether your firm keeps the account: the Head of Store Operations, the Chief Coffee Officer, the CFO, and the Board Chair. Margaret Schaefer, your Managing Partner, sent you the briefing the night before. The last line: "Tuesday is not a pitch meeting. If you treat it as one, we will lose the account."
The scenario is built on the Trust Equation. Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, divided by Self-Orientation. Every meeting tests a different component. Every meeting offers a moment where the easy move - pitch, defend, discount - is exactly the move that loses the account.
This is the scenario you want if your firm runs partner-track development, if your account leadership is changing hands, or if you've ever lost a key client and wondered, after the fact, exactly where the trust collapsed.
Half the Session
You are a coach. Four 15-minute sessions, four different clients. Same skill being tested in every one: contracting.
Contracting is the part most beginners think of as the warm-up. It's the bit where you ask "what would you like to work on today?" and then move into the real conversation. That framing is the mistake. Done well, contracting takes more than half the session. Done badly, the next 45 minutes are spent pretending to coach while circling material that was never properly framed.
This scenario practices the STOKERS framework - Subject, Time, Objective, Know, Ethics, Role, Start - originally taught by John Anderson and developed at Bernhard Kerres & Friends. The framework gives you six elements to weave, not a checklist to run. Beginners run it as a checklist. Skilled coaches integrate it so the client never feels procedural.
Each of the four clients carries a different contracting trap. One is in their third session and has drifted from the original Subject. One was scheduled by HR and arrives unsure why they're here. One has been sitting on a job offer for six weeks. One is newly promoted and confusing "stepping up" with "having a plan."
This is the scenario you want if you're studying for an ICF credential, if you run a coaching school, or if you lead with a coaching style and want the conversation about what we're working on to actually do its work.
Where Are We Actually Going?
You are six years out of an LBS MBA. Your study group survived the program, lasted the years, and has lasted as a WhatsApp thread. The group is planning a week away together at the end of August. The destination has been "discussed" for weeks.
The thread looks democratic. Everyone is "in." Everyone is "easy." Someone keeps suggesting Greece. Most messages end with "fine with whatever." A vague consensus is forming around a place no one has quite chosen.
You decide, on a Friday morning, to put the booking on hold. You're going to call each of the five members one-to-one over the next few days, then bring them back together. The scenario is the five calls.
This is the Abilene Paradox in conversational form. Jerry Harvey's 1974 idea: groups make collective decisions that contradict almost everyone's actual preferences, because each person assumes everyone else wants the obvious thing. The cost is real. Companies make decisions this way. Teams set strategy this way. Families plan holidays this way.
This is the scenario you want if you facilitate, if you make decisions in groups, if you've ever sat in a meeting where everyone agreed and nothing got done, or if you simply want to find out whether you can hear what people aren't saying.
There is also, this month, a small contest attached to this scenario. Details in a separate post - the short version is that the first person who gets all five personas to agree, freely and genuinely, on a specific destination wins two nights in a hotel of their choice.
How to try them
Register or log in. All three are free until June 30.
Each scenario produces moment-specific feedback at the end - feedback that references your actual conversation, not generic advice. That feedback alone will tell you more about what RolePlays.ai does than any sales conversation could.
Three rooms. Pick one. Walk in.