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My Role(s) in a Team

Teamwork is a common thread throughout life. Growing up with parents and a sibling, working at my first job at McDonald's, and my marriage and current household all provide me with an opportunity to practice teamwork. Most, if not all, of the engagements in my life involve interacting and cooperating with others, so this exploration into how teams form and are led is an interesting practice of reviewing literature and reflecting on how I engage in my day-to-date life. As a part of a team, I tend to take leadership roles quite naturally. Whetten & Cameron (2011) describe several roles of embers within a team: task-facilitating, relationship-building, and blocking roles. I believe that I have played each role at some point. I feel most at home when I play a task-facilitation role, but I also make time and space for relationship-building. Teamwork is all about getting individual contributors to work together toward a common goal, so ensuring that the relationships among team members are healthy is just as important as facilitating tasks. Without both teams cannot be effective (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). 

Task-Facilitating

Every team needs someone to keep them on task, and the task-facilitator is just the role for that. When team members perform task-facilitating roles, they ensure that the team is on task, on time, accountable, and has clear takeaways from meetings to ensure appropriate follow through once the meeting is over (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). 

Relationship-Building

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Perhaps this is a platitude, but also reality when it comes to working on teams. The most enjoyable part of teamwork is the relationship that it builds within members, at least it is for me. Building trust, cheerleading, and consensus building are important role that a team member who is engaged in relationship-building. Without positive energy, and comic relief relationships can become frayed over work related disagreements (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). 


Image From: https://www.potential.com/articles/teamwork/

By leveraging productivity tools, like Microsoft's Tasks & Planner management software, I help engage my team to accomplish our mission. Presently, I am on a long-standing team of three at my campus, but on occasion I work on a virtual team with my worldwide colleagues. When I had control over the agenda, I always ensure that we have an opportunity for relationship-building activities as well as takeaway tasks that are managed in MS Tasks & Planner. In my experience, the less formal the better when it comes to relationships. While structured activities like personality assessments are interesting and construction, having an opportunity to chat informally goes a long way to building rapport within teams. 


Reference

Whetten, D. A. & Cameron, K. S. (2011). Developing management skills, 8th ed. Pearson.

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