Designing the roles and assigning the responsibilities for team members in a way that aligns their individual skills, knowledge and abilities with the work is one of the key steps of building an effective team. Having clear roles and responsibilities and communicating these with one another will help alleviate conflict and improve teamwork and decision-making.
Try it! Roles and Responsibilities Exercise
This exercise works best shortly after a major change has taken place in your unit or department as it helps to resettle into a new normal. Misunderstandings about the work that people do can cause some hurt feelings; however, when colleagues already have good rapport, this doesn’t tend to be an issue.
Duration: 1-2 hours
Group Size: Under 10 people
Materials needed:
- Flip chart paper
- 2 color markers
Want to go paperless? See z.umn.edu/RRExercise (Google Slides) for a digital facilitation template
- Each team member receives a piece of flip chart paper posted on a wall with their name on it.
- With black markers – every team member is to spend 2-3 minutes at each flip chart (excluding their own) and write down the primary job responsibilities for each of their peers.
- Team members then return to their own flip charts with a red marker to edit the chart so that it accurately represents their role.
- Each team member then reports out what their primary responsibilities are, what flip chart edits they needed to make, and highlight the piece of their role that is currently the most challenging. If time allows – add an opportunity for discussion and feedback for each individual.
- Debrief – what did you learn about yourself and others through this exercise?
- What about your role did team members accurately depict?
- What did they get wrong?
- Why do you think these discrepancies exist?
- What is the thing you are struggling with the most right now?
- Does anyone on the team have ideas for how to help or streamline?
- Have a note taker capture the key takeaways and email to the team post-exercise.
- Have a note taker capture the key takeaways and email to the team post-exercise.
Coach your team:
- Are the team members getting too caught up in details or going off track?
- Are the team members becoming complacent?
- Is there a lack of fresh ideas?
The answers to these questions might not be known until the team has already formed and had a chance to work together. When building a team, appointing a "devil's advocate," or a person whose role is to challenge the status quo and ask tough questions can help the team avoid complacency, stay focused on a larger goal, and come up with more innovative solutions. A person playing this role might ask:- Why are we doing this again?
- What problem are we trying to solve?
- What other options do we have?
- What happens if we don't do this?