Roles and responsibilities

One of the most common sources of conflict and dissatisfaction in teams stems from a lack of role clarity between team members and between the team and the leader.

To resolve such difficulties in teamwork, a workshop can be held to clarify each role's areas of responsibility.

Let's see how to organize one.

Draw a table on the board with enough space to list the different roles on the team. Leave room for "unassigned responsibilities"; this part comes in handy later.

Ask each participant what their role on the team is, and write the answers on post-its.

Some roles can be combined; for example, if you have Front-End and Back-End developers, you can just list them as "Developer."

Each team member writes down 3-5 key things on post-its that they feel they are responsible for in their role. Then ask them to sort them in order of priority.

When everything is ready, set the post-its aside.

Now ask each team member to write down what they think are the top 1-2 priorities of each of the other roles on the team.

If any responsibilities are difficult to assign to a role, they can be put on a separate pile. They will come in handy for further discussion.

1. Select one role, for example, Product Manager.
2. Ask the representative(s) of that role to read what they wrote down as their top 3-5 priorities and place them in the appropriate grid square.
3. Then, ask each team member to read what they wrote down as the Sales Manager's top 1-2 priorities.
4. At this point, the Sales Manager can accept or reject responsibilities that other team members have suggested.
5. If a role representative declines, the team should figure out which role should be assigned that responsibility or move it to the "Not Assigned" column if it does not currently have an owner.

Repeat this exercise for every role in the team and discuss the unassigned responsibilities as you go to see if they fit anywhere.

At the end of the exercise, it will be clear if the team is aligned or if any unallocated responsibilities require owners.

The following steps may involve identifying who owns them. You may need to bring in an outsider to help resolve problems.

Trust someone to record the results and share them with the team.

The workshop's primary goal is to develop a team understanding of roles and responsibilities. Equally important is to put the agreements into practice, which should be given ample attention as we continue to work together.

It's also helpful to review roles and responsibilities as you add new roles or new people come in.