Working in Teams, Fourth Edition
Every team is a collection of unique human beings each with a contribution to make. This workbook looks at the characteristics of workteams, their problems, strengths and weaknesses, and what goes on in them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Working in Teams, Fourth Edition
3: The Roles People Play
3 The Roles People Play
The roles that members adopt in the activities of the team will depend on their personalities, their skills and the expectations of colleagues. Some roles will vary according to circumstances and the demands of the task.
It has been said that everyone, in any situation, takes on a role in relation to other people. There are two sets of influences at work.
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The person's own personality, skills and other attributes.
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The effects of the situation itself, and of the other people involved.
Each of us takes on many different and separate roles throughout our lives.
3.1 Role and Status
It is important here to distinguish between role and status. To take an example, a man achieves the status of fatherhood as the result of the birth of his child. The role he assumes as a parent will depend on many things: what kind of person he is, the behaviour the mother expects of him, the behaviour society expects from fathers generally and so on.
In a similar way, to say that a man or a woman is a team leader is a statement of status, but it tells us nothing about the behaviour of that person. Roles at work depend on (among other things) personality, culture, the requirements of the task, and the influence of colleagues. Status indicates what people are their position in life or at work; the roles they take on help to describe what they do and how...
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