Dividing up te work text
Lots of things need to be done within a successful team, and they fall into four main areas. First, management functions. Someone in the team needs to organize things to think longer term, et cetera. Second, people functions. Obviously, it's a team, so the people need to be looked after. Then, third, creativity functions. If the team's got to achieve something new, then these are important. And finally, fourth, someone's got to get on and actually do that work. And by the way, you can download a list of the following team functions from the exercise files that go with this course. So we've got four areas. And within each of the areas, there are three main roles that I've identified. Within the management area, there are three roles that need to be fulfilled by someone in the team. And the first one is the organizer, the organizer of people and of ideas, somebody who's going to keep everything neat and tidy. The second management role is the driver. This is the person who's pushing for speed and results, who's thinking about time and making sure we meet those deadlines. You could see that could be a different type of person from the organizer. The third management role is the visionary. This is maybe a bit of a detached thinker-type person. They have a longer-term, strategic view. So those are the three management roles, and just to stress that all three of these could be done by the same person if they were a really exceptional leader or perhaps by two or three different people in the team. How many of these three does your boss do? And how many are you naturally inclined to do? Next, we come to the three people roles. The first one of these is the networker. This is the person who loves meeting new people and collecting new ideas, probably a talkative person, maybe not that organized, but great for exploring new areas. The second people role is the carer, perhaps an observant, sensitive, maybe relatively quiet person. They're the ones who see the good in other people's ideas and say, "Yeah, Tony's come up with a really good idea there, "I think we should listen to him about that," or, "You haven't said much, Diane, are you okay?" Thirdly, you've got the inspirer who generates motivation, excitement, and sometimes even fun. Imagine a team without that. Now, moving on to my third category, creativity and problem solving. And again, I think there are three roles to be fulfilled within this area. The first one is the creative type. This is the person who generates completely new ideas from somewhere within their mind. I really admire people who can do this. Second, you have the opposer. This is the devil's advocate who says, "But what if that isn't right? "How do we know it's right?" and who's good at spotting flaws in the plan and saying so, not always popular, but very useful. And then third is the judge whose role is to assess the options and select the best answer and to make sure that one option does get selected, that we home in on a plan, rather than just coming up with more and more ideas. And then finally, the three work roles. And the first of the work roles is the detail person who makes sure that everything's exactly right, a very important role. Somebody has to cover that. The second of the work roles is the systems thinker. This is the detached-type person who stands back and organizes the processes and the way we're working and sets it up so that everything's going to run smoothly. And the final one of my 12 roles I've called the stayer. This is the person who's really good with those routine, repetitive tasks. They're the patient one. They've got staying power to keep just banging away at that one task. They don't get the glory, but they're really important in any team. Now, of course, you probably won't have a team as large as 12, so you'll each need to do several of the roles that I've been listing. So there's a copy of this in your exercise files for you to download. Have a look at the list, and think about which ones you are good at. And also think about what are the gaps in your current team? And remember that if there is a gap, there are really only two options. Either somebody in the team has got to make the effort to cover that gap, and it may not be their first choice of what they would naturally want to do, but someone's got to cover that gap, or you need to pull somebody in, recruit a new person or borrow someone from another department to join that team to naturally fill that gap.
The Tip Sheet referred to in the video is linked below.
