You Manage It! 5: Emerging Trends One Job, Many Roles
Teamwork is how many organizations operate today. Rather than being independent contributors, team members have some degree of interdependence and share in getting the work done. The informal reality in many teams is that tasks or responsibilities are allocated depending on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the team members. For example, a technical problem faced by a team might be allocated to the team member who has the best technical skills, whereas a potential conflict is given to the person with the best interpersonal skills. The informal reality is that team members often end up playing different roles, depending on their natural strengths. Research has found that allowing people to play to their strengths can yield maximum performance and employee satisfaction. It makes sense that if people can do what they do best, performance should also be maximized.
If team members take on different roles, there really isn’t one job for all of the workers, but different roles. Some people might do well in some of these roles and in others they might do poorly. Recognizing that people might take on different roles in a team environment can have important implications for the hiring process.
Critical Thinking Questions
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5-35. If there are distinct roles to be played on a team, how would you go about recruiting and hiring for them?
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5-36. The characteristics needed by individual team members depend on the team and the strengths and weaknesses of others who are on the team. In other words, the situation is much more dynamic than assuming that there is one static job with a single set of qualifications. How could you model or include this dynamic and interactive nature in the recruitment and hiring process?
Team Exercise
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5-37. As a team, identify the roles that you think are important for teams in the small business workplace. To help you get started, here are some possible basic team roles that have been identified in research: contributor, collaborator, communicator, and challenger. A number of other roles have been identified in research or could be useful in practice. Don’t limit yourself to this set of roles.
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a. Identify the skills needed to perform each role.
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b. In addition to skills, a natural tendency or motivation to perform in a particular type of role can be critical. How could you measure the motivation needed for each role?
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c. How could you measure the skills needed for each role?
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d. How could you effectively recruit for the various positions or roles?
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e. Present your recruitment and selection plan to the rest of the class.
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Individual Exercise
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5-38. If an opening on a team occurs, team members may want to take a leading role in hiring a replacement or additional worker. Do you think it is a good idea to give the workers a central role in the hiring process? Why or why not?
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a. How could management help the team members make the best hiring decision possible? Consider, for example, that workers may not recognize the various roles they play and what additional qualities might be needed in order to complement the team. Of course, they may also need help in identifying ways to measure these characteristics and in determining weights that should be placed on various characteristics. Describe the approach you would recommend to help team members in making hiring decisions. For example, what kind of measures would be used, would training be included, and who would make the final hiring decisions? Share the major characteristics of your design with the rest of the class.
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