Team Member's Roles
The purpose of this paper is to set forth an understanding of the benefits and the challenges of establishing each member's role in a team. It is not as easy as one might think. The member's role has to fit his strengths and abilities. Communication is important to determining roles. If the member has no desire to take on the assignment given, that person might not put in the full effort required to do the job. The team needs to have a solid understanding not only of each team member's strengths, but also their weaknesses.
Establishing the team member's roles requires more than just randomly assigning a project; it requires that everyone have a good understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses. It is the responsibility of team leaders and indeed of teams themselves, to ensure that responsibilities are geared to member's strengths, and avoid weaknesses. Knowing and understanding other person's weaknesses earlier rather than later, the team members have better chance to ensure that they work in a successful team environment. Failing to get a clear understanding of each others abilities heightens the chances of encountering conflict within the team, and therefore setting ourselves up for failure.
Before deciding on team member's roles, we need to define the member's role and how to decide on who will take on the task. As Dr. Merideth Belbin defines it as "Our tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way" (Belbin, 2007). As Merideth Belbin states it's our behavior and contributions to relate with others in a particular way is what makes a team members role. Now that we have an idea of what a team member's role is we can now discus ...