We are all familiar
with the concept of teams. My personal definition of a team is a group
collaborating and working together toward a common goal. Of course, that is a
very loose definition and there may be exceptions. A group of friends collaborating
and working together for the common goal of planning a party, for example,
probably would not be considered a team. Whetten and Cameron define a team as “groups
of people who are interdependent in the tasks they perform, who affect one
another’s behavior through interaction, and who see themselves as a unique
entity” (2016, p. 404). Some of the most obvious examples are sports teams. The
players rely on one another and interact with each other to achieve the goal of
outperforming the opposing team. I spent the majority of my time in the Army
with 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). For security reasons, I
won’t say how many Groups there are or how many battalions or anything like
that but what I will say is that every member of the unit ultimately is there
to serve the Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA), better known as an A-Team. Now
that I am a recruiter as I wind down my career, my entire center is a team with
the goal of finding qualified applicants and processing them into the Army.
The performance of
any team can be enhanced by having team members play certain roles (Whetten
& Cameron, 2016). There are two main types of roles that exist:
task-facilitating roles and relationship-building roles. These roles each have
certain characteristics. I will briefly describe both here.
Let’s begin with
the task-facilitating roles. They are direction giving, information seeking,
information giving, elaborating, urging, monitoring, process analyzing, reality
testing, enforcing, and summarizing. “Task-facilitating roles are those that
help the team accomplish its outcomes of objectives” (Whetten & Cameron,
2016, p. 422-423). All of these characteristics actually remind me of my
mother. She is very organized (messy, but organized) and always seems to be the
one to apply logic in the midst of chaos. Any time there is a major emotional
event – the loss of jobs, divorce, death in the family, etc. – my mother has
always been the one to keep everybody in line and guide them on the tasks to be
completed. In a team situation, she would be the one in the task-facilitating
role. Of course as task-facilitator on an organized team is not quite the same
but I see the similarities. Task-facilitators are team members that can
anticipate the complete process and have the ability to always remain neutral.
They assist the team in maintaining order and focus and are trusted by all
group members to maintain an unbiased loyalty to the group (Schuman, 1996).
The characteristics
of the relationship-building role are supporting, harmonizing, tension
relieving, confronting, energizing, developing, consensus building, and
empathizing (Whetten & Cameron, 2016). Think of Spock on “Star Trek”. He
was certainly a task-facilitator. He was always logical and, for the most part,
lacked emotion. We could probably see Captain Kirk as being the
relationship-builder, though. He was a little more emotional, of course, but
focused a lot on the “human” side of everything. If you are a Trekkie, you may
already know the best example of a relationship-builder. Though she was never
directly involved in very much, do you remember Guinan on “The Next Generation”?
She espoused all of these characteristics. She wasn’t necessarily emotional but
she was encouraging, supporting, harmonizing, and held the crew accountable. It
is important to notice, however, that the relationship-builder is not the
opposite of the task-facilitator. They can share some of the same
characteristics. They both work together toward the same goal. Whetten and
Cameron note that “it is difficult for team members to emphasize both types of
roles equally, and most people tend to contribute in one area more than the
other” (2016, p. 422).
It isn’t impossible
to fill both roles. Most of us probably have a blended approach to these roles.
And some of us may be forced to fill both roles but we still probably gravitate
toward one role over the other. At work, I am the acting center leader which
means that I am forced to be in a task-facilitating role. As the one that
manages and oversees the day to day operations, I have to keep my team focused
both on prospecting and processing. Honestly, though, that is a little out of
my comfort zone. Though I inherited my logical traits from my mother, there is
a difference between application and desire. I see myself as more of an
interpersonal relationship builder. I am a motivator and encourager. I like to
bring levity and hope to the team. I feel much more comfortable as a
relationship-builder. So the question that I am left facing is how do I do
both? How do I, as a manager, also act as a leader? Gary Yukl, a business professor
at the University of Albany, points out that a growing train of thought in many
highly successful business and organizations today is that managers and leaders
should be separate people because the roles often contradict one another (2013).
In fact, that is the reason that I selected to study for my Masters in
Leadership instead of just an MBA program. I am an efficient and effective
manager but I garner so much more joy out of encouraging others to be the best
that they can be. I am surely a relationship-builder on my teams.
Schuman, S. P.
(1996). What to look for in a group
facilitator. Milwaukee: American Society for Quality Control, Inc.
Whetten, D. A.,
& Cameron, K. S. (2016). Developing management skills (9th ed.). Boston,
MA.
Yukl, G. (2013).
Leadership in Organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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