Team Roles
Types of Contributors in Group Projects
Within any group project, the team members tend to fall into one of three main categories: Thinking, Action, or People oriented. Having at least one person in each of these categories helps teams stay balanced, maintain direction, and accomplish goals. Thinking contributors provide main ideas and feedback for the group, Action contributors provide meaningful labor and take care of all of the details, and People contributors provide structure to the work and keep everyone on track. When forming a team, it can be helpful to take an inventory of your own tendencies and communicate them to potential team members so that a team can start off balanced. If you find that your team is lacking later, you can always to add a person with your missing characteristics or try to learn a new way of contributing to a group project. There are many online tools that will help you learn about how you interact in a team setting and each one of them offers a unique look at constructing a group. Some examples are:
https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles
https://www.123test.com/personality-test/
https://www.16personalities.com/
Using any type of online tool or just talking about how you want to contribute to a project as it is beginning is helpful to the team dynamics throughout the project. It will allow you to discover who you can most closely collaborate with and who you can rely on the help you at something you are not good at. If one of the group members is good a logistics and planning while you are good at a technical skill, you can work together most effectively by letting each other know that and dividing the responsibilities to match each person’s skill set.
Strengths and Weaknesses
No matter what type of people that you end up working with, each one of them will have their own strengths and weaknesses. As a group it is helpful to know the natural strengths and weaknesses of every team member and the group as a whole. The members individually can accentuate each other’s strengths and cover each other’s weaknesses. If your team has too many overlapping weaknesses, it can be difficult to make meaningful progress, and with overlapping strengths it can be difficult to evenly distribute work. Keep this in mind when first forming your group to avoid frustration as the project progresses. If you cannot determine which type of person that you are, a group project can be a great opportunity to try out different styles. Try to figure out what your team is missing and see if you can fill the role naturally or by conscious effort. Being able to play many different roles on a team will allow you to meaningfully participate in a larger number of group projects because you will always be able to find your niche and contribute. Focusing on a single type of contribution over several group projects can also be beneficial as you will become more adept at a role the more you practice and learn about it. It is important to communicate with each of the other members when first forming your team to discuss which roles each person will play as the project progresses.
Balancing Your Team
It is important to divide responsibilities of a group project at the beginning so that everyone knows what they should be focusing on for the duration of the project. Have an open discussion about everyone’s preferred roles before starting on the project and write them down. This will make conflict resolution easier if anything comes up later. If you find that your team has too many or too few people trying to do the same things then recruit or separate team members early. The longer someone is on a dysfunctional team, the more difficult it will be to leave. If you team needs to recruit make sure to specify what style of person that you are looking for in addition to all of the details about the project.
Conclusion
Starting a project off with complementary group members and well-defined responsibilities creates a productive space with a lower chance of conflict as the project progresses. If your team communicates their strengths and weaknesses at the outset, more of the time can be spent working on the project instead of personality conflicts or motivation issues.
References
https://dotnetsharing.wordpress.com/2017/09/19/learn-belbin-team-roles-through-reflection/
