Team Roles
| Subject: | 💭 Psychology |
| Type: | Descriptive Essay |
| Pages: | 3 |
| Word count: | 783 |
| Topics: | 🧩 Critical Thinking, Creativity, Interpersonal Communication, Teamwork, 🏆 Career Goals, 😇 Organizational Behavior |
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Table of Contents
Introduction
A group or a team can be defined as the gathering of two or more persons who are united in pursuit of a specific objective (Robbins & Judge, 2014). The team may be informal or formal. This essay will focus on three team roles namely: advisor, controller, and creator. The team role model was developed by Dr. Meredith Belbin in an attempt to nurture balanced teams (Belbin Associates, 2017). Understanding one’s role in a team is a vital step towards nurturing the strengths of different team members and controlling the weaknesses. Teams may be disproportionate if the members possess comparable physical and mental expertise and weaknesses. Such an occurrence may cause the team members to compete amongst themselves instead of cooperating. Therefore, leaders may use the Belbin model to constitute teams with diverse strengths and weaknesses (Belbin Associates, 2017).
Body
A creator is an individual who develops innovative ideas. Creators are dynamic and positive minded individuals who are not afraid of taking risks and facing challenges. In addition, creators are often individuals with great interpersonal skills; they are industrious and great motivators. Around the world, there are a number of creators such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson. My first experience working with a creator was on a college team. Our team was tasked with developing an innovative business plan for that would secure funding from angel investors. The creator in the team came up with an idea to develop an affordable water filter for use in developing countries. The idea was voted the best and our team won.
The advisor is an individual who is inquisitive and knowledgeable. Advisors encourage teams to research for more information that will help the team to accomplish their objectives. They tend to analyze situations in order to understand what works, what does not work and what needs to be changed. However, the advisor’s contribution to a team is limited to their area of specialization. This limitation motivates them to manage professional standards. My experience working with an advisor in a team was when I was in high school. The advisor helped our football team to win numerous games by providing us with better playing strategies and tactics.
The controller is also referred to as a monitor-evaluator is an individual whose main responsibility in a group is to evaluate the information and ensure compliance with the regulations. Controllers are often critical thinkers who exhibit prudent decision-making choices. Their critical thinking makes them appear to be slow in decision-making. In addition, they are devoid of charisma and interpersonal skills, which are necessary to motivate others. My first encounter with a controller in a team setting was during my summer internship. Our team was finalizing a new project when the controller in the team pointed out that we had not considered the impact of regulatory factors in our project. His knowledge helped our team to comply with the regulations, and the project was successful.
Team roles are mainly influenced by role perception, role expectations, and role conflict (Robbins & Judge, 2014). Role perception signifies personal view of how one is supposed to act in a specific situation. Individuals acquire role perception knowledge from the environment around them such as the media, friends, and scholarly sources. These sources of information provide individuals with information on how they should act under different roles. Role expectations represent other people’s beliefs on how one should behave in a specific situation. A case in point is the role of the president versus the role of an athlete. The president is expected to portray dignity, ability to motivate others and demonstrate great leadership skills while an athlete is expected to exhibit sports prowess. Role conflict describes the inability of a team member to conform to different team roles simultaneously (Robbins & Judge, 2014) such as when students are required to evaluate the performance of their teachers. Such an activity is bound to create role conflict because the student is taking up two roles simultaneously.
Conclusion
Since the start of the 21st century, activities that require team roles have increased in organizations. This is because of the enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of teams compared to individuals working in isolation. In addition, team roles offer more responsiveness and flexibility when dealing with disruptive events (Robbins & Judge, 2014). In order for team roles to be effective, leaders must take into consideration the abilities, diversity, preferences and flexibility, diversity and personalities of the team members. In addition, the team should be provided with appropriate leadership, adequate resources, performance evaluation, and an environment of trust.
- Belbin Associates. (2017). Belbin Team Roles.
- Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2014). Essentials of Organizational Behavior (12th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.
Offered for reference purposes only.