less helpful roles

Beware of other, less helpful roles, including:

Roadblocking - raising objections, repeating him/herself, getting the discussion off-track

Attacking - challenging the competence of others, name-calling

Joking - continually joking

Lobbying - advocating your own special interests, being one-sided

Bossing - dominating, giving orders, interrupting

helping the group get along

Members also perform activities which help the group to get along. These include:

• Encouraging: building confidence in other members through positive statements or praise

• Harmonizing: speaking up to lend support to another member

• Compromising: accepting ideas or methods that include elements of your ideas with those of another group member

• Gatekeeping: keeping the lines of communication open by listening, speaking, and asking for feedback

• Consensus seeking: testing whether or not the group is in agreement, while being sensitive to the views of individual group members

• Facilitating: helping communication by testing understanding, requesting restatements, and clarifying meanings

getting things done

To play a part in getting things done within a group, a member should be able to do some of the following things:

• Information seeking: asking for clarification or suggestions
• Information giving: offering facts
• Opinion sharing: stating beliefs and attitudes
• Orienting: defining the position of the group in relation to goals
• Initiating: suggesting new ideas and/or raising questions
• Summarizing: briefly stating the group's decisions or beliefs
• Integrating: examining ideas or opinions and showing their relationship to each other

Roles in Groups

Our fall 2012 team project is off to a great start!

Today we discussed team-centered roles. In a team situation each member is interdependent. Every member needs the other members' expertise, experience, and energy to achieve mutual goals.

Team roles function in two ways which keep a group moving forward toward its goals:

• they are involved in getting things done
• they are concerned with getting along