Is a lack of role clarity disrupting your team?

Ruth Harrowfield – BA/BSc, MSc Hons, PGDip I/O Psych, PGDip Science (Cl. Psych)

There’s a bunch of reasons why teamwork gets messy. Could role clarity be the culprit?

Detailed job descriptions = role clarity?  –  not necessarily!

Having responsibilities written down doesn’t always mean they are getting done the way you intended.

Work and teams are dynamic so sometimes clarity of roles drifts over time.

To achieve role clarity you need to keep talking about it —

🛑🛑 Stop and assess clarity
✔✔ Compare expectations
🔍🔍 Check for alignment

You can do this conversationally by just asking your team —

❣❣ How they feel about their/others’ workload
⏰⏰ What they are spending time on vs job description
❓❓ Any uncertainty about their/others’ roles

You can get more formal and do a team exercise —

📘📘 This exercise from the Atlassian Team Playbook is great for checking clarity and finding misunderstanding or ‘unowned responsibilities’:
🔎🔎 Search: “Atlassian Team Playbook – Roles and Responsibilities”

Or you can survey your team individually —

👓 👓 Find out how their perspective on their role lines up with the organisation’s expectations/your perspective, by asking about:
📋📋 Job responsibilities/tasks/clarity
🎯🎯 Goals for their role/their contribution to organisational goals
🤝🤝 Who they collaborate with/others’ roles/ overlapping responsibilities
📈📈 Expectations of them – quality, quantity, deadlines/feedback loops
💬 Communication – channels for getting clarity or giving feedback

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We’re in the training business – human skills to be precise. We help people to understand themselves, understand others and communicate in a more effective, meaningful way.

I’m Ruth Harrowfield, and together with my partner Sam, we run Harrowfield People Development, a strategic learning agency based in Auckland, New Zealand.

We draw on the disciplines of organisational and behavioural psychology to provide fit-for-purpose experiences that build capability and confidence.

We help business leaders to bring out the potential that they see in their people by shaping habits of thinking, communication and action in the workplace. Talk to us today.