T here is so much more than simply a position that goes into defining what role someone plays on your team. Yet quite often, their position seems to be the defining (and sometimes limiting) factor that determines what they are able to accomplish on your team. The vast majority of people reading this article couldn’t name what position Michael Jordan played. Chances are, however, anyone reading who has never heard of him and doesn’t have at least a passing awareness of his value to the game of basketball most assuredly has been living under a rock for the past 20 years. We are challenged as leaders to evaluate our team members for the roles they will be most fulfilled in and most productive in, regardless of their position or job title. To be fair, title or position is a component of their role, but there are a few other things to consider when evaluating what role they can best fulfill on your team. 1. POSITION – a brand new maintenance technician has a definitively different role in the business than a dispatcher or team leader by virtue of their position. That is expected and cannot be circumvented, but it is important to not allow someone’s newness to a position or even placement within the company organizational chart limit their ability to fulfill their best role. 2. STRENGTHS – These are the attributes your team member exemplifies and the things he/she feels most comfortable doing. Is he a good listener or able to have a conversation with anyone? Is she extremely detailed and methodical? 3. PERSONALITY – We all know the class clown after any amount of time in a room with a new group of people. We all understand intuitively who is a leader, who has charisma, who has quiet confidence, and who is the social butterfly. Your team member’s best role takes all of these things into account. You might have a senior technician who is very technically competent, but he is a poor communicator (strengths) and doesn’t have much charisma (personality). Almost certainly, his best role is not as the motivational leader on the team. There may be a young maintenance technician who is extremely skilled in using technology and has a very easy way with everyone on the team. What might be his best role? What elements can you put in place to allow him to operate at peak effectiveness within that role? Perhaps you have a girl in the office who knows all of your technicians and is extremely perceptive about how they are doing personally, but she has a hard time striking up conversation. However, she loves planning and strategizing. How could you create a role that allows her to use that perceptiveness and planning to build the team? In doing so, you won’t just benefit the team, but create a new level of fulfillment and enjoyment for her within your company. Simply, it is not about just finding another technician or another Customer Service Representative (CSR). It is about defining what roles are filled on your team and what roles
are missing. From there, it is evaluating the strengths and personalities of your current team members to place each into a role that benefits them and benefits the company most. At the end of the day, you might not remember all the other players on those teams with Michael Jordan, but you can know for certain that if they had all tried to fulfill his same role, they wouldn’t have won a single championship. And probably only a handful of you would know who Michael Jordan was. “We are challenged as leaders to evaluate our team members for the roles they will be most fulfilled in and most productive in , regardless of their position or job title.”
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