When something fails, it’s more often a failure of clarity—who owned the decision or the responsibility—than a failure of individual performance.
Some of the most frustrating experiences we have at work—of someone else dropping the ball or stepping on our toes or creating the need for rework—are caused in part by unclear roles and responsibilities on our team. Here’s how to establish better clarity so everyone’s work feels cleaner, clearer, and more impactful.
Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hey, it’s Rachel Cooke, your Modern Mentor. I’m the founder of Lead Above Noise—a firm specializing in helping teams and organizations optimize their working experience. Some days working with teams feels more like doing family therapy than anything else. Which, by the way, I’m profoundly unqualified to do. But still.
My family, full disclosure, is kind of zany. The uncles, the cousins—I mean, how I share DNA with any of them is one of life’s great mysteries. Come to think of it, everyone I know seems to have a zany family. But no one I’ve ever met is the zany one. Are you smiling? Does this resonate? Is everyone in your family but you kind of quirky in some way?
This same phenomenon shows up in teams as well. When anything goes wrong—a ball gets dropped, a deadline missed, a project has to be reworked… we all point fingers at everyone else. Never at ourselves. And while I can’t help on the kooky family front
(let Uncle Alan do that weird juggling trick—just keep the matches locked away), I do have some tricks up my sleeve to help a team find its way from finger-pointing to real solutions.
This reality—something going wonky in the workplace followed by fingers pointing every which way—always signals to me that role clarity, or the lack thereof, is the most likely culprit.
We all generally strive to do a good job. And when something fails, it’s more often a failure of clarity—who owned the decision or the responsibility—than a failure of individual performance.
Infusing even a little bit of clarity into a team’s roles and responsibilities can make a world of difference.
I do this work with teams often. And I’d love to share how I approach getting them to clarity. If your team is struggling with role clarity—with dropping balls or stepping on toes or missing deadlines or struggles to collaborate—then pick this up and run with it.
And “team” in this case can mean the team you report into, an intersection of two teams who collaborate on an outcome, a temporary project team—really any collection of people whose shared contributions are required to get to an outcome.
Bring your team members (however you’re defining team) together. And have a conversation that covers the following ground.
Step One: Name strengths. Anytime I facilitate a conversation about things we need to change, I begin first with a naming of a team’s collective strengths. This helps us to understand both what we have to build upon (like if a team is awesome at creative problem solving, let’s make sure we harness that going forward), and also to know what we need to protect and preserve. So before we define changes we’ll make, let’s be certain we don’t accidentally make it harder for this team to come together and solve problems.
So the first part of your conversation is an invitation to all participants to name their favorite strength of the team. I often do this with metaphor cards (people love to think in pictures) but a verbal round-robin will do the trick.
Capture responses in a spot where people can see them throughout the conversation. Being reminded of what we do well helps us stay in a collaborative zone.
Step Two: Swap hats. Not literally. Because lice freak me out. But metaphorically.
Here’s what I mean. Choose a scenario that has played out a few times before.
Like how no one sleeps the night before a new campaign launches because of the last-minute scramble of activity that occurs. Or how the marketing and product teams are constantly arguing over which products to promote, and no one knows whose final decision it is. List them all.
These are annoying. And just 2 examples of things that can show up when roles and responsibilities are unclear.
Now choose one.
What you’re going to do is rehash everything that’s painful about this interaction. But you’re going to ask each member of the team to “play” someone else. In this case, your head of product “plays” your head of marketing and vice versa. So now as your head of marketing is running the process with a product hat on, you’ll be amazed at the insight—and empathy—this experience can unearth.
This hat-swapping exercise challenges people to step out of the assumptions we make when we see the world with blinders on. It challenges us to really feel the experience of others. And this opens our minds to a greater range of solutions.
Step Three: Charter key roles. Identify the key roles on this team—like maybe you’re a tech team with a developer, a project manager, an architect, and a scrum master (yes, I just did this with a tech team which is the only reason I know these words).
Here your goal is to capture the essence—and boundaries—of each role. What it does, what it doesn’t do, and where the boundaries exist between each. You’ll want to be sure that there is no duplication (no two roles can own the same things)—but also no gaps. Like, every step in a key process must exist in one of the role charters.
Here are the boxes I typically include on a role charter.
When you’re done, hang them side by side. Step back and reflect. Take it in and refine before moving to the next step.
Step Four: Pressure test your charters. OK. So you’ve designed and defined these roles on paper. Now it’s time to run your decisions through a real-life scenario to see how your decisions hold up. Take a process or transaction that typically falls apart. Talk it through, step-by-step, capturing as you go every critical activity, decision, and handoff along the way. Use the role charters are your roadmap.
Note the specific spots where something usually gets lost or overlooked or happens late. Reference your role charters. Who now needs to make that decision or refine that timeline or do the activity that typically falls apart? Use this process to finalize your role charters which should serve as your final source of truth.
Step Five: Commit to implementing. Once you’ve landed on role descriptions that work for everyone, it’s time to bring them to life. So make a plan.
I really believe if you give this a try you’ll experience a lot more ease and success in the workplace. And if you need any help or support might be useful—please don’t be shy in reaching out. This is my jam.
Join me next week for another great episode. Until then, visit my website at leadabovenoise.com if your organization is looking to dial up its Employee Experience or deliver some leadership development that activates change. You can follow Modern Mentor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Find and follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week.