Roles (What)

A role is an area of responsibility, privilege, or interest for an actor (person or group).

Examples of Roles

1. JT has multiple roles: wife, mother, PTA member, accountant, daughter, tennis player, artist, and so on.

2. LT, a physician, has several professional roles: medical doctor, team member, business owner, and office manager.

3. The role of a point guard in basketball is to run the offense, make assists, score points, play defense, and so on.

4. Some of the main roles of a university are

   1. Educate students.
   2. Advance the body of knowledge through scholarly research.
   3. Perform service activities for people external to the university.

5. One role of a fast-food restaurant is to provide food that people like and do so quickly. Another role is to hire and retain employees. Another role is accounting, which means to keep track of the income and expenses.

6. A high school soccer team has several main roles:

   1. Win games.
   2. Develop players.
   3. Provide entertainment via their matches.

Rationale

Here are some reasons why skill with roles is worthwhile.

1. The way to achieve balance and to achieve excellence in life is to identify one’s most worthwhile roles, figure out what good performance looks like in these roles, and then to play each part well.

2. The way to optimize performance of a group is to identify the key roles, what quality looks like in each role, and then to make sure that the actor playing this part does so with quality.

3. Well-defined roles communicate exactly what is expected in that role.

   1. This gives one peace of mind that they are playing a role well.
   2. This allows accountability in groups.

Concerns

1. It can be hard to play a role well. For example, it is not easy to be an excellent shortstop in baseball. Nor is it easy to be an excellent nurse, engineer, marketer, manager, teacher, or surgeon.

2. For roles to be effective, accountability needs to be placed.

3. Roles can be poorly defined in organizations.

Roles (How)

• Figure out what the essential roles are. Give each a name.
  • Ensure that everything important is covered.
• For each role, describe what quality looks like in this role. Write this down.
• Action: Play the role the best you can.
• Regularly improve performance in each role by using Reflective Thinking (RT)