How many times have you been in a situation where a colleague said, “I thought so-and-so was going to do that?” or “Isn’t that your job?” It’s frustrating at the minimum—but on top of that, it slows down decision-making and makes teams less effective.
Many managers think their team has a clear understanding of who’s doing what, but the reality is that most teams don’t. Often, either roles and responsibilities on the team aren’t clearly defined, or team members have a different understanding of each others’ responsibilities. You’ll end up with tension between teammates as they have different expectations for a specific role, responsibility gaps never getting filled, and misplaced accountability.
If this sounds a bit like your team, then you can course-correct. Try this exercise to define your roles and responsibilities. Together, you’ll bring everyone’s assumptions into the open and help kick-start a less frustrated, more accountable team.
Step 1: Set up a space for the discussion
If you’re running the play with a distributed team, use this Confluence template. If everyone is together in person, create the following columns on a large whiteboard or piece of paper: Role, Responsibilities (What Others Think), Responsibilities (What I Think), and Unassigned. You’ll need sticky notes as well.
Step 2: Identify roles
Define what roles there are on your team (like a team lead, developer, designer, or accountant) together. For any roles that have multiple people on the team in the same role, just add the role once. Some team members may play more than one role, like a software engineer who is also a project manager. In this case, add each role to the table.
Step 3: Identify your perceived responsibilities for each role
For each of the roles identified, have everyone write down their understanding of the role’s top responsibilities in the What Others Think column of the shared digital document or on sticky notes. Here’s the trick: only have people add notes to the roles they don’t fill. If you think of any responsibilities that don’t fall clearly within a role, add them to the section for unassigned responsibilities.
As you come up with those responsibilities, think about the role and what it requires, not the individual teammates in the roles. By focusing on the role, the team can identify gaps in what skills are needed to fill that role—regardless of the people on the team.
Step 4: Identify your responsibilities
Now ask each person to think of the top—usually 3-5—things they’re responsible for in their role. Write each responsibility on a sticky note or digital note then rank them in order of importance. Put these in the What I Think section of the chart.
Step 5: Discuss the differences in perceived role responsibilities
For each role, the person in the role describes their What I Think notes. This can include describing how the tasks are prioritized in their role. Each person in the room then presents their ideas in the What Others Think column. The group can discuss differences in ideas and prioritization.
The role owner then reviews the differences and either accepts or declines additional responsibilities. If any responsibilities overlap, define a primary owner, as well as contributors or back-up owners. Move responsibilities that aren’t accepted or don’t have an owner to the unassigned responsibilities section at the bottom of the table.
Step 6: Review unassigned responsibilities
Review the unassigned responsibilities as a group, and see if they’re already covered within any of the existing roles. Discuss as a group why they might or might not fit into specific roles.
If they aren’t part of a role, this could mean that a new role is needed, or that a role needs to be redefined. Together, identify a teammate who’s responsible for finding an owner of these tasks and a date to follow up.
You should repeat this play every 3-6 months, as new roles may come on to the team and responsibilities may change.
Investing time in clarifying individual roles will pay dividends for team members. With this quick exercise, you can cut unnecessary frustration, create a better understanding of everyone’s shared accountability, and make collaboration hurdles a thing of the past.
Mark Cruth is Atlassian’s resident Modern Work Coach. Focused on practice over theory, Mark spends his days coaching both Atlassian and customer teams on new ways of working, then sharing what he’s learned at events around the world.