Group Roles
Leadership
As we saw last week, groups are extremely complex entities in which our relationships with, and the expectations we place on, each other, both explicitly (rules) and implicitly (norms) have a powerful influence on the overall success of our group. We also took a look at how we work as a group during a presentation. Hopefully by now your group has had some difficult but rewarding conversations about how best to move forward. You should also be working quite diligently on your project.
This week we are going to build on that strong understanding of basic group concepts starting with the idea of roles. Be careful not to confuse roles people in your group take with the parts of the presentation. Group roles refer specifically to actions and behaviors people in a small group assume as your group pursues the task at hand.
In order to understand how these roles work we’ll take start by defining the three categories of roles and then take a look at each category, task, relationship, and individual, in more specific detail.
Prepare Yourself
What role do you see yourself taking on most frequently?
What syle of leadership do you see most frequently in groups of which you are a part?
There are three basic categories of group roles. Into which category do you find yourself most frequently gravitating?
What style of leadership do you see as most effective in your current group?