Defining Team Roles: the Missing Link in Creating Winning Teams in Corporate Teamwork

All across the world corporate executives, managers, and employees are looking out the windows of their offices thinking about team work. How can we develop new teambuilding trainings? How do we implement a new team? How do we disassemble a current team? How can I highlight my attributes in a team setting? In today 's workplace, teamwork has become an epidemic, or a cure all for corporate problems. Because of its popularity in today 's corporate environment, employers are adding teambuilding into their handbooks, orientations, and trainings; while employees are incorporating team building skills into their resumes. According to Carroll Lachnit 's (2001) article, Training Proves its Worth, corporations spend between from $221 to $252 per employee on training. But if teamwork is so important, are teams being frequently overused and poorly designed, resulting in failure? Teams fail because many corporate team leaders ignore the importance of team roles. They fail to realize that a team must do several things in order for it to be successful. Various team roles are needed to highlight one another, in turn creating an effective team. Unfortunately, corporations around the world are rushing into the popularity of team dynamics without realizing the importance of defining team roles and incorporating those roles into their daily operations.

In order for a team to be successful team roles need to be understood and redefined to fit today 's corporations. Some define (Biddle, as cited in Fulmer, Ingrid, Hollenback, Murray & Stewart, 2005) roles as a set of behaviors that are interrelated with repetitive activities of others and characteristic of the person in a particular setting. From this definition it can be seen that roles are a combination of interactions between team members that result in teamwork. Team roles are also defined as being a single role for a single member. However, in today 's changing workplace team roles should be flexible positions.

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