Facilitation and Navigating Leadership When You’re Not the Official Leader

Mar 26, 2024 | Leadership, Performance Management

When I did my graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, my professor Roger Karsk taught us about facilitation. He conveyed the importance of noticing Task, Maintenance, and Individualist Roles in a group, and especially in a meeting. Effective meetings balance all three of these behaviors. Many organizational cultures rely on task behaviors to the detriment of the project.

Here’s a great list of the behaviors to consider in your groups:

Task Roles

 

Task role behaviors include:

 

  • Initiator: proposes goals, plans of action, or activities
  • Information giver: offers facts, information, evidence, personal experiences
  • Information seeker: asks others for facts, information evidence, personal experiences
  • Evaluator-critic: analyzes suggestions for strengths and weaknesses
  • Clarifier: makes ambitious statements clearer, interprets issues
  • Elaborator: develops an idea previously expressed by giving examples, illustrations, explanations
  • Recorder: takes notes on the group discussions, important decisions, and commitments to action

Relational/Maintenance Roles

 

Relational/ Maintenance role behaviors include:

 

  • Supporter: encourages everyone, making sure they have what they need to get the job done
  • Gatekeeper: helps members gain the floor and have opportunities to speak
  • Harmonizer: helps manage conflict within the group, facilitating common ground, helping define terms, and contributing to consensus
  • Tension-releaser: uses humor and light-hearted remarks, as well as nonverbal demonstrations (brings a plate of cookies to the group), to reduce tensions and work-related stress
  • Compromiser: focuses on common ground, common points of agreement, and helps formulate an action plan that brings everyone together towards a common goal, task, or activity
  • Standard Setter: sets the standard for conduct and helps influence the behavior of group members

Individualistic/Self-Centered Roles

 

Individualistic/Self-centered role behaviors include:

 

  • Aggressor: belittles other group members
  • Block: frequently raises objections
  • Deserter: abandons group or is very unreliable
  • Dominator: demand control and attention
  • Recognition-seeker: frequently seeks praise
  • Confessor: uses the group to discuss personal problems
  • Joker or Clown: frequently uses distracting humor or other attention-seeking behaviors

When trying to determine why a group is effective or why it is not, pay attention to these behaviors. Who talks to whom? Who supports others’ ideas? Who talks over others? Who is impatient to reach a decision? While both task and maintenance behaviors are helpful, more than a few individualistic and self-centered roles will derail your meeting.

One of the ways you can improve your meetings is to teach attendees these behaviors since oftentimes simple awareness will change the dynamic. I welcome you to try it and let me know what happens! If you could use additional support, please contact me.

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