Before replacing team players, rotate their roles

Successful teams require more than great players — they need people to play complementary roles that reinforce each other. Roles define expected behaviors — they drive clarity for both the individual performing it and the team.

However, unlike titles, roles must be fluid. Just as we can get stuck playing a particular role in our families, our business roles can also grow stagnant.

A role is not a title. It’s the part played by a team member in a particular situation or project. More than one person can play the same role. One person can play various parts.

A role represents a fraction of work. Unlike a position or title, it’s not a full-time job — roles don’t equal souls.

Roles Rotations Minimizes Team Stagnation

“Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.” — Mary Catherine Bateson

According to Social Psychologist Enrique Pichón Riviere, a role in an organized behavioral model that establishes a dual relationship based on mutual expectations — doctors need patients and vice versa.

Traditionally, power and knowledge were restricted to one role: the formal leader. However, a fast-paced and uncertain world requires everyone to help drive change. Leadership cannot be limited to one person.

Fixed roles create stereotypes — they make things too predictable. When people supposed to play only one role, they are forced to play to the strengths — we limit their potential to learn new things.

When roles don’t rotate, teams begin to play within the comfort zone — boredom and repetition quickly become stagnation.

A role should not exhaust people. Roles should rotate to bring out the best of the team, rather than expecting everyone always to play the same part. That one person is very creative doesn’t mean it’s the only part she/he should play. That same individual might be a great motivator or organizer too.

Also, as Pichón Riviere explained, a team is like a Persian market where every individual negotiates between two sides: what you expect and need, and what others do.

To assign and hold roles is a dynamic and complex collective mechanism — for someone to play a role, someone else must assign it. When you delegate ‘the expertise’ on someone else, you are assigning a role to that person and acknowledging you don’t possess that skill.

However, not rotating roles creates a dependency towards so-called experts that can drive group-thinking. Team members must challenge the ‘experts’ — growth and innovation happen in the Learning Zone.

Roles rotation promotes a more flexible approach to approaching and tackling challenges — it encourages the team to become more adaptive to the reality of each project.

When was the last time you played a role outside of your comfort zone? How do you encourage your team to experiment with new roles?

The Benefits of Rotating Team Roles

1. Helps develop new skills

One of the most effective ways to learn new skills is by doing. Rotating roles allows team members to experiment with new things and pick up new skills on the go. Facilitating a meeting, leading a project, or creative problem solving are helpful for everyone regardless of their core function within a team.

2. Creates engagement

Rotating roles increases ownership of the project’s success. It helps to remove the divide between those who tend to be more vocal and those who are quieter. The same happens when you let people play a role that is the opposite of what it’s expected from them . It opens the door to challenging the status quo and sparks curiosity.

3. Makes leadership more fluid

Research shows that organizations that adopt roles enable the rotation of leadership within a team, which in turn facilitates the development of the group. Birds have a structured and well-designed airborne hierarchy — the one flying at the front commands the rest. However, the leadership role changes several times throughout one flight. Everyone has the responsibility and ability to lead — rotating roles allows people to step up.

4. Amplifies team perspectives

Group thinking usually occurs when roles are rigid — people override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. Groupthink causes people to follow the leader or experts unquestioningly, sometimes without realizing it. Diversity in thinking is critical for a team to become more innovative. Invite everyone to bring their entire self to work, not just the aspects needed for one role. Sports, hobbies, travel, etc. — everything that people experience ‘outside of the office’ is an untapped source of inspiration.

5. Develops collective empathy

Walking in someone else’s shoes is the best way to feel their pain and challenges. Role-playing builds empathy — you understand and appreciate what other people face every day. For example, letting an introvert facilitate a meeting is an excellent way for everyone to listen to the voice of quiet people. See what happens when they manage a meeting in a not-so-loud style.

Start by Organizing Your Team by Roles

The first step is to rethink how your people work beyond titles–start by organizing your team by roles.

The best way to do this is to engage the team in the process actively. Managers can introduce the notion of ‘role rotation’ and set clear rules of engagement. However, let the team design and craft their roles.

The first step is to codify the work that is already in place. Let everyone capture the roles they play. Have the team share collectively, avoid overlaps, see what’s missing — roles should capture all the work.

Some teams practice self-selection — people are free to choose not just which roles they want to play but also the projects and people they want to work with.

Facilitation is critical to building the right conditions. Also, don’t expect people to embrace this practice overnight.

Here are different approaches to roles that will help you get started.

Operational Roles:

These are roles that manage administrative or clerical aspects to help the work done. The secretary role takes notes during a meeting. The facilitator role manages and keeps a meeting on track. The logistics role gets the resources that the team needs to operate.

Operational roles must have an ‘expiration date’ (i.e., every 30 days) so everyone gets a chance to play.

Team Dynamics Roles:

Pichón Riviere identified several roles that every group must have to operate and function healthily.

The Facilitator enables the group dynamics during a meeting — he/she helps the team address the emotional and functional obstacles that hinder collaboration and communication.

The Observer is similar to a secretary, but additionally captures team dynamics not just what is being discussed — it observes ‘issues’ so that they can be resolved later.

The Leader role defines the situation and organizes action. It can be either driven by formal or informal authority. A leader can be one who was assigned to manage a team or that who has the influence and respect to be listened to. Most teams need both a formal leader and what I call the side-kick — it balances out the leader’s personality and bridges the gap between the leader and the team.

A formal leader is assigned from the top; the informal leader emerges from the bottom.

The Saboteur is more than just an obstacle; she/he represents the group’s resistance. In any group activity, there’s no progress without resistance. This role, rather than to be silent can illuminate blind spots from both leaders and team members alike. Rotation helps depersonalize this role — it avoids turning one person into the culprit.

The Scapegoat is a role where people deposit the negative aspects of the team. Blaming is a widespread, yet ineffective, team behavior — what people can’t tolerate about themselves, they assigned it to the Scapegoat. This role uncovers the lack of individual accountability.

The Spokesperson is the collective voice — it says what the group is thinking, especially when no one speaks up. It could be positive or negative emotions the group is experiencing at a particular time. Usually, these people are good at reading the minds of their co-workers. Listening to this voice is vital to understand the team’s mood.

Both the Scapegoat and Spokesperson roles complement each other but are different. One thing is to express what’s going on (Spokesperson) and another is to become the depositary of all the negative aspects (Scapegoat).

Thinking style roles:

To expand diversity in thinking, teams must include different perspectives and ways of thinking, as I explain here.

In “The Whole-Brain Business,” Ed Herrmann outlines four basic thinking styles — administrator, talker, problem-solver, dreamer — corresponding to the four quadrants of the brain. Most people thinking is dominated by only one.

Some of us are inclined to focus on the big picture. Others are detail-oriented or tend to follow their gut. Using a whole-brain approach will help leverage all your team’s thinking styles, not just the one they default to.

Similarly, Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats” method helps challenge how our brain thinks to create more effective solutions. By consciously training your brain, you can play with different types of perspectives (e.g., gut instinct, pessimistic judgment, neutral facts).

Expertise roles:

Depending on the nature of a project, a team needs to bring in experts that can add specific knowledge to the table. Roles based on skills or expertise are more difficult to rotate— not everyone can be an expert on bid data or artificial intelligence, to name a few. However, expertise roles are in and out — they don’t need to be part of the regular team dynamics.