What is Your Role?

Role awareness is a personal success component that can be assessed, measured and quantified.  After utilizing this insight for both clients and candidates for over 10 years, I’ve grown to value its importance to executive success for both leaders and the people they lead.

Role Awareness Defined

Role Awareness is the ability to be aware of your role in the world or within a given environment. It’s the ability to understand the expectations placed on a position and to clearly see how those expectations are to be met.  * 

Why is Role Awareness So Critical?

Role Awareness is a measure of your clarity for your job objective.  If you’re unclear about what is really required in your job role, what’s the likelihood you can actually meet the objective?  Simply restated: before you can determine the path to an objective (develop your self-direction), you need to be clear about the answer to this all-important question:

What is the job objective?

It seems so elementary.  Why is this even an issue?  The fact is low role awareness happens far more than you could imagine.

What’s happening when Role Awareness is Low?

• You likely lack understanding of your job role
• You can be unclear or uninformed of expectations
• You may not ask for clarification of your role or responsibilities

What’s the Root Cause of Low Role Awareness?

I continue to believe that miscommunication is at the root of all dysfunction.  An effective communication of job objectives is the exception rather than the rule.  What happens?

• Written Job Descriptions (if they exist at all) are frequently lists of tasks fail to include measurable, prioritized responsibilities.
• Workers are reluctant to ask for clarification.
• When workers do ask for clarification, they don’t receive a workable answer.

All to often we provide our new hire a job title, a desk and an in-basket. Then expect the new hire to figure things out. Then they get slammed in their annual review.  We call this game Stump The Chump.  It’s a game with no winners.

Leading Small Cogs in the Big Wheel

We’re often challenged to lead people who play minor parts in the grander scheme.  But their jobs exist for a reason.  How frequently do you help them understand the importance of that reason?

All jobs have their tasks.  How have you offered criteria to help them to prioritize those tasks?  Have you helped them to understand the difference between urgent and important?

What’s A Worker to Do?

If your Role Clarity is lacking, you should:

• Get familiar with the job description.  If it doesn’t exist, collaborate with your boss to write it yourself.
• Ask management to spend time to define the role.
• Talk to peers to learn what is expected.
• Develop a prioritized list of your 3 to 5 most important Key Accountabilities

Related Posts

• When There’s No Why, There’s No Way
• Delegation and the Power of “Why”
• Are Carrots and Sticks Obsolete?

Foot Note

* Role Awareness definition is courtesy of Target Training International’s Dimensional Balance/ TriMetrix™ Coaching Report