Don’t Define Roles
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
A Leader's Guide to Discouraging People, Diminishing Trust, and Damaging Culture
Don’t Define Roles
Description: The leader does not clearly articulate the roles specific team members will play in accomplishing a goal or task. They put off decisions, keep the path forward vague, and struggle to provide role clarity. Despite follower questions, requests, and concerns, the leader fails to provide the team with concrete details. As a result, people are confused and demoralized, and accountability for the lack of progress becomes elusive.
This One Time: My division was allocated a substantial sum to begin a new initiative. While everyone was excited, there was a great deal of confusion because the leader did not outline a concrete path forward and did not assign roles, and as a result, everyone was unsure of how to contribute. The leader organized several summit meetings and explored options but failed to assign specific roles...for months! High potentials felt their time was wasted, and they became disenfranchised with the entire process. Eventually, they checked out, and progress died, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were wasted. The project became frustrating, and followers winced at its mention.
Making it Worse: The leader gets mad when things are not progressing as planned but has no self-awareness that they are the bottleneck.
The Leader’s Lost: Credibility, respect, trust, and motivation.
Employees Feel: Confused, frustrated, in the dark, powerless, and skeptical.
The Leader Said: “I don’t want this to be overly structured,” “I need to think about how we proceed,” “Why aren’t we further along on XYZ project?”
Followers Think: “What is my role in all of this?,” “Who is doing what?,” “What’s going on with…?”, “I’m confused.”
At the Water Cooler: “This project is a mess,” “I really don’t care anymore—I tried asking months ago,” “It’s a train wreck, but she has her head in the sand and refuses to make a decision.”
Effective Leadership: Role clarity is essential. Team members need to understand their roles, the timeline, and indicators of success. If these elements are unclear, it will be challenging to hold people accountable for results. There will be confusion and frustration, and high potentials will become discouraged.
This Week: Pay close attention to ambiguity in the system. Are people unclear about their role? This lack of clarity wastes time and money and potentially damages engagement.
“What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.” — Salvador Dalí, surrealist painter