4 Types of Team Roles | Quality Gurus (2024)

In a team, different individuals have different roles to play.

Here are four roles for a team: Leader, Facilitator, Coach or Member.

All these are the components of a team, but remember that these need not be exclusive. A leader can act as a facilitator and a coach as well at different times. It's not necessary that the team will have one individual as a leader, one individual as a facilitator and one individual as a coach and member. The leader depending on the situation can act as a coach, facilitator or member.

The role of a leader is to provide direction to the team, vision to the team, motivation to the team, and establishes ground rules for working with each other. What sort of communication will happen, and how will things be reported? All these ground rules are set by the leader. The role of the leader, of course, is to make the successful completion of the team goal. So sets the goal, clarifies the goal, provides direction, and also, if there are regular meetings to be held, then the leader is responsible for preparing for those meetings and conducting those meetings effectively. The team leader assigns individual roles to team members.

The facilitator, many a time, doesn't have formal authority. The facilitator helps the team to make the decision. Even if a leader acts as a facilitator, the leader is asking the team or helping the team make those decisions. The facilitator helps the team to understand objectives and supports the team on how to achieve that objectives. That's how he or she facilitates the team towards the goal.

The coach provides one-to-one support after training. If a team member has been trained with something, the coach is someone who provides support after the training. The coaching is one-to-one training and if there's any problem team faces coach would be the first person to go to. These rules might overlap. A coach might be the same person as the team leader. When we are talking about coaching, let's understand the GROW Model of coaching that will help us understand the coaching concept better.

• G is for Goal
• R is for Reality
• O is for Obstacles
• W is for a Way Forward

• Goal: In coaching, the first thing is understanding what the team wants to achieve. What is the objective?
• Reality: Realizing what current reality is? Where are we today? What are the challenges this team is facing?
• Obstacles: What stops the team from achieving the goal? What are the obstacles?
• Way Forward: Those identified obstacles are to be removed by the coach by providing all the support and steps needed to achieve the goal.

The role of members is to participate in team meetings, do whatever is assigned to them, and actively participate when it comes to brainstorming, idea generation or any other support they need to provide. Members actively engaged in the team.