Your team is struggling with role clarity. How can you navigate conflicts effectively? Start by understanding the root cause of the conflict—identify where role confusion arises. Assess both individual and team impact, making sure to see how it affects performance and dynamics. Define an action plan for the individuals and the team, with clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations. Once the plan is in place, it’s time to act decisively and address issues head-on, then focus on moving forward together as a unified team.

Define Roles Clearly: Create a document outlining each team member's responsibilities to eliminate confusion. Open Communication: Encourage team members to discuss their concerns and clarify misunderstandings openly. Facilitate Discussions: Hold regular team meetings to address conflicts and reinforce role expectations. Mediation: If conflicts persist, mediate discussions to help team members find common ground. Feedback Loop: Implement a feedback system for ongoing role evaluation and adjustments.

To address role clarity issues - First conduct a role assessment to clearly define responsibilities and expectations. Start with open conversations where each team member can outline their understanding of their role. This helps identify any overlaps or gaps. From there, create a detailed document that defines each role, including specific tasks, goals, and reporting lines. Encourage ongoing communication, so team members can raise concerns when boundaries are unclear. Finally, schedule regular follow-ups to review and adjust roles as needed, ensuring everyone stays aligned and conflicts are minimized.

Not everything is written in the job description and I as a Manager of the Team should always bring clarity and describe deviations for my team with bringing business context. Each of them should understand their wider business role and impact and can ask questions and propose ideas on what we should do together to establish clarity in roles, tasks, and responsibilities. Also, my favorite option is to tune the role of each team member based on their natural skills and abilities to get the most benefits for both of us.

In order to navigate conflicts among your team members, especially with regard to their roles, you need to ensure: *Having beforehand clear description of their individual roles and responsibilities; *Aligning the above around common business goals, and showcasing the related impact of their individual contribution; *Maintaining continuous dialogue and corresponding progress update that would assist towards resolving such conflicts, and realigning your Team efforts accordingly.