What’s in a Role?

Role - the position or purpose that someone or something has in a situation, organization, society, or relationship.                                            Cambridge Dictionary.

A role or a job lies at the heart of how employees connect with organizations, and is the building block for ensuring large scale coordinated work across numerous employees. All organizations are designed to deliver goods and services to customers, and through this process finding purpose and profit. Since most organizations have more than one employee, everyone needs clear boundaries of work deliverables to be able to function, add value and minimize waste or conflict. Thus, a role emerges at the juxtaposition of a person and a set of work duties, and connects and binds the two.

What is a role?

While we understand this intuitively, there are several nuances that emerge like layers of an onion as we dig deeper. To begin with, a role is effectively the job description – a set of responsibilities and accountabilities for work. But anyone who has been part of a corporate ecosystem, knows that it is the person occupying the role who brings his/her own impact to the role – even though the job description doesn’t change. Replace person A with person B, and it will affect relationships, speed, quality, even if the next person has identical skills and qualifications. This human nuance is sometimes defined as values and competencies, and they play a determining factor in how a role pans out. Does this mean that the same person, performing the same job description in one organization or another, performs the same role? Here’s where it gets murky, for the organization culture has an incredibly important influence in how a role actually plays out.

In some sense, a role can be seen as an overlap of:

The balance of all three components go into defining how any role in any organization across the world is played out – be it an operator, a chief justice, a banker or a junior associate. Let’s explore these in some detail.

1. The first and most critical component of a role is the exact set of work deliverables. The job description may be in writing, or may simply be the brief shared by the manager about what one has to do. There is a set of tasks which need doing, and which drive specific work deliverables and generally have interdependencies with other functions.
2. The second element is the person. All selection processes are developed to be more effective in fulfilling this piece. People need to have the right skills, the right education, the right attitude, the right values and morals, the right company background, the right experience - the list is sometimes longer than an uber-conservative matrimonial ad! 
3. The third and most complex element is cultural, which is often expressed through expectations from the role. It defines how people behave in ambiguous situations, or how they interact with others, what they do when something new happens or how they respond in the event of a mistake. These are rarely defined or written anywhere. Managers may or may not explain this explicitly. And yet, these play a distinct role in how a role is performed.

Human Resources and Roles:

Almost everything (though not all) that we do in human resources is designed to improve role effectiveness – for organizations and employees. For people to be effective in their roles, it is essential to have the right fitment in all 3 elements of the role. This frame is understood intuitively by great managers and leaders who also review their team members on all of these – discussing work deliverables, skills required, expectations on managing newer / complex situations, all in the same review.

Talent Acquisition

Understanding roles play a pivotal role in the life of recruiters – in their own organization, or external ones.

Let’s take a conversation from the life of a recruiter: -

Recruiter: What are your career goals in the next few years?

Candidate: I would like to see myself in a ‘good’ position in a ‘good’ company.

Recruiter: What is a ‘good’ position according to you?

Candidate: It means that I will be in a ‘good’ designation like manager / general manager, and there will be ‘growth’.

Recruiter: What kind of ‘growth’ are you looking for?

Candidate (expectantly): Salary growth?

Recruiter (clearly a patient professional): Okay. Apart from a good designation and better salary, what else will change in your role?

Candidate (sheepishly): I am not sure.

Recruiter: I’ll get back to you.

While this may seem like a tad simplistic, it is unfortunately quite common for many candidates – their understanding about how their own role can evolve is rather weak. Perhaps it is because they have only ever received feedback on task deliverables in their performance appraisals, but not about their skills. At times, they may be working in ecosystems where the unsaid expectations involve not challenging the hierarchy, critically examining processes for effectiveness, or taking initiative. The cultural expectations from the role being performed can be very different from the role being hired for, and apart from competencies, it is also essential to check for those during the selection journey.

Similarly, many a recruiter has had frustrating conversations with the hiring manager, where the role specifications mimic the person handling the role and not the core work deliverables. It is important to remember that individuals add their own experiences to the role over time – sometimes taking on additional responsibilities, or doing things in a unique way given tenure and past situations. The replacement role is best defined by going back to the core work delivery expectations, without adding any personal specific quirks.

On-boarding:

The absence of role clarity is perhaps one of the greatest sources of unhappiness for employees; this emerges over and over with disgruntled new joinees. “Since I have joined, I am given tasks as and when my manager feels like it. I do it, but am unable to figure out why that was needed, or whether it is part of my role or not.” While some additional initiatives are always good for learning and checking initiative, the core role first needs to be understood and performed by any new joinee to gain credibility and confidence. “My salary has gone up, but my role has gone down – since earlier I was asked my inputs for many issues / projects, but not anymore.” After the hygiene factors are fulfilled, the role has a huge impact in driving motivation for new and old employees alike.

Role detailing can be quite useful for individuals as they plan careers and explore new positions. Many designations are misleading – the title may be ‘Senior General Manager’, but what does the role really do? What decisions can be taken, how are initiatives finalized, what is the capability of the team (which determines what the incumbent will have time for), where is the organization headed? All of these can really add or reduce value in a role.

For anyone taking up a new role or moving to a new organization, understanding the real role is an essential tool to settle in quickly, by reflecting on things like expected work deliverables, skills and competencies that may be needed, things that have to be learnt anew, the unsaid expectations of the ecosystem, and how they are similar or different from earlier setups.

Talent Management

Expanding roles is the simple method which can be used to institionalize talent management and continuous improvement. In the words of a plant manager – “Earlier we were only managing operations, but now we are also held responsible for ensuring that costs are under control and within budgets. This empowers us much more.” There is no increase in compensation, no change in designation, and yet, the individual feels more engaged. Of course, this is a tool that should be used with caution, keeping the needs of the employee and organisation in mind, rather than as a means to overwork existing employees due to other constraints. In a study on Leaders who develop Leaders[1], it was found that the top 3 ways of developing leadership bench strength are – coaching provided by the leader’s direct manager, job rotations and assignments, and action learning. All of these relate to expanded roles and how individuals learn to navigate them.

The best performers differentiate themselves from others because their conception of the role is much broader – it includes newer initiatives, or perhaps influencing others with ease. Similarly, ‘growth’ can come in many ways, and expanding one’s role to take up newer activities and initiatives generally leads to stronger connect at the workplace.

Ethics and Culture:

Role clarity is also a critical tool for maintaining ethics and standards in business operations. Say a theft is detected because book stock was not cross checked with physical stock, and the finance lead is being asked why. The answer comes quickly – “this reconciliation is not part of my role. It should have been done by the store manager”. When the store manager is asked, he says – “I was surprised when the finance lead was not doing the reconciliation. After all, audit must be done by someone other than the core function, otherwise the process can be abused. In my earlier organisation, it was always done by finance!”  This seems like a case where role clarity is absent, which cost the organisation financially.

Role clarity provides an interesting lens to view culpability as well. If an employee posts incorrect entries in official records, as per the instruction of his manager, and feels that he did nothing wrong since following manager’s instructions are an essential part of his role, what should the leader and HR do?

Concluding thoughts:

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” – William Shakespeare

In its most fundamental essence, a role is a set of expectations from us – crafted from our own selves and from others. The role is not the designation or the grade, though that can sometimes define us. Roles can be moved around, but not as simply as a game of checkers, because the people performing those roles and the underlying culture are as critical as the job responsibilities.

As we step into the new year, reflecting on roles can lead to some surprising revelations - “How is my role adding value to my career, my learning, my goals? What am I willing to change to grow? How can I review my role deliverables to add to my learning and contributions next year?”. Perhaps the most important question is – ‘what shall I expect from myself in the next year?’

References :

[1] "Leaders who develop leaders: Establishing the Foundations of Effective Leader-Led Development", study by Learning and Development Roundtable, 2006.