Allocating Role and Responsibilities Good communication skills required to achieve team harmony and thus best performance

Fixed or Rotation As a team you will need to agree on who is going to carry out which role (role allocation). This could be a definite and fixed allocation for the whole duration of the project or you could decide to rotate the roles so that everyone takes a turn and thus gains experience of the different roles (as in some forms of democratic team).

Based on Preference or Skills? Another important decision when allocating roles is to decide if the crucial roles within the team should be given to the people who would like to take them or to team members that are best qualified to carry them out through prior or current experience. Decisions on team roles allocation will require careful conversations and good communication skills as could lead to confrontations and possibly bad feelings.

Make sure that someone completed the task Whatever protocols you use for allocating roles within your team, you should make sure that someone performs these roles or, if the roles are not allocated explicitly, that someone in the team undertakes the tasks. Allocating appropriate roles and coordinating these roles can lead to increased morale and motivation.

Key points Make sure that each team member understands their roles Be clear and make sure that everyone understands the roles of their team mates Discuss and clarify as a team how the roles interrelate in the achievement of the team's goals Decide who has authority on making sure that the functions allocated to the role are actually completed by the team member

To summarise There are many ways to allocate roles and responsibilities within a team. The most important point is to make sure that someone will complete each required task Good communication is needed as a good and honest consultation process will give opportunity to each team member to indicate the role they feel they should play within the team. Team members should be encouraged to adopt the roles they feel most comfortable with as this in turn helps ensure that individuals take responsibility for their roles and perform the tasks with the best possible effort.