Team Roles and Leadership Behavior Theories

Roles Within the Working Group

There are three categories of clearly distinct roles:

A) Performance Roles

These roles facilitate and coordinate efforts to achieve the objective of the group. We can point out the following:

• Starters: Provide new ideas on how to proceed.
• Information Seekers: Seek facts, data, and information to solve the problem.
• Providers of Information: Provide accurate data and facts.
• Coordinators: Organize facts, ideas, and opinions.

B) Maintenance Roles

These roles stimulate human relations in the group, maintaining internal union and strengthening cohesion. Roles are developed by:

• Facilitators: Help reduce tensions and disputes.
• Caregivers: They cause others to participate in the discussions.
• Negotiators: Modify views to achieve the harmony of the group.
• Facilitators: Suggest ways to make the group work better.

C) Disturbing Roles

These are subject to behavioral motivations. These roles are played by the following team members:

• Blockers: Headstrong, stubborn, and negative toward the discussions.
• Members Seeking Recognition: Arrogant, self-centered, seeking to attract attention to themselves.
• Key Handlers: Assert their authority to impose their will.
• Isolated Members: Separated from their companions.

Theories of Behavior

The impossibility of finding a solution to the identification of the leader in the theory of traits gave investigators the impetus to study the behavior of the leaders themselves. It moves attention away from traits to focus on how the leader behaves. We find that if a leader has a specific behavior, then these behaviors can be taught. The studies undertaken in this line were made almost simultaneously in two worlds, Ohio and Michigan, by different groups of researchers. The results are similar.

The two forms of behavior for administrators are:

• Task-Oriented Leaders (Production): They tend to give importance to technical aspects and tasks, worrying that activities are completed on time. They are authoritarian leaders.
• Leaders Employee-Oriented: They tend to give importance to interpersonal relations, are interested in the needs of subordinates, and accept individual differences. They are participative leaders.

The usefulness of these studies was the ability to establish a two-dimensional behavior of leaders, though none serves alone.