Achieving Role Clarity

You are on your first day of a new job. Excitement and anticipation have morphed into the realization that you have new things to learn, people to work with, and a company culture to learn, not to mention you want to perform well in this new role. So, what are the responsibilities of the role? What does winning look like in your role? Now visualize yourself in a long-time role. Can you answer the previous questions clearly? Oftentimes, whether new to a role or being in a role for a while, people do not clearly understand what their roles and responsibilities are and what winning looks like in their role. I invite you to walk along with me as we look at the steps for achieving role clarity.

Role Clarity Tool

Good leaders ensure that roles are clearly defined for each person within their team/across the company. CLG uses a GiANT Role Clarity Tool to help leaders get clear about the roles and responsibilities of those they lead. The Tool evaluates each role in four categories:

• General information: the employee’s name, title, who they report to, location, and company name.
• Listing responsibilities.
• Answering what winning looks like in the role.
• Answering what people should contact the person in each role for to ensure efficient communication.

Leaders and employees are able to use comparable information in evaluating roles and responsibilities, painting a clear picture of what winning in the role looks like, and developing efficient communications. Let’s look further into responsibilities, winning, and communication.

Responsibilities

Employees cannot be expected to be accountable for a job or responsibility they did not know was theirs. According to The Predictive Index’s 2024 Successful Leader Report, more than one in four businesses (26%) today do not clearly define roles and responsibilities for people leaders. As you can imagine, this hampers productivity and often leads to conflict over job duties.

The Role Clarity Tool evaluates responsibilities by asking these questions:

• Are the roles and responsibilities clear at every level of the organization?
• Does each person have a defined job description, goals, and know who to report to?
• Where are the gaps? If the ball gets dropped, where does that happen most often? This may indicate lack of clarity or resources/leadership.

Double check yourself by asking, “Are your people aware of their responsibilities/expectations, and are they equipped to execute their job?”

Winning

The Predictive Index’s 2024 Successful Leader Report says one-third of organizations do not have a formal way to measure the success of people leaders, yet the overwhelming majority (94%) believe such frameworks are good for business. So how are employees expected to know what it looks like to win in their job?

Consider using these questions from the Role Clarity Tool:

• What does success look like for each person?
• How do they win?
• How do they help the team win?

It’s important for people to know why their job matters and how it is part of the overall success of the team and ultimately, the entire organization. This increases overall employee well-being and engagement.

Communication

The Role Clarity Tool prompts leaders and employees to identify clear communication regarding job roles across the company by asking these questions:

• Does your organization and each individual know who to contact for specific duties and questions?
• Does each role have a list of things it can be contacted for?

Knowing who to contact and for what creates effective communication by going straight to the expert for the information and/or problem solving instead of getting wrong information or bounced around.

When everyone knows their roles and responsibilities, there is true accountability and things are less likely to fall between the cracks. Everyone clearly knows their job and their contribution to the team and organization. If you need help with achieving role clarity, contact CLG today. We can help!

-Melissa Spangler