Responsibility and Roles
By: Jed May
Tags: Responsibility, Management And Leadership

No matter your role, you have responsibilities. Many are plainly stated, but there are several that are more “implied”. For instance, no matter what you’re doing, show up on time. That’s a responsibility that may or may not be stated. Below is a collection of ideas covering some of these unwritten responsibilities, and places I’ve seen the ball dropped many, many times.

Leadership

As a leader, you have a responsibility to the people you’re leading. You owe them a vision. A goal. Any organization, team, or collection without a common goal is just wandering in circles. Goals should be S.M.A.R.T. goals. (You can get info about that acronym here). If you’re a leader, you should have this laid out.

A great leader, before formally establishing the goal/vision, will reach out to his team for feedback. That leader’s team will typically consist of a group of managers, supervisors, or people doing the work directly. Leaders, taking into account the feedback, will establish “what” we are doing.

Managers

There’s a stark difference between a leader and a manager. Managers tend to deal with the details. They worry about the how. Once the vision has been established, a manager has the responsibility of working out the details. They should be comfortable talking with the leader when there are concerns about a goal. Managers and leaders shouldn’t be confrontational toward one another, but there should be a mutual respect and professionalism present that welcomes any kind of feedback or question.

In the end, the leader is the one that has the responsibility of the outcome of the vision; managers are responsible for making sure it’s executed. Leaders come up with it, managers get it executed, and you need both for a team to thrive.

Workers

“Workers” probably isn’t the best term, but this is a broad category. Anyone doing the actual productivity work falls in this category. In my field, software developers, testers, analysts — they all fall in here. Workers are the ones that actually execute the vision. In order for this to work, regardless of opinions, the entire team needs to understand the vision/goal, and everyone needs to do what they can to execute it. Management’s communication with the team should always be in support of the stated goal. That’s not to say there’s no room for feedback; of course there is. There is a fine line managers must follow. A manager cannot belittle the goals to your team. That causes chaos, and before they realize it, they’re responsible for the team not moving at all.

Meetings

Meetings are a big deal. Ultimately, they often waste a ton of time. If you look around at everyone at a meeting, consider what they’re average salary probably is, per person. Then guess what that is per minute. Here’s an example, if there are 10 people in a meeting, all making around $100,000 a year, that’s $0.80/min per person, being $8 a minute, just to be there. To get them all there, that’s $240 a half hour. If you’re wasting any of that time talking about anything other than the purpose of that meeting, you’re throwing money away. Every minute. Every hour. That time they’re spent goofing off or just listening could (and should) be spent working instead.

Be mindful of the time spent in meetings. Before it begins, you should have a very clear objective, notes jotted down, and they should begin on the designated time. It’s fine to cut up a couple of minutes before it starts, but be disciplined enough to start on time. Set the standard as a professional.

Written Communication

If you’re communicating in today’s world, it’s almost a certainty that some of it is going to be done via text. And if that’s the case, keep it professional. Follow some of these tips.

Be professional. Don’t joke, even if you know the person and it’s one-on-one. If you’re communicating in writing, always assume a reader will take the wrong tone. It’s best to keep writing with facts, no jokes, puns, assumptions, none of that.

Overstate ideas. It’s a great idea to always state your understanding in full. You never want to assume the reader knows what you’re thinking. That’s not often the case. Typically, if I’m just asking a quick question, expecting a quick answer, I still write out the full idea. For instance, if I’m trying to figure out if we store our documentation as a ReadMe.md file only, or if there’s another place for all documentation, I might ask this in a chat on Teams: “Hey, I’m working on the app that writes files to the hard drive. I’m finishing up the documentation, and I’m not sure where it should go. I’ve seen it in the readme.md file alone, but I’ve also seen it in a document repo center for easy access. Is there a way you normally document your apps?” In this way, it’s clear/concise.

Writing is great for following up, but not so much for fleshing out ideas. If you know this is more than a couple of questions, get on the phone or a quick voice chat. Ask someone if they can spare an odd number of minutes (rarely say 5 or 10 minutes, because no one believes that number). Instead, say, “Hey John, can I get on a call with you? Got a question about the report I’m working on. It shouldn’t take more than 3minutes.” That’s an odd number, and they are more likely to carve out the time for that conversation. Then, when you have it clear, just before you hang up the phone, restate the idea back to them. If you got it, they will listen and go, “Yup, that’s it!”, and you know you’re good. Lastly, it may be a good idea to send an email to follow up. If it’s just a clarification, maybe not, but if you’ve asked a supervisor for the next priority, and they give you something unexpected, it’s always good practice to send an email stating something like, “Hey Cassie, I’m picking up job 312 and pushing my other task aside, just as we discussed. I’m assuming I’ll pick back up on 112 as soon as this one is done.”

Responsibilities

In a nutshell, you have a responsibility to be professional. Don’t waste time, don’t waste money. It’s that simple. Having to communicate the same thing several times because you weren’t clear in the beginning is a waste. Talking about non-business things in meetings when it has started is a waste. Sending 25 emails about an issue that could be resolved over the phone in 12 minutes is a waste. Calling an employee up one-on-one for five minutes to talk about something funny that happened at home…not a waste. That’s relationship building, and we need that. Your job isn’t a prison, and you shouldn’t treat it like an assembly line. You should feel free to goof off with people, ask questions about things done over the weekend, but you set boundaries. Ask them before a meeting starts, ask them after a meeting. If you’re good enough friends, text/call during lunch breaks if you’re working remote. The big take away is, be an adult.