Team Members and Leaders

Team Members and Leaders
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Working in groups is among the practices that promote teamwork. It encourages people to work together with the aim of accomplishing a certain task assigned to them (Daft & Lane, 2008). Groups consist of members and leaders for them to appropriately execute their functions. For instance, I recall of a group in which I was a member during my first semester when we had been assigned a task by the course lecturer. The task required us to form groups of ten students and appoint a group leader to lead us throughout the task.
However, in order to ensure appropriate performance, the group will require both task roles as well as maintenance roles which are very essential in facilitating the group to accomplish its mandate (Hughes & Terrel, 2007). The task roles are crucial in helping to get the group to amicably do its job. The task roles are often executed by single minded and tough members of the group and effectively relate to the group’s rationale. These group task roles include information seeker, initiator, opinion giver, opinion seeker, coordinator, information giver and summarizer (Daft & Lane, 2008). Moreover, the maintenance roles within a group usually facilitate the functioning of the group by looking after the group’s emotional life and helping to make the group work as well as considering individual needs of the group members. These roles achieve this by opening up communication channels. They include the joker, the supporter, process observer and sharing experience (Wheelan, 2010).
One member of our group played the initiator group task role. He was always doing a very vital in getting the group started. In addition, he was also very vibrant in proposing opinions and suggestions (Wheelan, 2010). His ideas and suggestions were mostly very essential and always helped to motivate other group members to share information in addition to providing direction for the group (Hughes & Terrel, 2007). Additionally, he was also performing the role of a joker. This was a very crucial group maintenance role which was essential in helping the group to let off the steam whenever we would get stuck. This critic...