Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success Podcast, episode eighty-eight. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

Defining your role helps you find your place. Sometimes you can utilize the flexibility that already exists within your corporate organizational structure to create a job that suits your strengths and aligns more with your sense of purpose. This is crucial for greater job satisfaction and ultimately for your career success. Having clarity around your role ensures you understand your responsibilities and the expectations being placed on you. 

In this episode, we explore why it’s worth taking the time to clarify your role and responsibilities, whether you’re a new hire or taking on a new position within your organization. We’ll cover some tips for going about defining your role upfront and getting clear on the expectations of others, as well as getting alignment with what success looks like so everyone is on the same page. 

Your role is your position on the team or within the organization. Simply speaking, it’s your job title. Your responsibilities are your job description, which includes the day-to-day tasks and duties expected of a person in your specific role. The two are linked as your responsibilities are directly tied to your role.

As you can imagine, each team member has several different duties and they’re responsible for completing specific tasks each day. In addition, sometimes there will be one-off responsibilities that are assigned and may not be directly related to their role. 

It’s important that your responsibilities are clearly defined and yet, many people go into work not really knowing what they’re responsible for on a day-to-day basis. They’re basically winging it. But excelling at a job is difficult when you’re uncertain of what is expected of you. And this problem of role ambiguity is more common than you might think. 

We’re often handed a job description that is vague and outdated, if there is one at all. So, start by reviewing your job description, if it exists, with the understanding that job duties evolve and job descriptions often fail to reflect the actual workday of someone in that role. Recognize that priorities and needs in an organization are constantly changing and everyone is expected to adapt. 

The more clearly the required tasks are outlined, the more time can actually be spent doing the job and the more quickly we can achieve our goals and help the company succeed. After you’ve reviewed the job description, make a detailed list of the duties included that don’t seem to fit your understanding of the role that you were hired to perform. It is to your benefit to point out a stale job description in need of a refresh. 

Take a positive, proactive approach to arrange a one-on-one meeting to discuss your job description with your supervisor. This is an opportunity to express your enthusiasm for being hired or your excitement in starting a new position within the company, and to explain that you’re seeking clarification to ensure you’re both on the same page. Stress that in time you hope to exceed their expectations with the understanding that your job description is the best way to help you achieve that goal. 

I invite you to negotiate for a job title that accurately reflects the role and responsibilities that are ultimately agreed upon since often job titles are behind the times. Job titles are important for career advancement because they document progressive levels of responsibility and a commitment to continual growth. Even if you don’t necessarily care much about your title, others do care. And they care more than you think. 

Establishing your job description is not a one-and-done type of task. Work responsibilities are fluid and negotiable in many work environments. So, conversations with your supervisor about your work responsibilities should be ongoing. It’s a great way to ensure you’re spending the bulk of your time on projects and assignments that advance the vision and strategic goals of the organization.

Having an understanding of your job description is only a starting point. Highly productive teams aren’t locked into roles and expectations evolve as people become more familiar with your capabilities so clear communication must accompany these changes. 

Conflict can arise as a direct result of role ambiguity, and this is only exacerbated by a competitive work environment. Defining roles and responsibilities set clear boundaries to prevent misunderstandings and the appearance of stepping on anyone’s toes. For example, if your boss has expectations of you that don’t match your colleague’s perception of your job, it is up to you to suggest that it would be helpful to clarify your role at a staff meeting or in a memo. If your boss assigns you a new supervisory role, others need to be given that information or your authority will be questioned. 

In my own experience, and a lesson learned the hard way, don’t assume that this information has been communicated. Make it a condition of your acceptance of this assignment where you are overseeing the work of others, that this be explained by the person making the decision to drop you into this role and not left for you to explain why you’re suddenly there, or it will make your life very uncomfortable. 

Think about it from their perspective. All of a sudden, you have been added as another level of scrutiny over their work and they are going to get defensive or outright hostile at the idea that you are there to check up on them. So, don’t let that crucial step be skipped over, leaving you to explain who gave you the right to question their authority. It doesn’t end well. Believe me.

What we do each day should be more than just a guessing game and clearly defining your role and responsibilities is key. So, if it hasn’t been done, or hasn’t been done well, this is your opportunity to make it your own. Your job satisfaction is enhanced when your role matters in the big picture. And it also might marginally increase your job security. But, whose job is really safe these days? 

Not having your role clearly defined within an organization can lead to confusion about responsibilities, a lack of direction, difficulty collaborating with others, and challenges with performance evaluation. When someone doesn’t know what’s expected of them, or those expectations keep changing, it’s hard to know what it takes to succeed. 

Having a clear understanding of your responsibilities and expectations allows you to evaluate your own performance and identify areas for improvement which helps in goal setting. This can also help your supervisor evaluate your performance and provide more actionable feedback. If you encounter resistance to establishing that minimum standard of performance against which you will be measured and evaluated, I would recommend that you not stay there long because your frustration will only increase. 

Your job description should be a well-defined, thoughtful guide for those things that you must do in order to keep your projects running smoothly. With it, you should be able to confidently focus on your priorities, trusting that everything else has been taken care of by other team members, so nothing is going to slip through the cracks. This is the secret to creating a more effective workplace where confusion is eliminated. 

Having transparent responsibilities allows everyone to track what each team member owns. This is a great opportunity to understand what others are working on so you’re able to lend a hand when needed, or ask for support with what you are working on. It enables everyone to work independently and collaboratively, as needed, for their specific tasks. This helps to eliminate much of the frustration and headaches in having to deal with subpar work when too much is left open to interpretation. 

Gaps in communication leave people wondering whose job it is, and it tends to result in one person having to take on added responsibility to ensure everything gets done. So, being clear upfront results in less finger pointing and less overloading of the most capable workers. No one will have to be the villain or the pushover when ownership of the required tasks has already been decided. 

Here are four reasons why having a playbook of everyone’s roles and responsibilities is so important: 

1. Eliminates confusion: We all understand what’s expected of us and know what we need to be working on, which helps us know what success looks like in our respective roles, so we can use our time more effectively, which leads to increased productivity and avoids wasted time where people don’t have a clue where to start. 
2. Promotes autonomy: which allows people to use their time much more effectively without needing to stop and clarify what they should be doing at every step, which empowers them to take action. 
3. Increases engagement: which improves morale leading to more success, which in turn builds momentum and fosters confidence, which lessens the likelihood of interpersonal conflict. 
4. Makes transitions easier: by helping the team step in for both planned events and the unexpected. Because, while we can’t expect everyone to stay forever, we can prepare our teams for when someone decides to move on or move up, which can also help to keep things rolling when someone goes on vacation, calls in sick, or has a family emergency. 

Thoughtfully developing roles and responsibilities goes beyond writing one-off job descriptions. There also needs to be a continuous process in place for refining them. Stagnant roles and responsibilities lead to boredom and complacency. Even when there’s a lot going on, without clear direction, some who are a little less self-motivated may feel like there’s nothing to do. This ongoing process of updating and keeping job descriptions aligned with what people do every day can be crucial for keeping the whole team motivated and contributing. 

The best way to develop roles and responsibilities is to start big and narrow in. Here are five steps to get you going: 

1. Get clear on the big picture: Understand what we are trying to accomplish or who we are serving. Then establish how each role contributes to these goals and get a clear picture of how everyone works together to accomplish these goals while identifying areas of interface. 
2. Group tasks logically: Determine what needs to get done and group tasks in a way that will most effectively achieve goals and objectives by outlining each person’s duties and responsibilities. Get clear on what each role needs to accomplish day-to-day to achieve these goals and take into account each person’s strengths and weaknesses, including interpersonal skills, interests, and past successes. You’ve hired each person for a reason, so leverage their individual strengths. 
3. Communicate individual roles and responsibilities: Give people ownership over specific areas and identify gaps in responsibilities and then use this as your starting point for team realignment to ensure nothing falls through the cracks and is left open to interpretation. 
4. Solicit feedback: Set a recurring meeting where you ask for opinions and insights to open the lines of communication and foster a healthy discussion of expectations as roles and responsibilities might need to change over time. 
5. Regularly audit roles and responsibilities: to ensure workloads are reasonable and responsibilities still align with individual roles and the long-term goals of each person. 

Finding your place within an organization is important for identifying opportunities for growth and development. It starts with understanding the organizational structure. It might surprise you to realize that there can be some flexibility within the identified roles. 

Recognize that people have different motivations, so it’s important to individualize the approach in defining their roles and responsibilities in order to unlock their true potential. Having clearly defined job descriptions doesn’t just help you ensure you have the right person for the job, it also improves their experience and supports the efficiency of the organization as a whole. 

Rather than simply identifying areas where your current job description falls short or feels limiting, it can be helpful to focus on identifying opportunities for growth and development within your existing role. Understanding your short, mid, and long-term goals is needed in order to help career progression be more measurable and less transactional.

By taking a proactive approach to problem solving and identifying areas where you can add value and contribute to their organization in new ways, you can begin to shape your role in a way that is more aligned with your strengths, interests, and aspirations. Recognize that being given ownership over specific tasks demonstrates their confidence in you to get things done. 

Defining your role and purpose within the organization is crucial for understanding your responsibilities and the expectations others have of you, which in turn can lead to greater job satisfaction and career success. Ensure those professional growth opportunities are clear, because without being able to see these opportunities within the organization, you risk losing talent. And part of what makes most people’s roles enjoyable is working with great people. 

So, take the opportunity today to define your work responsibilities more clearly before you run into a situation where your boss or coworker claims that you’re not doing your job because it’s been left too vague, and then it’s open to their interpretation. 

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Clarifying Roles at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode eighty-eight.

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com.

If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out The Confidence Collective. It’s my monthly coaching program where we dig a little deeper into what’s holding you back in your career, and we find the workarounds. We help you overcome the barriers and create the career you want. Join me over at cindyesliger.com/join. I’d love to have you join me in The Confidence Collective. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thanks for listening.