Course Highlights
This team roles workshop will:
- Give participants a clear picture of the role they naturally play on a team and why it matters.
- Reveal the collective role profile of the group and what it means for how the team operates.
- Identify where the team’s natural strengths are concentrated and where gaps exist.
- Examine the tensions that arise between certain roles and give participants a practical way to navigate them.
- Introduce the ROLES model as a tool for addressing role-based conflict constructively.
- Help participants see their colleagues differently and work together more deliberately as a result.
Course Overview
Every team has people who generate ideas, people who execute them, people who hold things together, and people who keep everyone honest. Most teams have no shared language for any of it. They know what people do. They rarely talk about how people are wired to contribute, which contributions go unrecognized, or where natural friction between different working styles comes from.
“Roles in Action: Building Stronger Teams Together” builds that shared language. The workshop centers on the Team Roles Assessment, a proprietary BTW tool that identifies eight distinct roles: Adaptor, Creator, Evaluator, Implementer, Integrator, Mobilizer, Organizer, and Strategist. Participants complete the assessment, debrief their individual results, and then examine the team’s collective profile together. The conversation that follows tends to be one of the most candid and productive a team has all year.
The following outline highlights some of the workshop’s learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).
Program Objectives
At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Identify their dominant role or roles on the Team Roles Assessment and describe what that profile means for how they contribute.
- Explain how the team’s collective role profile affects its strengths, gaps, and working dynamics.
- Recognize the natural tensions between certain roles and describe how those tensions typically show up.
- Apply the ROLES model to a role-based conflict or communication challenge within the team.
- Identify one specific way to adjust how they work with a colleague based on what the workshop surfaced.
Workshop Modules
Understanding Team Roles: The Foundation
The workshop opens with the question that shapes everything that follows: what does it actually mean to have a role on a team? Participants will examine why teams with similar skills and experience still produce different results, and why knowing what someone does tells you less than knowing how they are wired to contribute. This section establishes the framework the rest of the day builds on and prepares participants to approach the assessment with genuine curiosity rather than the instinct to confirm what they already think they know about themselves.
Self-Assessment: Discovering Your Role
Participants will complete the Team Roles Assessment and score their results. The assessment identifies each person’s dominant role or roles across eight distinct profiles. The individual debrief gives participants time to read their results, reflect on what fits and what surprises them, and begin connecting their profile to specific moments from their actual work. This is the section where the room gets quiet in the best possible way.
Reading the Room: The Team’s Collective Profile
The most useful part of any roles workshop is what happens when individual results go up on the wall and the group sees itself as a whole. Participants will examine where the team’s roles concentrate, where they are thin, and what that collective profile makes the team naturally good at and naturally prone to missing. The group will also discuss what the profile reveals about how the team handles pressure, makes decisions, and recovers when something goes wrong. This section surfaces things the team has felt for a long time but never had language for.
Role Tensions: Why We Clash and How to Bridge It
Not all roles work naturally together. Some pairings generate productive friction that makes the team’s output better. Others generate friction that quietly costs the team time, trust, and momentum without anyone quite understanding why. Participants will examine the natural tensions between specific role pairings, recognize the patterns those tensions create in their own team, and discuss what each side of a tension needs from the other to work well. The group will also explore what happens when a team is missing a role entirely and how that absence shows up in predictable ways.
ROLES: Navigating Conflict Between Different Working Styles
The workshop closes with a practical tool for the moments when role-based tension tips into genuine conflict. Participants will learn and apply the ROLES model, a BTW framework built specifically for navigating disagreement between people with different working styles. The model moves from recognizing what each person brings, to naming what each person needs, to building a solution together and securing a path forward. The group will work through realistic scenarios drawn from the kinds of role-based friction the earlier modules surfaced, and practice using the model on situations from their own team.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for groups that want to:
- Build a shared understanding of how each person on the team is wired to contribute.
- Identify the strengths and gaps in their current team composition.
- Develop a common language for talking about working styles, tensions, and collaboration.
- Address role-based conflict in a way that strengthens rather than strains the working relationship.
Frequently Asked Questions About This Team Roles Workshop
What is the Team Roles Assessment?
The Team Roles Assessment is a proprietary Business Training Works tool that identifies eight distinct roles individuals naturally gravitate toward in a team setting. Participants complete it during the workshop. No advance preparation is required.
How long does the assessment take to complete?
Most participants finish in ten to fifteen minutes. The assessment is straightforward, and we encourage people to go with their first instinct rather than overthink their responses. In our experience, the results tend to be more accurate when people move through it naturally rather than deliberating over each item.
Is it possible to score strongly in more than one role?
Yes, and it is more common than people expect. Many participants discover they have two or even three dominant roles. We spend time in the workshop helping people understand what that means, when each role is most useful, and how to avoid the fatigue that comes from constantly operating in a role that is not your natural home.
What happens when someone’s results do not feel accurate?
It happens, and it is worth exploring rather than dismissing. In our experience, results that feel off often reflect one of two things: the person is answering based on what they do at work rather than how they are naturally wired, or they have been filling a gap on their team for so long that it has started to feel like their default. Both of those conversations are useful.
What if our team is missing certain roles entirely?
That is one of the most valuable discoveries the workshop produces. In our experience facilitating this with dozens of teams, the missing roles almost always explain something the team has been struggling with. A team with no Evaluators tends to move fast and course-correct late. A team with no Mobilizers tends to have good ideas that never gain traction. Naming the gap is the first step toward doing something about it.
How do participants typically respond to the collective profile discussion?
That section of the day tends to generate the most energy and the most candid conversation. People recognize patterns they have observed for years but never had a framework to describe. It is not uncommon for someone to say this explains something that has been frustrating me for a long time. The facilitator’s job in that moment is to keep the conversation productive and forward-looking rather than letting it become a referendum on individuals.
Can this workshop be customized for our team’s specific dynamics?
Yes. As with all Business Training Works programs, we can modify content as needed to meet your group’s specific goals and objectives.
How long is this program?
The standard format is a half-day onsite session. We can adjust the duration based on your schedule and priorities.