In each team, every member has a functional role that covers his or her work. However, each team member also has psychological roles that are determined by the individual member’s contribution to the team. This is defined by the individual’s view on own identity and reputation compared to the other team members’ perception of this.

The purpose of the exercise is to visualise, understand and improve the self-awareness between the individual team members and the psychological roles within the team. Furthermore, the exercise will shed light on the dynamics of the team in cases where there is a disagreement between the team and the individual team member’s perception of own psychological role.

The purpose of ”Your contribution to the team” is to locate and select the psychological roles that each team member should contribute to the team. To reach a common understanding of the psychological roles, it is important to get a deeper understanding of each other. A common understanding is a great starting point for a team. It boosts collaboration within the team and it increases the chances that the right skills are used for the right task.

Each team members writes down the answer to the following question on a piece of paper: ”Which three behavioural characteristics describe your positive impact on the team? As accurate and direct as possible!” Afterwards, the facilitator (or one of the team members) collects the answers and defines the three most comprehensive perceptions of positive contributions from the other team members for each team member. Each team member comments on the characteristics of him or herself.

The other team members may explain the positive contributions to the team to start a dialog about the positive contributions of the individual team member. The purpose is to reach consensus about the individual team member’s positive contribution to the team.

Then the exercise is repeated, but this time the question has a different angle. ”Three behavioural characteristics that describe this person’s less positive impact on the team?” As accurate and direct as possible! The facilitator (or one of the team members) repeats the same procedure as before. The exercise ends with a dialogue in the team about what they learned from the exercise.