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INTRODUCTION

One of the most important types of subsystem in any organization is the work group. Any

huge task cannot be done alone except for the person who could do it alone is a

superhuman which had all the abilities of all humans. One may think that he could do his

work alone but without realizing it is because of participants from his group mate.

If we look apart from our work life, could someone stand alone by himself in this huge

world? The answer is affirmatively no. One needs family, friends and others, or otherwise

his life would become so bored and totally wrecked. Imagine if we are getting sick, the

first we need is for someone to take care of us. Thus, it shows that in every little thing in

we do in this world we need someones help in getting the work done. That is why we have

to work in group. Even one group can give benefits to other group in achieving the

organization goals.

What exactly is a group? There is no actual definition of group. A popular definition

defines the group term as any number of people who:

1) Interact with one another2) Are psychologically aware of one another3) Perceive themselves to be a group

A group usually consists of large size of members in it. Since it consist large amount of

people in a group, thus it will face a large number of behaviour. It is a natural human being

to have a different behaviour between each other. If humans are made with the same

behaviour or intelligence, there will be no various type of work can be done. For example

if all humans are born to be a doctor who have all the abilities to becomes one, there will

no leaders who could lead his country and all his followers towards a better world.

Mc Gregor (1960) developed a theory of humans behaviour. He distinguished between

two world-views managerial styles that is Theory X and Theory Y. People in theory X are

the one that is dislike work, trying to avoid it as much as possible and needs to be

controlled and motivated by others. Apart from that is a person in theory Y who likes work

and can control and motivate himself.

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Since there is two totally different people introduced by McGregor, would there any

cooperation exist if those two types of people were gathered in a group? If we think it

generally, both of these people cannot fit into a group. There wouldnt be any chances for

east to meets west. Yet it takes all sorts to makes a world. These differences complete each

other.

Generally, behaviour can be expected if we know how is someone perception on one thing

and what is important for him. Even though we find someones behaviour is not rational, it

is believed that his behaviour is actually to become rational and totally rational. One will

see it as irrational because of they dont get the information as the same way or they look it

from a different view. Affirmatively there exists diversity between these people.

Various type of work talent had an important implication in management. All of those

manager should change their thought that all people are the same to agree on the diversity

and give reaction to the diversity by indiscriminate the workers.

The relationship between behaviour and personality is perhaps one of the most complex

matters that managers have to understand. When we speak about an individuals

personality we are referring to a relatively stable set of feelings and behaviours that have

been significantly formed by genetic and environmental factors. Thus this individuals

personality also contributes to the behaviour of a person in a group. And this will make the

diversity getting bigger.

Group members are brought together in order to collaborate or contribute towards a

common goal, most commonly in the workplace or school projects. This does not

necessarily mean that the group acts like individuals. A group needs to have a mix of

different roles in order for the group to accomplish the task at hand.

Members of a group always fall into specific roles; defining and understanding these roles

greatly influence groups as a whole and their level of performance. Who leads and who

follows? To simplify the roles of individuals have to look back on its overall cause and the

realization of an objective. Roles are expected behaviour for a given position (Kreitner &

Kinicki, 2003). Roles become evident at critical points in group development, normally at

its formation, and throughout each stage of the group's evolution.

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Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats the two influential theorists on group behaviour, who

wrote a respected article titled "Functional Roles of Group Members" back in the 1940s. In

it, they defined 26 different group roles that can be played by one or more people within a

group. Their work influenced other early research and thinking on group functions. And

while more recent research has refined many of these ideas, Benne and Sheats Group

Roles remains a useful and interesting way of looking at group.

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BENNE AND SHEATS GROUP ROLES

Benne and Sheats defined three categories of group roles:

1) Task roles2) Personal and social roles / maintenance roles3) Dysfunctional or individualistic roles

Task roles

The task roles were identified by behaviours such as facilitating and co-ordinating group

activities and suggesting new ideas and ways of solving problems. These are the roles that

relate to getting the work done. Group task roles focus on the task at hand and include.

Beneath task roles, there are 12 types of roles that are:

i) Initiator/contributor

People who plays role the initiator/contributor are whom who suggests new

ways of perceiving or approaching the problems or goals of the group. This

may entail new solutions, procedures or ways of organizing the group. They

always move groups into new areas of exploration.

ii) Information seeker

These are the people who ask for clarification of new ideas in terms of their

factual adequacy and expertness/authoritativeness. He always seeks for expert

information or facts relevant to the problem by determining what information is

missing and needs to be found before moving step ahead.

iii) Information giverThese are the people who offers facts or generalizations which are expert or

authoritative. They provide factual information for the group. Sometimes

they used their own experience when relevant.

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iv) Opinion seeker

These are the people who ask for clarification of the values, attitudes and

opinions of group members. They concentrate on the group discussions to make

sure different perspectives are given. They did not tend trying to find the

relevant facts.

v) Opinion giver

These people supplies values and beliefs to the problem in hand rather than

facts. They express their own opinions about the subject being discussed. They

often states in terms of what the group should do.

vi) Elaborator

People in this role take other peoples initial ideas and builds on them with

examples, relevant facts and data. They also look at the consequences of

proposed ideas and actions.

vii) Co-ordinator

They identify and explain the relationship between ideas. They pull together all

the ideas and make them cohesive.

viii) Orienter

This role is the people who reviews and clarifies group position. They provide a

summary of what has been accomplished, how far has the group veered and

suggest on how to get back on target

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ix) Evaluator/critic

They evaluate proposals against the objective standard. They asses the

proposals and look for the unreasonable objectives and whether it was heading

to a solution.

x) Energizer

These people stimulate and challenge the group to take further action and

always make the group move forward.

xi) Procedural technician

They are suppose to take care about logistical concerns for the group such as

preparing the needs for meeting and place where the meeting wild held.

xii) Recorder

They acts as the secretary or minute keeper which record all the ideas and keep

track on everything that were discussed in a meeting.

Personal and social roles / maintenance roles

The maintenance roles are to ensure that human relationship and communication within

group are strengthened while tasks are being performed. These roles are focusing on

keeping the group together to achieve the groups goal. Maintenance roles contribute

positive functioning of the group. Both task and maintenance roles help the group pursue

its goals. There are 6 types of roles identified by Benne and Sheats under maintenance

roles. These are:

i) EncouragerThese are the people who praise, reward and support others in the group

especially on the efforts that they had shown. They demonstrate warmth and

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provide a positive attitude during meetings. They always defend the shy

members by encouraging them to be confident during presenting their ideas.

ii) Harmonizer

Harmonizer or sometimes known as a peacemaker are the people who always

soothing the mood in a group. They seek to find the way to reduce the tension

between the members and diffuse the situation by providing further

explanations and sometimes by using humour. They play the diplomat and try

to build a consensus. They are trying to keep the group in a harmony and

peaceful situation.

iii) CompromiserThese are the people who are willing to reduce conflict by compromising with

the oppositions by yielding status or admitting error. Sometimes they offer to

change their position for the good of the group.

iv) Gatekeeper/Expediter

They ensure that everybody have chances to speak up their own ideas. These

are done by limiting the members who dominate the conversation and

encourage the shy and quiet members to express their ideas. Sometimes they

suggest a groups rules to make sure everybody had their chances.

v) Observer/Commentator

They provide feedback on how the group is functioning and often seen when a

group wants to set, evaluate or change its standards and processes.

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vi) Follower

The followers are always seen as the listener not the contributor. They accept

what others say and involve in decision making even though they was not

contributing any idea.

Individual roles

Individual roles are negative functional roles and do not help the group to move towards

its goals. People playing this roles attempt to satisfy their own needs and desires and work

against the group as it tries to achieve its goals. These roles disrupt the group progress and

weaken its cohesion. There are 8 types of negative roles which are:

i) Aggressor

These people always make personal attacks by using insulting comment.

Attacking people is their main role. They tend to critics and give negative

comments to all the ideas given by other group members without giving a

solution to it.

ii) Blocker

They oppose ideas or opinion given yet refuse to give even a single suggestion

for all the ideas that they opposed. That is why they are named as the blocker.

They block all the ideas or opinions given by others.

iii) Recognition seeker

This person attracts everybodys attention to focus on him especially during

meeting. They always talks about something good or best that he they had done

in the past so that people will recognize them as one of the excellent member.

And sometimes they draw peoples attention by making something stupid such

as making excess noise.

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iv) Self-confessor

This type of role used meetings as a place which they can confess or appoint

their personal feelings and issues. They always relate topics discussed in the

meetings with their personal experience which almost of the time did not have

any relation of the topics discussed by the group.

v) Disrupter/playboy or playgirl

They used meetings as a place which they can have fun time and avoid from

real work. They distract the meetings by playing pranks, telling jokes or even

reading unrelated material.

vi) Dominator

This person dominates everything in the group. This can be easily seen during

meetings. This type of people loves to control the conversation and did not

giving any chance for the other group members to give their own opinions or

ideas. They manipulate the conversation by exaggerating their knowledge and

giving solutions which they think is the best while others disagree with his

ideas.

vii) Help seeker

They actively look out for sympathy by expressing feelings, acts like they are

so helpless, vulnerable and unable to contribute. If people starts to give

sympathy to this kind of person, than all the attentions to group work will

disrupted.

viii) Special interest pleader

They tend to use sceptical and stereotypical responses such as they wont do

that or they wont like that. They make lame suggestions responding on

others think or feel.

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USING BENNE AND SHEATS THEORY

Benne and Sheats point out that those group members should not limit the range of roles

they can play. In a rigid role structure of group, each member only plays one or two roles

during discussion. Usually, such a group cannot become successful group compare to the

group with more flexible structures. Group with flexible structures would allow everyone

to play as many as roles they can play. This kind of system will help the group to utilize

the talent of its members.

Benne and Sheats did not actually prescribe any application of their theory but they simply

identify and brought out the roles. However, their group roles theory could be used in

management of a group to improve group effectiveness and harmony. This is done by

determining and placing each roles in the suppose situation or stage, which roles are

required and which are suppose to be eliminated noting that the roles required in a group

can vary depending on the stage of the group development and the task in hand.

These are the steps suggested on using Benne and Sheats theory:

Step 1 : determining which stage are the group at

Tuckman (1965) concluded that group pass through four phases that are:

i) Phase One : Forming

During this ice breaking phase, group members tend to be uncertain and

anxious about such things as their roles, who is in charge and the group goals.

At this phase, there are few stages which are forming a group, discussing tasks

and roles, setting out expectations and goal setting. An emergent leader is

needed to fulfil the groups need for leadership and direction.

ii) Phase Two : Storming

This is a time of testing. Individual is challenging their leaders by performing

numerous types of behaviour. Some are the good and useful behaviours and

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some are not. The stages of a group included during this phase are

brainstorming ideas and discussing alternatives.

iii) Phase Three : Norming

A feeling of group spirit is experienced because members believe they have

found their proper roles. Group cohesiveness is also increased gradually with

the group performance. At this moment, the group should completing the tasks

and duties and making the decision.

iv) Phase Four : Performing

Activity during this phase is they are solving task problems. Cohesiveness and

personal commitment to group goals help the group achieve more than could

any one acting alone. The stages included in performing phase are

implementing the solution and evaluating the performance of a group.

Step 2 : determine which roles are most suitable and helpful for the current

stage/function

By using Tuckman theory of group phases, both maintenance and task roles can run

roughly concurrently. The suitable roles for each phase could be placed such as these:

i) Phase One : Forming

For the maintenance role it needs to discover the limits of acceptable

behaviours during interaction. Thus the maintenance roles which we can use in

this phase are encourager and follower as for encourager to supports the entire

group member to form a group, while the follower is to follow on what has

been set by the group. There will be no leader if there has no follower.

As for the task role, we can include the initiator, orienter and recorder. During

this phase, the group attempts to define the task and the manner in which the

group will accomplish it. Initiator will suggest new goals and ideas for the

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group, the orienter keeps the group towards and focuses to its goals by

discussing about tasks and roles that should have the group provides. And as for

the recorder, he will record the entire ideas and keeps track on the groups

development.

As for example is the group of the teachers society in a school. During

forming, they need one teacher to initiate what are the groups goals and the

purpose of forming that group. After that they had to appoint someone to act as

a secretary who will marks down all the group development process. They also

need an orienter which could suggest task and roles needed for the group to

provide by focusing on the group goals.

ii) Phase Two : Storming

This is one of the critical phases of a group. In this phase, group members tend

to argue with each others. All the maintenance and task roles are needed during

this phase. Maintenance roles are used in development of intragroup conflicts.

They polarize around interpersonal issues and resistance to emerging structure

of interpersonal relationships.

For example, when discussing one of the group problems sometimes there

exists dissension of ideas by the group members. This is the time for the

harmonizer and evaluator could play their part. As for recorder, he is needed

along the storming process so that he could record and track down the group

development. Yet, no individual roles are needed in this phase but usually they

exist in any group formed. The existence of any of these individual roles will

make the relationship between group members disrupted.

Storming is the most crucial part. Usually it is been held in a meeting. As for

the example earlier, the teachers society held meeting by meeting to discuss

and brainstorming on the activities of the group or discussing on the problems

which the group members faced in achieving the groups goals.

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During storming phase, the group tends to create misinterpretation among

members and cause a quarrel. Thus, the harmonizer needed who will always

played by the happy go lucky person to handle the situation by making jokes

or calming the hot and crammed situation. To find out whether the group

process is well developed, roles such as information giver/seeker and opinion

giver/seeker are also important in order to gain people opinion or information.

Same goes to the evaluator, their roles are to keep group in line with goals and

provides sense of progress. They always measure accomplishments against

goals, noting progress and blocks. As a conclusion, all the maintenance and task

roles are needed during storming phase.

iii) Phase Three : NormingDuring this phase, maintenance roles are focusing on developing the group

cohesion. They try to accept the structure of interpersonal relationships. The

maintenance roles that are needed here is the encourager and commentator. This

is considered to affirms, supports and praises all the efforts given by the group

members so that the relationship between group members could be tighten.

While the commentator will observe the group development and sees either the

group needs any changes or they could stay in the existed position.

Roles of the energizer and orienter are needed for the task roles. This is due to

the development of the group. The energizer will gives energy to the group

movement. They challenge and stimulate the group to take further action. As

for the orienter, they provide a summary of what had been accomplished by the

group and also they make sure that the group has not veered from their earlier

goals.

iv) Phase Four : Performing

This is the phase that we can see either the group can success or fail. During

this phase, a group needs people who could encourage and monitor the group to

move forward. That is why a group needs the encourager, commentator and of

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course a follower to follow the groups ideas in performing. Commentator is

there so that he could comments on a group processes/dynamics.

As for the task roles, the emergence of solutions needed and someone who

could construct attempts to complete the task. Thus the coordinator, orienter,

evaluator and energizer play their role during this phase. One of the important

roles is the coordinator where they could pull together the entire ideas and

suggestion and comes out with a new solution. The orienter keeps the group on

track which was set earlier by the group. Another role is the energizer who

keeps the group working out on the problems.

Step 3 : recruit and develop the missing roles within your group

Benne and Sheats had stated in his writing that the more flexible the group members are

the better. This means that the group members should be able to adapt their roles

depending on the groups need. A manager could help the group understand there are gaps

in the functions being represented or discussed and how filling these gaps could bring the

harmony to the group. With a flexible group structure like this, members could use wide

range of talents and provide maximum contribution to the team.

Step 4 : identify any dysfunctional roles being played within the group

Since these dysfunctional roles are negative roles played by the members, it should be

eliminated from the group roles. The existence of these kinds of roles will bring the group

to become ineffective group. More miscommunication will happens and leads the group to

destruct the relationship between the group members. Thus the manager have to make a

plan on how to eliminates these negative roles either through increasing awareness,

coaching or giving feedback.

This plan is between the manager and the person who brings this type of behaviour into the

group. Consultation is one of the ways to coach group members from doing the wrong

things that are not supposed to be done in a group in order to reducing prejudices,

minimizing miscommunication and building relationship with diverse others. After

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eliminating the disruptive and damaging behaviours, a group process will automatically

improved.

In education group, there exist many of these dysfunctional roles played by the teachers if

we are talking on the school community. As we could see generally, these roles can be

seen on some senior teachers who had been teaching in many years. They feel hard to

except any new ideas which are suggested by the others. They tend to play the recognition

seeker role who always trying to brag all about past achievement made by them during few

years back. Sometimes they become the dominator who dominates the entire conversation

and not giving any chance for other member to speak out their own ideas or opinions.

As for the novice teachers, some role can be seen in few of them are the aggressor and

disrupter. Since they are younger compare to others, thus they have this hot-blooded gene

in themselves. They are easily to getting mad on some topics or irrelevant issues and tend

to makes personal attacks. For the disrupter roles always can be seen during meetings.

They just talks between them which are far from the related topics discussed in the

meeting. This is one of the ways for them to get out from the real work. The disrupter role

exists due to the member did not have the belonging feelings in the group. They think that

their opinions are not needed in the group.

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CONCLUSION

A group consists of people with different types of behaviours. To build and manage a

group, one has to determined roles that should exist in a group. These roles are the

behaviour of the group members played in a group. According to benne and Sheats there

are three types of roles that are being played by the group members. The roles are task

roles, maintenance and individual roles.

Behaviours had influenced the group development process. There are two types of

behaviour which Benne and Sheats described it as group roles that are positive functional

roles (task roles and maintenance roles) and negative functional roles (individual roles).

The positive functional roles leads the group move forward and achieve victory while

negative functional roles could disrupt the group process and lead the group doomed area.

As a manager, one has to include these positive functional roles suggested by Benne and

Sheats into their group management so that the group will becomes more effective. At the

same time, they had to avoid as much as they could for the negative functional roles as

those roles can distract the group developments process and creates tension situation

within the group. This will weaken the group cohesiveness. The more interactions, the

more positive feelings exist and the more cohesive a group is.

Building successful group is one of the important things to be discussed in the modern

organization era. It is necessary to take account a variety of interrelated factors, including

the characteristics and behaviour of the members and relationship among the members.

The task of management is to view the development of group and provides necessary

support and training. The requirement for continual development and improvement is a

necessary part of effective teamwork.

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REFERENCES

1) Angelo Kinicki, Robert Kreitner, Organizational Behavior : key concepts, skills &best practices, Mc Graw-Hill/Irwin (2008).

2) Suzanne C. De Janasz, Karen O. Dowd, Beth Z. Schneider, Interpersonal Skills inOrganizations, 3

rdedition, Mc Graw-Hill/Irwin (2009).

3) Laurie J. Mullins, Management and Organisational Behaviour, 8th edition,Pearson Education Limited (2007).

4) Allan R. Cohen, Stephen L. Fink, Herman Gadon, Robin D. Willits, EffectiveBehaviour in Organizations : learning from the interplay of cases, concepts and

student experiences, Richard D. Irwin, Inc. (1980).

5) Baden Eunson, Behaving ; Managing yourself and others, Mc-Graw Hill BookCompany (1988)

6) http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_85.htm7) http://books.google.com.my/books?id=Y-uB1-

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%20and%20sheats%20theory&f=false