What influences my role?

I most certainly have different roles in different groups of people. I think my type of involvement in a group depends on two main factors. One is my comfort level with the members of the group. For example, I’m very comfortable with my family members and I give my opinion in most family matters and even try to convince others to follow my decisions. I think I’ve gained enough credibility over the years that I’m not worried to be accused of making a wrong decision. On the contrary, when I attended one of my neighborhood meetings, I met a group of older people who have lived in the neighborhood for many years and I didn’t know many of them. I was not comfortable to take any leadership role and I just participated in the discussions and brought up some concerns and questions.

The second factor that affects my group role is the kind of people in that group. I work more efficiently with people who have certain characteristics compared to others. For instance, at work, I am regularly assigned to different projects with different group members. I have worked with all of my co-workers in different projects and more or less know their characters. So from the beginning of the project, just by looking at the team composition I can predict how successful the project would be. Although many people learn to work with each other over time, I believe certain personalities work with each other and achieve their goals more efficiently. Certainly being a leader in some groups is easier than others. If I gain the leadership role in any of these groups, I try to change my style accordingly. For example, if I have passive or bystander co-workers in my group who are not motivated and need to be pushed, then I have to be more controlling and do more micro management. On the contrary, when dealing with self motivated co-workers, I change my style and try not to control the details, providing only an overall leadership of the project.