Leadership Skills

Team Responsibilities

The specific tasks associated with formal roles also come with specific responsibilities. These responsiblities may be defined in job descriptions or as part of a team's configuration. For example, in some groups the president or leader presides over meetings, whereas in other groups, those responsibilities are assigned to another member. New teams will need to connect responsibilities with roles so that there will be no confusion as to which person is responsible for which tasks. Unclear roles and responsibilities will likely cause conflict and confusion within a team.

Teams are responsible for completing their projects and tasks within the parameters they were given, on time, and within budget. In order to determine individual responsibilities, consider these questions?

What is the scope of the project?
Are there deliverables or deadlines?
Is there a budget?
Who has power to spend money or make decisions?
Who posesses what skills on your team?
Are the work tasks best completed individually or as a team?

Develop a Responsibility Matrix

There are several different acronyms for this type of matrix. One type is the responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (RACI) matrix, and another type adds support and is known as the RASCI matrix. Those terms stand for:

Responsible: The one responsible for completing the task. There may be other team members who may support (the S in RASCI) working on the task, and there may be a team responsible for completing it. Projects, of course, may have multiple tasks.
Accountable: The one who must give final approval of the project or specific task. There is only one person accountable, and that person could also be the one responsible.
Consulted: This would be a subject-matter expert who is consulted on tasks or about the project.
Support: One who works on the task in a support capacity but is neither responsible nor accountable for the overall task.
Informed: One who is keep up to date on tasks and the project.

The purpose of a responsibility matrix is to identify the tasks or components of a project and to assign responsibilities. This ensures that everyone knows and understands his or her responsibilities to the project and to the team. The RACI and RASCI models are merely examples, and teams may use other models. Here is one basic example:

RASCI Matrix for Quarterly Newsletter

Task	Editor	Reporter 1	Reporter 2	Reporter 3	Citizen	Government Official	Proofreader	Press Operator	Distributor
Main Article	A	R			C	C	S
Article #1	A		R		C	C	S
Article #2	A			R	C	C	S
Electronic Production	A						S
Print								AR
Distribute									AR

Leadership Skills
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Velda Arnaud, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Lead, Educate, Serve Society
leadeducateserve@gmail.com