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The Members and Their Roles 129

functions. Self-centered functions manipulate and use other members for selfish goals
that compete with what the group needs.
Although researchers believe that both task and maintenance roles are essential
to effective group functioning, it is the task roles that seem more important to group
members themselves. Members clearly recognized the contributions task roles
46
make to the group effort but did not seem to value the contributions of the mainte-
nance roles, nor did they devalue the individualistic roles. We hope group members
begin to recognize the importance of social roles and work toward valuing task and
social roles equally. We also hope that group members recognize the harm self-
centered roles cause and work to minimize those roles. Ideally, group members will
display a “benevolent orientation” of cooperativeness and willingness to give back
to the team; such members are more likely to engage in good citizenship behavior
47
toward the team. This is behavior that members engage in voluntarily—not because
someone told them to—that helps the team function effectively. These behaviors are
the opposite of the self-centered actions of some group members.
We cannot emphasize enough how important it is for you to understand that
groups need both task and social roles and how you, as a group member, can perform
appropriate roles for the group. Plas, writing about the importance of participatory
management approaches in American industry, says:

One of the keys to working well within teams is learning how to differentiate roles—
process roles as well as task roles. Successful teams—no matter where you find them—
are made up of individuals who know how to define roles for themselves and how to
work with the roles that other team members have adopted. 48

Role Management Across Groups
Just as important to understanding the role structure of your group is the recogni-
tion that members bring role expectations into the group from other groups. The
bona fide group perspective discussed in Chapter 3 reminds us that group members
are often simultaneously members of other groups. One implication of this fact is
that our roles in one group may conflict with the time and commitment expecta-
tions of our roles in other groups. For instance, the fact that ad team leader Ben was
president of the local Public Relations Society of America chapter affected how
much time he could devote as a member of his local Rotary Club. How do we man-
age the roles in our church or community groups with our roles in work and family
groups? Michael Kramer studied a community theater group in order to answer
such a question. 49
Most of us belong to what Kramer calls “life enrichment groups” such as church
and community volunteer groups. We sometimes experience difficulty in managing
our time and commitment in those groups as they clash with the time and commit-
ment demands of our family and work groups. The trick is not only creating but also
maintaining, then negotiating, our various roles, so we can maintain a balance among
all our groups.
There are two strategies members can use to manage multiple group commit-
50
ments, segmentation and integration. The theater group members segmented, or

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