What if I asked you to tell me about yourself? How would you respond? More than likely you would respond by listing your roles and positions followed by your interest.

So, who are you? Do you know? Are you merely a name, or are you much more?

We often fail to realize that our roles and positions help to define who we are. For example, I am a student, daughter, educator, consultant, and guardian.

DEFINING YOUR ROLES AND POSITIONS

Roles and positions are interrelated but have different meanings. Roles are different parts we play when we interact with other people. Positions are our locations within a collection of interconnected roles. A role includes duties or obligations of position.

In order to define your roles you must first understand that for every position there is an expectation of what should be behavior of a person who holds that position. For example, educators are expected to teach, assist students, grade papers, etc.

Defining your roles and positions help you to better manage them and maximize your role performance.

MANAGING ROLES AND POSITIONS

Every individual learns that certain behaviors are expected of him as an occupant of a particular position. In other words, he learns role associated with position.

Everyone occupies a number of different positions and therefore has a number of different roles. However, few people learn how to effectively manage them all. Usually ineffective management is due to ambiguous understanding of role expectations and/or burden of managing behaviors associated with multiple roles.