Building Your Team: Part 2: Defining Roles, and Job Descriptions

For many years in my former life and work within the global sector as a Program Manager, I was involved in recruitment and hiring people for projects large and small. At one point in my career I realized that I had undertaken several hundred interviews to fill roles on projects in one year alone!
A key part of finding good people for project and work, goes back to being clear on what the role is, and being excellent in communicating that.
In building your team, getting better at defining roles and even writing position descriptions is imperative. This holds true for project roles, sub-contracting roles, as well as full time roles.
Questions to consider as you go about creating position descriptions are:

1. What is the role? Outline what is required. What’s the job title?
2. What type of role is this? Supporting role, customer facing…
3. What are the job requirements? What is needed in order to be successful? Consider the skills, and experiences someone needs in order to be successful in this role.
4. Responsibilities – What will the person be required to do?
5. Tasks – What are the actual tasks people are required to complete?
6. Reporting – Who will they report to? How often? What is required around reporting?
7. Relationships – Who will they need to interface with? What relationship can they expect from you?
8. Support and Resourcing – What support and resourcing can they expect?
9. Feedback and Performance Measures – What are the metrics they are being measured on? What does successful job performance look like? What feedback loops can they expect?

In creating a position description, it can be useful to ask:

• Who else has a business model or team like you do? Do they have a job description you can start with?
• When is it important to revisit this?

Human Resource Management may not be part of every coaches wheel-house. If this is something new for you and you’d like more information, two good “go to resources” or starting points are:

1. The Balance Careers – Susan Heathfield has been writing in this area for many years now. Check out her post on How to Write a Job Description for a Job opening  here.
2. Paul Slezak’s Five Simple Steps to Writing a Concise Job Description at the RecruitLoop blog.

Note that job description/position descriptions may vary from location to location and can have different legal requirements. Be sure to reach out to your local Small Business Centers for more information on local level realities.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

PS – A reminder that this month’s 30 days focus in the 1BizStepaDay series is around Relationships. Download a copy of the 1BizStepaDay series here. What are the daily actions you are taking to build your relationships during this month of February?

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
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Looking for regular support around growing your coaching business? Join me and a small group of other coaches twice a month at the Coaching Biz Growth Lab. We meet on Fridays from 3-4 pm ET (weeks 1 and 3 of the month) to explore topics related to growing your coaching business. February's focus is on Collaboration and Building Community. Coaches take part in 2 group coaching calls each month and have access to a growing resource library of month articles, templates and recordings related to your business.