Since
I have been only studying and not working this year I decided to apply the
Kantor’s model to one of my group meetings. If I think about what kind of roles
I usually take in a group, I would say that am used to be a bystander and I am
the most comfortable with that role. I like to listen to other people’s opinions,
summarize them and bring in new perspectives. However, since I am studying
business, I should be able to lead people in the future and be able to be a
mover. I am usually a bit afraid to be a mover because I am concerned that
people will not support my views and I will feel stupid because of that.
However, during past couple of years I have learned to act as a mover if the
situation requires that. If the other group members are not acting as movers, I
often feel obligated to do so since I want to get things done. Being an opposer
is really hard for me too because most of the time I try to avoid conflicts and
rather bring in new points of view than clearly oppose something that the other
person has said. Nevertheless, if somebody is holding tightly to their point of
view and I really disagree with them, then I can usually oppose and try to
steer the conversation to a new direction.
I
tried to practice Kantor’s model when I met with my group in order to discuss
one of our group projects and how to get it started. Four members of the group
were present at the meeting. Overall our group is really well functioning and
balanced and all of us are used to take different roles depending on the
situation. We are also used to speak our minds and therefore I think that it
was really good for me to practice taking new roles in this relaxed situation. In
this particular meeting one of our girls took the role of the mover at the
beginning. She is really goal-orientated and thus, she is always taking care
that we get something done. Again this time she started the discussion by suggesting
how we should start approaching our project and what kind of things we should
discuss in it. Rest of us agreed with the overall structure of the project so
we were acting as followers. After this one of our group members suggested that
we should also talk about this one other topic in our project. However, the
mover girl disagreed with her so this time she was acting as an opposer. I
understood the both points of view and also wanted to show them that there are
some other options to consider based on what I had read on our case and
articles. Therefore I was now acting like a bystander instead of the follower and gave the other members of group some additional insight. We
were able to build on what I said and move forward with the project. However,
after a while we had discussed all the things that were on the table and none of
us was sure what to do next. Since being a mover is a role that I really want
to work on, I decided to take the lead. Thus, I suggested that we should
concentrate on writing down all the challenges presented in the case in order
to divide the case to smaller parts and be able to develop approaches to these
individual issues. Earlier we had only talked about these challenges in general
which made it harder to approach them. To my relief the other members agreed
with me and we were able to move forward with our project.
Even
though I have gotten better with being a mover, I still feel a bit
uncomfortable with that before I actually take a lead. Being able to influence
people feels good but stating your opinion first also requires a bit of social
risk-taking since you cannot be sure whether the others agree with you.
However, I think that the role of the mover is something that I continue
working on in the future by learning to speak my mind before the others do. As
mentioned before the role of the opposer feels a bit strange to me and I try
start strengthening that after I feel comfortable with the other roles. I
believe that the easiest way for me to strengthen my opposing skills is to act
as a devil’s advocate and potentially correct the direction that we are heading
to.
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