2 Technical team roles
One way to identify someone’s role is to focus on the relevant skills or expertise that they bring to the team. This might have been referred to as their technical know-how. Figure 2 shows a selection of the technical roles you might come across in the workplace.
You’ll notice that the word ‘technical’ doesn’t necessarily mean the role is related to the use of technology. In this context, it simply refers to a role that involves expertise relating to a particular subject, such as logistics or marketing.
Activity 2 Technical know-how
Spend some time thinking about when you have brought your technical know-how to a team, either in work or elsewhere. You might have been helping with the use of IT, sharing your knowledge of social media or highlighting your previous experience of a relevant situation and what you learned.
Use the space below to note your thoughts and then, if you’ve come up with some new roles – go back to Activity 1 and add them to the mind map in your toolkit. Remember to reflect on which were your preferred roles and which you disliked, as this can be helpful when making career decisions in the future.
Comment
We often find it easier to identify our technical skills than the ‘human’ or ‘professional’ skills that you considered in Week 1. But often the two skillsets are closely interlinked, and you might find that actually it was the softer skills, such as your ability to explain things appropriately, or support people in their learning that you enjoyed using the most.
You’ll focus more on a range of communication related skills in Week 5.
Another useful way to think about your roles is by considering what function you were performing in a given situation. You’ll explore this in more detail in the next section.