Current and Ideal Team Roles: Relationships to Job Satisfaction and Calling

Abstract

Successful teamwork is an important factor for positive outcomes at the organizational and the individual level. Best results should be expected when every team member can contribute his or her specific set of strengths and skills, with all of the necessary skills being present in a team. Recently a new model of team roles developed from a positive psychological perspective has been suggested comprising of seven informal team roles. The present study examines the relevance of role-fit between roles displayed in the current team and roles displayed in an ideal team on a person’s job satisfaction and calling. For this purpose, a sample of N = 342 employed participants who took part in an online survey were analyzed. Results show that most current team roles contribute to job satisfaction and calling, whereas only few relationships are found with ideal roles. Further, the interplay between current and ideal role behavior is relevant for job satisfaction in most team roles, but only for few roles with regard to calling. Thus, both current and ideal team roles are relevant for work-related outcomes; this information could potentially be used as a starting point for positive interventions at the workplace.