The Importance of Roles In Outcomes and Success

May 17, 2020

Until recently, I thought I had my meeting prep ritual locked and loaded. But I had forgotten the critical role “roles” play.

On April 23rd, I co-lead a virtual meeting for Northwestern University’s Council of One Hundred (C100). It’s an organization of 100 incredible women sponsored by my undergraduate alma mater. We typically meet in person, but given this year’s COVID crisis we scheduled a two-part virtual Zoom meeting. During the first part, our President and other Northwestern leaders spoke. During the second part, we split into breakout rooms for an intimate discussion. As a member of the Exective Team for the C100, I led one of the breakout rooms. I prepared for the meeting; I considered two questions I always ask as part of my goal-setting-prep-work.

(1.) What Is My Intention? (2.) What Is My Desired Outcome?

My goals were: (1) To create a safe space for our members to share during this COVID crisis and (2) For everyone to feel supported by their fellow members during this challenging COVID time.

Because there were some delays during the first part of the meeting, I was limited to 1/2 the time for my meeting. I was rushed, flustered and at the conclusion, wondered if I had accomplished my goals. When I took a step back, I realized I was missing an important question, one that was critical to measuring my own success because it was the only question over which I had complete control. The question was simple:

3. What was my role?

In this situation, my role was to moderate and facilitate so everyone was heard during the meeting. I had no control over the fact that my time was cut-short or how people would feel. But I did deliver on my role; and by that measure, I did it well.

This spring, I am co-teaching a CSR/Sustainability lab class at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The course is 90% team work. At the start of the course, we tasked the teams to write a team contract to define their values, norms, and roles. Since then, the teams have been rocking! They uniformly attribute their success to defining their roles that set their expectations and determined their metrics for success.  

I also think about my personal relationships; those that feel good are those where our roles are clearly defined. When I feel off, be it personally or professionally, I now find myself returning to this simple question “what is my role?”.

And that brings me to today’s work of art, one of humanity’s first recorded works ever, from the Prehistoric Era.

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In the record-setting heat of the summer, I visited the Ice Age relics from the Chavet Cave in the South of France, where the cave-wall-art was impeccably preserved. In my strappy sundress, I found cool comfort in the cave and used my imagination to envision the prehistoric humans seeking refuge in those confines, safe from the cold outdoors where wolly mammoths and aurochs roamed the earth. In the low flickering light of the cave, I saw charcoal wall paintings of animals dancing with my every move. Those illuminated drawings moved as I did, shifting depending upon my angle of vision. To me, this 31,000-year-old art was among the most modern I’d seen. 

What were noticeably missing from these brilliant drawings, however, were images of humans, of the artists themselves. There were only faceless stick figures drawn among the other cave art. It is theorized that these prehistoric ancestors of ours had a deep appreciation for the smaller role humans played with respect to Mother Nature, and they reflected that in their art.

During this COVID time, Mother Nature is again reminding us of her role with respect to ours. All the more reason, in my humble opinion, to define and remember our roles — and to do them the best we can. It isn’t all bad. After all, humans survived the Ice Age, the wolly mammoths did not!