Belbin’s Team Roles Made Simple

A team is not just a group of persons. It’s a system of dynamically interactive interdependent individuals,whose performance and behaviours not only affect each other but also tell on the performance of the group as a unit as well as the overall output of the organisation.

 

Dr.Meredith Belbin, an English Researcher and management consultant proposed the concept of "Team Roles" in 1981. He proposed nine team roles in three categories depending on the functionality in working situations.   

According to Belbin, a team role is a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way. Dr.Belbin, has stated that each member of a team, assume any one of the nine team roles or a combination of them.The composition of team roles has a influence on the performance of the team.

Belbin categorised team roles into action oriented, people oriented , and thought oriented team roles, each group has three team roles.

  Each team role has  typical behavioural and interpersonal strengths and weaknesses.He called the weakness of the team roles as “Allowable weaknesses”Since behaviours can Be shaped or modified, these areas can be potentially improved.

 ACTION ORIENTED ROLES

 SHAPER (SH)

              Shapers like and encourage others to take up challenges. They are dynamic and extroverted and  always try to inspire others. They are result oriented, rather than procedure oriented. Obstacles are often seen as challenges by shapers and they push to the last, when others feel to quit.

Being argumentative may be a weakness of these people. This may hurt others sometimes.

 

IMPLEMENTERS (IMP)

They are well disciplined, organized, reliable, conservative and efficient. They are capable of turning ideas into practical actions. The implementers  are highly dependable for getting the job done.

On the flipside, they are somewhat rigid and slow to respond to new possibilities.

 COMPLETER- FINISHER (CF)

As the name itself denotes,  they are the persons who see to it that the projects are completed thoroughly. At the same time they are detail oriented also.  So they pay attention to the smallest details and see to it the that quality in work is assured.

They are stated to be the perfectionists and conscientious.

The weakness of the Completer-Finisher is that they may worry un-necessarily. Sometimes they may fail to delegate for fear of compromising on quality.

 

People oriented roles

CO-ORDINATER (CO) (chairman)

They are mature, self-confident persons having a clarity of goals and results to be achieved. They promote decisions making process. They are good at identifying the roles of others and delegate effectively.

They are traditional Team Leaders and also commonly known as "Chairmen". They have good listening skills.

The inherent weakness of this role is that, he may over delegate much of personal responsibilities and may become manipulative.

TEAM WORKER

They are cooperative, mild perceptive and diplomatic persons. They provide support and make sure that the team members work together effectively and help team members to get along.

The weakness of the team worker may be his in-decisiveness and not being able to stand up to the commitments and rise upto the expectations.

RESOURCE INVESTIGATER (RI)

They are extroverts, enthusiastic and good at communication. They explore opportunities and develop contacts and often seen negotiating on behalf of the team.They often try to accomplish tasks with the help of persons outside the team, due to the extensive contacts they have.

They may lose initial enthusiasm quickly and seen as overly optimistic.

THOUGHT ORIENTED ROLES

PLANT(PL)

They are creative, imaginative, un-orthodox innovators, who always come up with new ideas and solutions. They have high need for approval and cannot bear criticism.

Sometimes, the solution offered by them is so novel that they may be seen as impractical due to its un-suitability.

MONITOR- EVALUATER (ME)

They are very logical, analyzing, evaluating and judgmental of others. They have the ability to estimate the pros and cons of the available approaches. They are critical thinkers and good strategists.

The weakness of the Monitor-Evaluators is that is that they are seen as lacking emotions and insensitive to others.

SPECIALISTS (SP)

They have specialized knowledge in their field of work. They take  pride in their knowledge and specialized skills.  They try to maintain superiority and status by virtue of their specialization. They are experts in their area and work hard to maintain their role as specialist.

However, they are pre-occupied with technicalities at the cost of larger picture and results.

Belbin and his team have developed a tool to identify the team roles to which anyone belongs to. Belbin’s team role questionnaire has been widely used for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of teams and its members and help in better team building for optimum results from teams.