Introduction to Belbin Team Roles

Belbin® Team Roles are used to identify people’s strengths and weaknesses. This information provides a foundation for teams to achieve better business results.

Who uses Belbin Team Roles?

  • Individuals who want to understand their contributions to a team and increase their self-awareness
  • Teams who wish to identify their strengths and weaknesses to help achieve better results and be more effective
  • Trainers, consultants, managers and organizations who want to get the most out of their people

What are Belbin Team Roles?

Belbin Team Roles is a methodology for developing successful teams. Belbin is an evidence-based, data driven approach to improving team performance.

This approach is unique for examining and understanding how individuals contribute, interrelate and behave and how best to maximize the strengths of each individual in the team. It is useful and effective for both personal development and for developing high-performing teams.

How are Belbin Reports used?

Belbin Team Roles have enabled thousands of individuals and organizations worldwide to:

  • Build productive working relationships
  • Select and develop high-performing teams
  • Raise self-awareness and personal effectiveness
  • Aid recruitment processes

What makes Belbin Team Roles different from other approaches?

The Belbin Team Role analysis is different from personality or psychometric assessments. It measures the different contributions team members make on a team and it does so without labeling people (individuals can hold multiple roles on a team). Your Team Roles report will tell you your role preferences based on your own self-perception as well as input from observers that you choose.

The Belbin Team Roles approach:

  • Uses individual and observer feedback to develop results, which reduces the amount of bias present in assessments that only use self-evaluations
  • Measures clusters of behaviour, not personality, and defines the ideal responsibilities for each role
  • Emphasizes getting better business results in a team setting
  • Provides invaluable information on three levels: individual, team and organization
  • Is distinctive in its ability to be used with predictable results which are empirically verified
  • Is used in more than 30 countries and available in a range of languages

The Nine Belbin Team Role Descriptions

Resource Investigator

Tends to be highly creative and good at solving problems in unconventional ways.
Strengths: Outgoing, enthusiastic. Explores opportunities and develops contacts.
Allowable weaknesses: Might be over-optimistic, and can lose interest once the initial enthusiasm has passed.

Teamworker

Helps the team to gel, using their versatility to identify the work required and complete it on behalf of the team.
Strengths: Co-operative, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens and averts friction.
Allowable weaknesses: Can be indecisive in crunch situations and tends to avoid confrontation.

Co-ordinator

Needed to focus on the team’s objectives, draw out team members and delegate work appropriately.
Strengths: Mature, confident, identifies talent. Clarifies goals.
Allowable weaknesses: Can be seen as manipulative and might offload their own share of the work.

Plant

Tends to be highly creative and good at solving problems in unconventional ways.
Strengths: Creative, imaginative, free-thinking, generates ideas and solves difficult problems.
Allowable weaknesses: Might ignore incidentals, and may be too preoccupied to communicate effectively.

Monitor Evaluator

Provides a logical eye, making impartial judgements where required and weighs up the team’s options in a dispassionate way.
Strengths: Sober, strategic and discerning. Sees all options and judges accurately.
Allowable weaknesses: Sometimes lacks the drive and ability to inspire others and can be overly critical.

Specialist

Brings in-depth knowledge of a key area to the team.
Strengths: Single-minded, self-starting and dedicated. They provide specialist knowledge and skills.
Allowable weaknesses: Tends to contribute on a narrow front and can dwell on the technicalities.

Shaper

Provides the necessary drive to ensure that the team keeps moving and does not lose focus or momentum.
Strengths: Challenging, dynamic, thrives on pressure. Has the drive and courage to overcome obstacles.
Allowable weaknesses: Can be prone to provocation, and may sometimes offend people’s feelings.

Implementer

Needed to plan a workable strategy and carry it out as efficiently as possible.
Strengths: Practical, reliable, efficient. Turns ideas into actions and organises work that needs to be done.
Allowable weaknesses: Can be a bit inflexible and slow to respond to new possibilities.

Completer Finisher

Most effectively used at the end of tasks to polish and scrutinise the work for errors, subjecting it to the highest standards of quality control.
Strengths: Painstaking, conscientious, anxious. Searches out errors. Polishes and perfects.
Allowable weaknesses: Can be inclined to worry unduly, and reluctant to delegate.

What do we do?

  • Provide individual Belbin Team Role Reports, either as Full Service or DIY. For those needing a large number of reports, volume discounts are available.
  • Offer team reports and team mapping to put the individual reports in a more useful context.
  • Host Belbin workshops and webinars so you can maximize use of Belbin in your organization.
Find Out More
To learn more, download our free comprehensive introduction to Belbin’s team building approach, A Guide to Team Roles. You’ll get 30 years’ worth of academic research combined with practical experience- so you can stop leaving your teams’ success up to chance.
Get Download

Want to Find Out More?

Just give us a shout and we’re happy to answer your questions.
Contact Us

Any questions? We’d love to chat.

Toll-Free: (877) 333-3606
info@belbinnorthamerica.com

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DBA Belbin North America
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Lindsay Lalla

Lindsay Lalla is the VP of Marketing and Client Support for Belbin North America. Most recently, she has been spearheading the introduction of the Belbin Team Role methodology into North America. Lindsay is a skilled facilitator, and also runs the Belbin Accreditation classes where she certifies others in the Belbin method.
Lindsay’s formal education is in instruction and performance. Combined with her 17 years of adult education experience, she brings a depth of understanding in how to deliver the highly experiential workshops that are a hallmark of the Belbin North America approach to education and organizational development.

Patrick Ballin

Patrick offers more than 25 years of experience with some of the most successful businesses in Europe as a consultant, change manager and executive coach.

He has helped many well-known organisations to get their ideas and projects off the ground by working with business leaders and their teams to optimise interaction, strategy and execution.
Patrick was Global Head of Supply Chain and Logistics Development for The Body Shop, an international retailer of ethical health and beauty products, and managed its change programme across 52 countries. In 2009, he set up the national redundancy coaching service, Rework, for the UK industry charity, Retail Trust. Patrick spent his earlier career with ACWL Group, one of the pioneering UK Apple Centres, where he was a divisional Director.
He holds an MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, is a Visiting Lecturer for Brighton Business School, a Fellow of the RSA and coach for social enterprise incubator On Purpose.

Max Isaac

Max is the CEO of 3Circle Partners. He brings a depth of knowledge and experience from his career in general management and consulting in North America, England, Europe and Asia.
Max has assisted CEOs and senior leaders within client organizations with the design and implementation of Interaction Planning processes, team based organizational development programs and Lean Six Sigma initiatives.
Prior to moving into the field of organizational development, Max was the CFO for the Retail Division within The Molson’s Organization, where he took a lead role in growing the business to over $1 billion in revenues, doubling its size in four years through acquisitions and internal growth.
Max is co-author of Close The Interaction Gap, The Third Circle – Interactions That Drive Results, Setting Teams Up for Success and A Guide to Team Roles. He is also the contributing author of the Organizational Change sections of Mike George’s books Lean Six Sigma published in May 2002 and Lean Six Sigma for Service published in June 2003. Max is a registered CPA, CA in Canada. His undergraduate degree was earned at Witwatersrand University, South Africa.