Leadership Development

MAX ISAAC

I would like to welcome to the blog: guest author, Marsha Egbert.

Marsha is manager of Organization Development at ALLDATA and has consulted with Belbin North America. She has more than 25 years of experience aligning human capital with business needs for profitability, serving as a Human Resources Director, an organization development specialist, and HR generalist in diverse industries such as technology, consumer products, industrial manufacturing, and customer relations and support. She  has been a key business partner, change agent, and 

facilitator in environments undergoing start-up, rapid-growth, domestic/international market expansion, mergers and acquisition), as well as turnaround, financial restructuring, and operational consolidation/downsizing.

Belbin Case Study: Leadership Development
by Marsha Egbert, Manager of Organizational Development, ALLDATA

Pete had a meteoric career in realty, quickly rising to the top and staying there for a number of years. Another company recognized his success by offering him the chance to manage real estate sales in one of its regional divisions. Pete jumped at the chance for career advancement. He approached his new job with enthusiasm, eager to prove himself an able leader.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go well at first. After a few months, his division had fallen to having the worst sales performance of any in the company. Because Pete’s total compensation was heavily tied to the division’s sales performance, he was now making less than half of his income at his previous employer.

After going through Belbin Team Role training, Pete realized that he had been equating “leadership” with the Coordinator role — which was one of his weakest areas. He had far too short an attention span, did not really enjoy detailed follow-up, and tended to dominate meetings. That was why his team was constantly behind and people felt they weren’t given a chance to contribute.

One of Pete’s first moves after studying his Belbin profile was to hire a strong Coordinator as his second-in-command. With that person in place, Pete focused more on what he did well: connecting with resources and opportunistically pursuing new leads (behaviors typical of the Resource Investigator role). In a remarkably short time-frame, his team made a complete turnaround, becoming the most successful division in the company (and ultimately doubling profits within six years).

Commentary:
We all know that a group’s performance is usually closely linked to the effectiveness of its leader.
Chances are pretty good that if teams or even entire departments or functional areas in your company are under-performing, there will be mismatch between the needed leadership skills and the leader’s actual team role strengths. In some cases, it may be necessary to replace the leader. But as this case study illustrates, that is not always needed. Rather, knowing a leader’s team role strengths and weaknesses allows you to develop a plan for compensating for the weaknesses – and the entire work area can benefit.

This post is an excerpt from a white paper, New Directions for Human Resources: A two-part series presenting new ideas for meeting the HR challenges of today.

Part 1: Team Role Theory: A discipline to help HR become the solutions provider that organizations are demanding.

Part 2: The Power of Self-Discovery: How to create high performance individuals, work teams, and organizations through experiential learning.

If you’re interested in finding out more:

Contact Us.

  • Call us toll-free in North America at 877.333.3606 or phone us at 416.483.7380.
  • Email us at info@belbinnorthamerica.com.

About the Author

Max is the CEO of Belbin North America. 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.

Any questions? We’d love to chat.

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

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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.