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.
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.
Want to Find Out More?
Just give us a shout and we’re happy to answer your questions.
