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.
The Nine Belbin Team Role Descriptions

Plant
Tends to be highly creative and good at solving problems in unconventional ways.
- Contribution: creative, imaginative, free-thinking. Generates ideas and solves difficult problems.
- Allowable Weaknesses: ignores incidentals. Too preoccupied to communicate effectively.

Resource Investigator
Uses their inquisitive nature to find ideas to bring back to the team.
- Contribution: outgoing, enthusiastic, communicative. Explores opportunities and develops contacts.
- Allowable Weaknesses: over-optimistic. Loses interest once initial enthusiasm has passed.

Co-ordinator
Needed to focus on the team’s objectives, draw out team members and delegate work appropriately.
- Contribution: mature, confident, identifies talent. Clarifies goals. Delegates effectively.
- Allowable Weaknesses: can be seen as manipulative. Offloads personal work.

Shaper
Provides the necessary drive to ensure that the team keeps moving and does not lose focus or momentum.
- Contribution: challenging, dynamic, thrives on pressure. Has the drive and courage to overcome obstacles.
- Allowable Weaknesses: prone to provocation. Offends people’s feelings.

Monitor Evaluator
Provides a logical eye, making impartial judgements where required and weighs up the team’s options in a dispassionate way.
- Contribution: sober, strategic and discerning. Sees all options and judges accurately.
- Allowable Weaknesses: lacks drive and ability to inspire others.

Teamworker
Helps the team to gel, using their versatility to identify the work required and complete it on behalf of the team.
- Contribution: co-operative, mild, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens, builds, averts friction.
- Allowable Weaknesses: indecisive in crunch situations.

Implementer
Needed to plan a workable strategy and carry it out as efficiently as possible.
- Contribution: disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient. Turns ideas into practical actions.
- Allowable Weaknesses: somewhat inflexible. Slow to respond to new possibilities.

Completer Finisher
Most effectively used at the end of tasks to polish and scrutinize the work for errors, subjecting it to the highest standards of quality control.
- Contribution: painstaking, conscientious, anxious. Searches out errors and omissions. Delivers on time.
- Allowable Weaknesses: inclined to worry unduly. Reluctant to delegate.

Specialist
Brings in-depth knowledge of a key area to the team.
- Contribution: single-minded, self-starting, dedicated. Provides knowledge and skills in rare supply.
- Allowable Weaknesses: contributes on only a narrow front. Dwells on technicalities.