Your team roles

Understanding your team roles

Belbin Team Inventory from Shaymaa

Belbin’s team preferences

Through his extensive and world renowned research Professor Meredith Belbin has devised a world recognized method of identifying team pref­erences which help us to understand why people behave in certain ways in teams. He identified eight types of preference for working in teams. Below are listed some of the essential characteristics of each type:

• The company worker/implementor
• The chair/co-ordinator
• The shaper
• The plant
• The resource investigator
• The monitor evaluator
• The team worker
• The completer finisher

1.The company worker/implementor

Role

• Translates general ideas and plans into practical working objectives.
• Gets down to implementation.
• Breaks things into tasks and actions.
• Delivers actions and results.

Methods

• Helps ensure that the team’s objectives have been properly estab­lished and that any tasks have been clearly defined.
• Clarifies any practical details and deals with them.
• Maintains a steady, systematic approach to the job at hand.
• Is calm under pressure and reliable – will not let you down.
• Perseveres in the face of difficult and challenging targets. Is tenacious.
• Provides practical support to other team members.

Behaviours to avoid

• Unconstructive criticism of other team members’ ideas and suggestions.
• Lack of flexibility. Company workers have a high efficiency concern which means they question the introduction of the ‘new’.
• Being resistant to new ideas or innovations.

As a manager, a company worker or implementor’s strengths are their ability to define objectives and practical details. They are also very effec­tive in introducing and maintaining procedures and structures. In organizations they are often promoted because of their inherent organ­izing abilities and skills. They value what organizations like.

2. The chair/co-ordinator

Role

• Controls and organizes the activities of the team, making best use of the resources available.
• Pulls the team together.
• Stands back and helicopters above the team.
• Is able to get people working together.

Methods

• Encourages team members to achieve the team’s objectives by helping them identify their roles and contributions.
• Encourages people to put the team’s objectives before their own.
• Provides positive feedback on individual performance.
• Smoothes over disagreements and inter-team competition with keen people insight and understanding. Uses tact and diplomacy to control and manage.
• Identifies weaknesses in the team’s composition and organizes and develops the team to neutralize any weaknesses.

• Exercises self-discipline and perseverance. Acts as a focal point for the team’s effort, especially when under pressure.
• Delegates effectively.

Behaviours to avoid

• Not recognizing the full capabilities of the team. Not using all of the team’s resources.
• Competing with other team types.
• Failing to add a creative, innovative or challenging aspect to their role.
• Abdicating the leadership role in the face of strong competi­tion (particularly from shapers and possibly plants).

As a manager, a chair or co-ordinator is in a good position to lead the team. They are comfortable standing back from the detail and can mobilize people to tackle the issues. Their effective interpersonal skills also mean that people will listen and take their lead from an effective chair.

3. The shaper

Role

• Makes things happen.
• Gives shape and strong direction to the team’s activities.
• Injects energy and drive into a team’s proceedings.

Methods

• Directs the team’s focus, setting objectives and clear priorities.
• Adopts a wide perspective of the team’s goals and helps indi­viduals understand their roles and contributions.
• Exerts a strong directive influence on the team’s discussions.

• Summarizes outcomes in terms of objectives and targets.
• Will often appear impatient and in a rush.
• Focuses on progress and achievements. Intervenes when the team wanders from their objectives.
• Challenges others if they are pursuing another direction.
• Can be argumentative and dismissive of people who do not move as fast.

Behaviours to avoid

• An overly directive style that assumes undue authority.
• Being too directive in making summaries, appraisals or inter­ventions.
• Not being tactful. Avoid being overly blunt or even rude and insensitive to the needs of others.
• Becoming isolated or remote from the team. Losing identity as a team member. Being seen as too egotistic.
• Competing with other team members, particularly the plant and the monitor evaluator.

A shaper performs best when operating in a team of peers. If they find themselves in a formal leadership position they may well need to adopt more Co-ordinator type behaviours. This may require more involvement in routine activities and more self-discipline. Shapers normally focus on a broad brush approach to getting things done. They have little time for the detail and want to drive forward. They also need to watch that their insensitivity to the needs of others does not, in the long-term, create problems for them. Tact and diplomacy is not always a high priority for shapers.

4. The plant

Role

• Acts as a primary source of ideas and innovation for the team.
• Creative – an ‘agent provocateur’.
• An independent perspective.

Methods

• Concentrates their attention on the big issues and major strate­gies.
• Formulates new and often radical ideas and approaches.
• Looks for possible breakthroughs in approaches and methods.
• Times their contributions; presenting proposals at appropriate moments.

Behaviours to avoid

• Attempting to demonstrate their capabilities over too wide a field.
• Contributing ideas for reasons of self-interest and indulgence rather than the team’s needs, and so may alienate the team.
• Taking offence when their ideas are evaluated, criticized and possibly rejected. Sulking and refusing to make any further contri­butions to the team.
• Becoming too inhibited about putting ideas forward, especially in dominant, extrovert, or over-critical groups. Being intimidated or alternatively arguing with Shapers.

A plant needs to exercise self-discipline and be prepared to listen to team members’ comments on their ideas and proposals (particularly their Monitor Evaluator colleague(s)). If found in a leadership role a Plant must not let the stresses of controlling the team stifle their creative input.

In non-directive roles a plant should expect to be used as a strong team resource; devoting their energies and talents towards establishing their role as a creative thinker and ideas person.

5. The resource investigator

Role

• Explores the team’s outside resources and develops useful contacts for the team.
• Harnesses resources for the team.
•  A networker and free agent.

Methods

• Makes excellent contacts quickly. Develops effective and useful relationships and allies for the team.
• Uses their interest in new ideas and approaches to explore outside possibilities. Introduces new people and resources to the team.
• Develops their role as the team’s main point of contact with outside groups. Keeps up-to-date with new and related devel­opments that may be helpful to the team’s work.
• Helps maintain good relationships in the team and encourages team members to make best use of their talents, especially when the team is under pressure.

Behaviours to avoid

• Becoming too involved with their own ideas at the expense of exploring others.
• Rejecting ideas or information before submitting them to the team.
• Relaxing too much when the pressure is off.
• Getting involved in wasteful or unproductive activities. This often results from the resource investigator’s natural sociability.

Resource Investigators are skilled communicators with a creative outlook. They are vital to helping bring new resources into a team and their networking capabilities make them invaluable.

6. The monitor evaluator

Role

• Analyzes ideas and suggestions.
• Evaluates ideas and approaches for their feasibility and prac­tical value.
• Deals with facts.
• Introduces a high level of critical thinking ability to any team.

Methods

• Uses high levels of critical thinking ability to assess issues and plans.
• Balances an experimenting outlook with a critical assessment.
• Builds on others’ suggestions or ideas. Helps the team to turn ideas into practical applications.
• Makes firm but practical and realistic arguments against the adoption of unsound approaches to problems.
• Is diplomatic when challenging suggestions.

Behaviours to avoid

• Using their critical thinking ability at the team’s expense.
• Tactless and destructive criticism of colleagues’ suggestions. Liable to upset others because of this.
• Negative thinking; allowing critical thinking skills to outweigh their openness to new ideas. Provoking a “You always see reasons why it cannot be done!” type of response.

• Lowering the team’s morale by being excessively critical and objective.

A successful monitor evaluator combines high critical thinking skills with a practical outlook. When a monitor evaluator is a team leader they need to ensure that they do not dominate other members of the team and stifle contributions. When in a non-directive role a monitor evaluator has the challenge of making their voice heard and not appearing threat­ening to colleagues. If they can avoid a tendency towards undue scepticism and cynicism their strengths will help them develop their management capability.

7. The team worker

Role

• Strong team player.
• Helps individual team members to contribute.
• Promotes and maintains team spirit and effectiveness.

Methods

• Applies themselves to the task.
• Observes the strengths and weaknesses of team members.
• Supports team members in developing their strengths, e.g. builds on suggestions and contributions.
• Helps individuals manage their weaknesses with personal advice and assistance.
• Selfless in outlook.
• Improves team communications and builds relationships.
• Fosters a strong sense of team spirit by setting an example.

Behaviours to avoid

• Competing for status or control in the team.
• Aligning with one team member against another.
• Not addressing or resolving conflict situations.
• Delaying tough decisions.

The team worker role can be exercised at different levels within a team. As a manager the team worker should see their role as a delegator and developer of people. Team worker’s qualities of conscientiousness and perseverance will help ensure that projects are completed on time, and to the necessary levels of cost and quality. But they have to watch that their sense of duty in wanting to help team members achieve objectives often overrides their concerns for overall task or goal achievements.

8. The completer finisher

Role

• Ensures all the team’s efforts are as near perfect as possible.
• Ensures that tasks are completed and that nothing is overlooked.
• Injects urgency into problems and projects that fall behind.
• Provides attention to detail.

Methods

• Perfectionist – looks for errors or omissions; especially those that may result from unclear responsibilities.
• Works on tasks where attention to detail and precision are important.
• Looks for mistakes in detail.
• Actively identifies work or tasks that require more detailed attention.
• Raises the standards of all the team’s activities.
• Maintains a sense of urgency and priority.
  

Behaviours to avoid

• Unnecessary emphasis on detail at the expense of the overall plan and direction.
• Negative thinking or destructive criticism.
• Lowering team morale by excessive worrying.
• Appearing slow moving or lacking in enthusiasm.

A completer finisher role can be exercised at different levels within a team and can be easily combined with another role. As a manager a completer finisher needs to pay careful attention to their delegation skills and to keep unnecessary interference to a minimum. In a junior role a completer finisher will need to develop tact and discretion so as to avoid earning a reputation as a ‘nit picker and worrier’. Completer finishers also tend to possess a nervous drive that needs to be controlled and directed if it is to have positive results.