Belbin Team Roles

“Strengthen your strengths”

The drive for greater productivity has meant that more organisations require people to work together to achieve business results.

Unfortunately, when we bring individuals together to work as a team we don’t always end up with the kind of performance we had hoped for. This lack of performance often comes in the form of:

• Lack of focus and direction.
• Lack of accountability and doing what needs to be done.
• Poor communication.
• Unnecessary interpersonal conflict.
• Disruptive meetings.
• Withdrawal of certain team members.
• Unnecessary mistakes.
• Socialising rather than paying attention to the task at hand.

These ‘red flags’ often point to an imbalance in team membership – overlaps in team roles and people playing out of position. Just as a cricket team performs best when there is the right balance of batsmen, bowlers and a specialist wicket keeper, work teams perform best when there is the right balance of skills, attitudes and approaches to the task at hand. Under most circumstances we wouldn’t think about asking our strike bowler to open the batting and for good reason. His likelihood of performing well as opening batsman is low and this is not how he prefers to contribute to the team. We now risk his motivation to perform and to be part of the team. Unintentionally we are often using our own people out of position, leaving them over stressed and underutilised.

Thankfully, there is a way that you can ensure greater team performance. Belbin Team Roles are one of the most popular and researched models for helping groups of people work more effectively together.

Based on the extensive research of Meredith Belbin and his team, Belbin identified that each person has “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate in a particular way”. By understanding these preferences you are in a better place to anticipate future performance so that you can assign tasks and projects to ensure individual and team success. Belbin’s ultimate conclusion, “balanced teams perform best”.

Belbin Team Roles are ideal for both established teams as well as newly formed project teams. Individual and team reports allow you and your team to better understand each other’s strengths.

Belbin Team Roles:

• Provide a common language to describe individual contribution in terms of preferred team roles.
• Positively reframes the way individuals view each other in terms of strengths rather than deficiencies.
• Facilitate greater flexibility when assigning roles to achieve work and project goals.
• Validate people’s strengths and encourages them to contribute to teams in the way that they will add most value.
• Get people playing to their strengths.
• Help identify Team-Role gaps that could affect team performance.

For more information about how Belbin Team Roles can help you create a high performing team contact us on 07 4772 3800 or email training@tphumancapital.com.au.