How many roles do you play in the team? Belbin's model

How many roles do you play in the team? Belbin’s model

‘But how many have I done today …’. When we say this we refer to the amount of different activities that we had to go through and complete to carry out, with our team, the tasks and chores of a day. But what role did we play in the activities we completed? And what role did we play in relation to the others?

The concept of role in a team can be seen from two different perspectives, Aitor Artzeta, Stephen Swailes and Barbara Senior tell us in their publication. There is an anthropological and sociological perspective according to which the role is defined through a combination of values, attitudes and behaviors associated with the function assigned to the person. In this case, the role is defined by the behavior with respect to this assigned relational framework. And then there is a more psychological point of view, in which the role is expressed by the behavior that the person assumes with respect to the assigned position, or cognitive and behavioral factors that are critical for the person’s success come into play.

In an extreme synthesis, we can distinguish individuals between those who solve problems (task leaders) and those who are concerned with satisfying the emotional needs of teammates (socio-emotional leaders).

As you can imagine, research on this topic has developed a lot over the years (even since the beginning of the last century) and has led to the development of theories based on models of behavior and personality characterization.

The 9 roles of Belbin, we will see them shortly, are determined with a self assessment and can be enriched by an observation activity by other colleagues (including team members), but they can also be identified by the whole team (and, again, from any number of observers). The assessment is based on six factors: personality, skills, values and motivation, the binding characteristics of the task and context, experience, the ability to learn different roles.

The analysis makes it possible to identify the most complex models, the acceptable ones and those to be avoided. On the basis of their characteristics, different combinations of different potential roles are also analyzed.

Belbin does not consider it necessary that all roles have to be cast by a team, and she does not rule out that the same person may be comfortable with her with more than one role. As you will see, the roles of this model are quite distinct from the technical-functional roles that may depend on the specific skills of the team members.

A bit along the lines of Tuckman, Belbin identifies six phases of team development:

identify needs,
find ideas,
formulate the plan or plans,
put ideas into practice,
establish the organization of the team,
devote yourself to producing.

In ciascuna fase uno o più ruoli sono più importanti di altri.

In each phase, one or more roles are more important than others.

But here are the nine team roles! Eye: (+) indicates a contribution, (-) indicates a limit.

Creative, imaginative, with free thinking and outside the box. (+) Generate ideas and solve difficult problems. However, ignore the accessory and specific aspects. (-) Too busy with his own ideas and thoughts to be able to communicate effectively.
Resource investigator. (+) Expansive, enthusiastic, communicative. Explore opportunities at 360 ° and develop contacts. Hyper-optimistic. (-) Loses interest once the initial enthusiasm has worn off.
Co-ordinator. (+) Mature, confident, knows how to identify and develop the potential of others. Clarifies the objectives. (-) Delegate effectively. It can be perceived as manipulative. Download a part of your work to others.
(+) Challenging, dynamic, works well under pressure. He has the grit and courage to overcome obstacles. (-) Prone to provocation. It hurts the feelings of others.
Monitor evaluator. (+) Balanced, strategic and insightful. He considers all the various options and knows how to evaluate carefully. (-) Lacks grit and ability to inspire others. It can be hyper-critical.
(+) Co-operative, perceptive and diplomatic. He knows how to listen and avoids friction. (-) Indecisive in critical situations. Avoid confrontation.
(+) Practical, reliable, efficient. Turn ideas into action and organize the work that needs to be done. (-) Quite inflexible. Slow in responding and reacting to new possibilities / opportunities.
Completer finisher. (+) Accurate, conscientious, perfectionist. Look for errors. Improve and fine-tune. (-) Prone to worry too much. Reluctant to delegate.
(+) Focused, autonomous, dedicated. It provides specialist knowledge and skills with both hands. (-) Contributes on a limited front. It focuses only on the technical aspects.

The advantage that this tool can offer is to give a ‘heuristic’ response to the mutual classification within a team and, very high value, it becomes an easy subject for sharing, discussion and feedback generation! Among other things, it allows evaluations on diversity, abundance and scarcity: there may be too many to play the same role, or too few!

As you may have noticed, the roles are described and configured to be multi-context, and not necessarily dedicated to management teams or pure managers.

And then, you don’t need to be a certified specialist to interpret the reports: a great tool for an internal team coach !!