Nutshell: Belbin – hiring for balanced teams

When recruiting new staff, we should assess the current make up of our team and consider the skills and qualities to bring in to achieve balance.

When, in the 1970s, Meredith Belbin began his now-famous team behaviour studies, he not unreasonably expected that, in the competing teams he put together for a business simulation, high intellect teams would succeed where lower intellect teams would not. Surely, maximising the substantial brainpower of his high potential participants would make all the difference.

But no. Through years of observing, categorising and recording all the different kinds of contributions from team members, Belbin and his colleagues found something entirely different. Teams predicted to be high performing based on intellect failed to fulfil their potential. Instead, it was not intellect but balance that made for success.

The most successful teams were made up of people exhibiting a range of personal characteristics and behaviours, playing what Belbin would come to identify as different team roles.

As the studies progressed, he was also able to predict the roles that people might play and how the optimum balance might be struck. So was born Belbin’s Team Roles, a diagnostic and guide that has been used by organisations in their team building ever since.

The most effective teams work interdependently: they need to marshal all of their diverse strengths — of experience, expertise and thought — and work together to perform. Diversity can also be a difficult thing to manage; individual differences, if not acknowledged and managed, can cause division and conflict.

What Belbin encourages us to do is to understand and recognise difference up front, so that we can harness and deploy people’s different strengths, and accommodate any weaknesses, depending on the situation we face or the task at hand.

It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that the X-Men comics and films have proven to be such a success. They offer a great example of a diverse team coming together to make the most of different strengths in the service of one of the most unequivocal goals of all: saving the planet.

Professor X surrounds himself with superheroes who possess powers he himself does not have. They complement his own ability. He accepts that his team has both talents and shortcomings, and nurtures and mentors them so that they can discover and use their talents to the best effect.

Creating more balanced teams

Belbin defines a team role as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way”. If we understand the role (or roles) people tend to play in a team, then we understand better how everyone can best contribute and work with others. We will also have a better understanding of our strengths and an opportunity to work on what Belbin calls “allowable weaknesses”.

If a team is made up of people who have similar styles of behaviour or play the same team roles, that team can become unbalanced — think of Belbin’s exclusively high IQ teams that ended up competing with one another and just couldn’t get anything done. Or a team that shares the same weaknesses that compromise its ability to compete.

To help us create more balanced teams, Belbin has identified nine team roles, organised into three categories:

• Social-oriented roles

• Thinking-oriented roles 

• Action- or task-oriented roles

  
  
  

Each role is associated with typical behavioural and interpersonal strengths. The trick is to have a good balance of roles across the three categories. This doesn’t mean that teams must have a minimum of nine people to succeed. People tend to have at least two role preferences and we can all learn to play a range of roles when required, even if these may not be the most natural for us. Each role is equally important, and each has its strengths and allowable weaknesses.

Social roles

Resource Investigator (RI)

Strengths: Resource Investigators use their inquisitive and curious natures to explore options, develop contacts and negotiate resources for the team. They are outgoing and enthusiastic, and good at bringing in a range of stakeholders.

Allowable weaknesses: RIs tend to be over-optimistic, and can lose interest once the initial enthusiasm has passed.

Teamworker (TW)

Strengths: Teamworkers are the glue that binds team members together. They are co-operative, perceptive, diplomatic and good listeners. They prioritise team building and helping people to work together effectively.

Allowable weaknesses: TWs can be indecisive when the chips are down and tend to avoid confrontation, which might make them reluctant to make difficult or unpopular decisions.

Co-ordinator (CO)

Strengths: Co-ordinators are sometimes known as a team’s “chairperson”. They tend to be mature, calm, confident and good at picking up on, and harnessing, people’s strengths. They clarify team goals and are keen to delegate.

Allowable weaknesses: COs can be seen as manipulative and might offload their own share of the work with a bit too much delegation.

Thinking roles

Plant (PL)

Strengths: Plants are highly creative and are good at finding unconventional ways to solve problems. Free-thinking, they tend to come up with new ideas and approaches.

Allowable weaknesses: PLs are not always great at the detail and might not respond well to criticism, or working within boundaries or parameters. They can also be too pre-occupied to communicate effectively.

Monitor Evaluator (ME)

Strengths: Monitor Evaluators provide a logical eye, able to act impartially and weigh up a team’s options accurately and dispassionately. They are shrewd, strategic and discerning.

Allowable weaknesses: MEs sometimes lack the ability to inspire others and can be seen as detached, reactive and overly critical. Weighing up the pros and cons of all the options might lead to slower decision-making.

Specialist (SP)

Strengths: Specialists bring in-depth knowledge of a key area to teams. They pride themselves on their skills and abilities and tend to be single-minded, self-starting and dedicated.

Allowable weaknesses: Because SPs tends to focus on their own areas of expertise, their contribution might be limited (although invaluable in the right context). They often dwell on the technicalities and fail to see the bigger picture, and might overload everyone with too much information.

Action roles

Shaper (SH)

Strengths: Shapers provide the drive that keeps everyone moving forward without losing focus or momentum. They are challenging, dynamic, thrive on pressure and are not fazed by obstacles. They like to question norms and shake things up to make sure the team does not become complacent.

Allowable weaknesses: SHs can be argumentative and blunt, and can easily cause offence. They can become aggressive and bad-tempered in their drive to get things done.

Implementer (IMP)

Strengths: Implementers get things done. They are good at creating plans and carrying them out as efficiently as possible. Practical, reliable and organised, they turn ideas into action and organise the work that needs to be done.

Allowable weaknesses: IMPs can be inflexible and slow to accept new possibilities. Once they have a plan, they might want to stick to it a bit too rigidly, and can be resistant to change.

Completer Finisher (CF)

Strengths: Completer Finishers are the people who see that the team’s work is completed thoroughly. Painstaking and conscientious, they are the quality controllers, deadline-driven, picking up on errors, polishing and perfecting.

Allowable weaknesses: CFs can be anxious and inclined to worry. They are perfectionists and are often reluctant to delegate.

Having a balance of roles in a team offers us a range of resources we can call upon as circumstances dictate. For example, teams with no Plant might struggle to come up with new ideas — but one with too many might find it hard to sort the good ideas from the bad.

We might need some Monitor Evaluator behaviours to help sort the wheat from the chaff.

Shaper-less teams might lack direction, but having too many Shapers is likely to lead to infighting. We might need some Teamworker behaviour balm to ease the tension. If we have an important project to deliver to a tight deadline, a Completer Finisher will be a very useful person to have on board.

Like other diagnostics, Belbin Team Roles is not, of course, a silver bullet. The roles we play are just one of many factors involved in creating a high performing team. Belbin Team Roles have also been criticised for being culturally biased towards white middle-class men.

But the idea of team roles and behaviours does remind us that diversity of behaviours and approach matters. Belbin can provide a useful (shared) language for us to identify the dynamics and compositions of our teams – especially when recruiting new members – and to help us to talk about strengths and weaknesses in a safe and non-confrontational way.

Test your understanding

• Describe how Belbin defines a 'team role'?

• Identify the three categories within which Belbin organises his nine roles.

What does it mean for you?

• Try using Belbin's assessment to ascertain the existing strengths and weaknesses of your team.