Belbin's 9 team roles

These days project-oriented work is commonly used in vast numbers of industries and markets, but that has not come without challenges! Managers are today not only required to be in charge and take responsibilities, but they are also expected to compose and manage teams and project-groups, formed of people, whom they might know very little about. How do managers ensure optimal performance from any given project group? The success of a project-group has continuously proven to be heavily dependent on the interdisciplinary and interpersonal relations between the group members, finding the right people for the right jobs. To help ease this comprehensive task, Dr. Meredith Belbin developed a set of defining eight personality traits, a ninth was added later, that are essential to a high functioning group. These nine roles, dubbed Belbin’s 9 team roles, can be determined by a written test performed by the group members and delivers an opportunity to determine in which degree each role is present in a person, and by using this knowledge, ease the formation of project groups. Reading this article, you will obtain knowledge about the foundation on which Belbin built his theory, what his assumptions were and how the theory has evolved. This article will give an overall view of how these personality traits are defined, which strengths and weaknesses each possess, and how to combine them into a high-functioning team. Building on that, the article will describe, which benefits a project, a manager or the individual itself can benefit from gaining awareness of to what degree the 9 Roles are present in a person. As a concluding chapter, the article will describe some commonly used points of criticism against Belbin’s theory along with its limitations.

Background

In 1969, Dr. Meredith Belbin initiated a study of teams, based on several international management teams. Dr. Belbin was invited to begin his studies at a business simulation game, hosted at Henley Business school. Nine years, and more than 200 highly qualified teams later, the study concluded with two very important learnings. Dr. Belbin and his team’s initial thesis was that intellect would be quintessential in predicting success among the team. Basically, teams with members of higher intelligence would outperform teams with lower intelligence members. What the research team saw though, was several high intelligence teams, failing to fulfill their potential and being outperformed by what Dr. Belbin’s team had presumed inferior teams. These observations laid the foundation for what today is known as Belbin’s 9 Team Roles, as the research team set out to determine, what the source of this unpredicted success was. What was determined through the years, was that the catalyst for success in teams was balance, not intelligence. Teams with a balanced distribution of personalities, with different strengths and weaknesses, had an opportunity to complement and strengthen each other, covering gaps in the knowledge and skill within the group and hence, appear stronger combined. At the same time, groups, comprised of people with similar characteristics often experienced conflicts over influence and share of work. This can all be illustrated by visualizing a soccer team. You want to prevent the opponent from scoring a goal, but if you comprise your team solely of goalkeepers, you will be unlikely to score yourself. A well-balanced team will contain both goalkeeper, defensive, midfield, and offensive players, this way you are able both to defend your goal, pass the ball upfield, AND score in the opponent's goal. It was the same conclusion Dr. Belbin and his team reached, a balanced combination of different personalities with different focus points and perspectives significantly raised the likelihood of a team being successful. By having participants from the business simulation games fulfill written tests and personality assessments, he was able to determine nine clusters of personality traits. This resulted in a personality test, that determines the presence and strength of each trait in a person. This is beneficial in two ways. First, awareness of your personal strengths and weaknesses enables you to work with them. At the same time, it makes it easier for a manager to combine their employees in diverse teams, with complementing personalities.

The 9 Team Roles

Belbin’s 9 Team Roles, covers nine clusters of personal attributes, which each affects and benefits the efforts of a project group. One person will often contain traces of each role, in varying degrees, and usually, two or three different roles will be the strongest and most dominant ones. The roles are derived from the test developed by Belbin and his team. Through questions revolving around how different situations are handled and reacted to, the test determines the presence and magnitude of each role within a person. The roles and their different strengths and weaknesses are as follows.

Team Roles	Personal traits	Strengths	Allowable weaknesses
Resource Investigator (RI) By utilizing Belbin’s 9 Team Roles, a manager can avoid possible pitfalls, by combining people with compatible personality traits and hence avoid the lack of any crucial roles. As an individual, you are also able to benefit from being aware of your Belbin composition. Since Belbin’s test determines your personality traits, it is not something that changes overnight, but by being aware of how you act and are perceived by your team members, you gain awareness of your own strengths and weaknesses, while also obtain the reasoning for why some people react towards you as they do. Limitations of the Belbin's 9 Roles Validity While Belbin and his team proved that there was a correlation between balancing team compositions to include all nine roles and the likelihood of success in the project, there is still to be drawn conclusive evidence that the roles are the determining factor. Doing project work is complex and just like intelligence, team composition has not yet been proven as a guaranty for success. There are many other determining factors like interpersonal relations, external factors to the project or unforeseen circumstances and events, that can affect the project in ways, team composition cannot predict. Diversity vs. likeness Diversity is often proclaimed as being essential for a functioning project-group. However, it is also a common psychological fact, that humans tend to prefer and like people, who resemble themselves, to a higher degree. Therefore, a team consisting of widely different people can, A, prove difficult to manage, and B, tensions between group members can arise and evolve due to personal differences. Annotated Bibliography Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 2017 Edition This book provides knowledge on best practices for project management, according to PRINCE2. This book delivers insight into the importance of the selection of the correct people for a certain project. The book determines that, under the direst circumstances, a project is destined to fail, if the responsible manager fails the selection task. 2021 BELBIN Associates The official website of Dr. Meredith Belbin's team. This website offers insight in the nature of all 9 Team Roles, while providing information and background for the nature of Belbin's theory. References