Belbin's 9 team roles

Using a project like structure for certain types of work has been around for thousands of years. One needs only to look at Noah’s description of the Ark in the Bible, where God delivered the scope, dimensions, and timeframe. However, only in the last century, we have seen the formalization and definition of projects as a proper, standalone form of running a business. 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 compose teams and project-groups, formed of people, whom they might know very little about. How do we ensure optimal performance from our 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. To combat this, 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 ease the formation of project groups. Leading 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. 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 compliment 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 goal keepers, 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 up field AND score in the opponent 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 test 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 they 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)	This person is often very extroverted and enjoys communicating and establishing contacts with other people. Resource Investigators are curious and innovative. Finding resources outside of the group comes naturally to this person, both in terms of partners and/or knowledge.	Outgoing Enthusiastic Explores opportunities and contacts	Can be over-optimistic Might lose interest, once the initial enthusiasm has passed
Teamworker (TW)	Team Workers are diplomatic, perceptive, and flexible. They value cohesion in a team and are committed to helping facilitate an efficient workflow. They are often popular or well-liked people and very capable in their own right but often focus on being the group's internal negotiator. The Team Worker offers support and a sense of diplomacy to group discussions.	Co-operative Perceptive and diplomatic Listens and averts friction	Can find it difficult to make hard decisions Tends to avoid confrontations
Co-ordinator (CO)	Co-Ordinator’s personalities are often very similar to what is perceived as the traditional leader role. They are often calm and good-natured, with a natural talent for delegating and dividing tasks among the rest of the group. This talent is linked to their ability to determine skills and strengths in others, along with what value other people can bring to the team. A lot of these skills can be attributed to the fact that Co-Ordinator’ often are excellent listeners	Mature Confident Identifies talent in others Clarifying goals	Might be interpreted as manipulative Can appear lazy, as they offload their own work and suddenly have little to do
Plant (PL)	Plants are the creative engine of the team. They are innovative and creative in approaching a challenge and they will often either produce a novel and exciting solution or propose a new way to approach a given task. Due to this creativity, Plants sometimes tend to ignore given parameters or constraints given for the task. This can lead to impractical solutions. Working with a Plant, it is important to remember, that this type of group member thrives on praise and finds it difficult to handle criticism, combined with a lack of communication often found in Plants, which means that other group members need to be cautious when giving feedback. Often, Plants tend to be introverted and work on their assigned task, away from the group.	Creative Imaginative Free-thinking Generates ideas and solves difficult problems in new and exciting ways	Might ignore initial parameters or constraints Might be too engaged in a solution, that they are unable to communicate effectively
Monitor Evaluator (ME)	If a project group is a courtroom and other members are lawyers advocating for their perspective, the Monitor Evaluator is the judge. Members with this role evaluates, analysis and considers all aspects of ideals. They are objective, critical thinking and as such can appear to be detached or even unemotional. Monitor Evaluators will consider every pro and con of a case, they will consider the far-sighted strategic implications of every idea, before deciding. Therefore, they can come across as being slow to decide. Even so, Monitor Evaluators are intelligent and experts at staying objective in discussions, this however means that they can appear to be without passion for a project, and often fail at motivating others for their cause, even though it might be objectively right. They will prefer to react towards an event, rather than investigate why the event happened.	Sober Intelligent Strategic Sees and judges all options even and accurately	Can come across as overly critical, this is especially true when working with Plants Lack passion and drive to inspire and motivate others
Specialist (SP)	The Specialist is the most recent addition in the 9 Roles. The Specialist is other highly skilled in the area a project group is working. They deliver specific knowledge, technical details, and limitations for the project. Specialists are often the center of knowledge for a specific part of the project. They take pride in their skills and are often passionate about their field of expertise. Because they often joined the group to supply knowledge regarding a certain aspect of the project, their contribution might be limited to that field. They will often be preoccupied with technical details, within their field, refusing to move away from this, as they do not consider it their field of work. This means that the Specialist often is unaware or uninterested in the big picture of the project.	Expertise in a certain field Single-minded Self-starting and -sustaining	Contribution tends to be limited to the Specialists field of expertise Gets lost in technicalities
Shaper (SH)	Shapers are driven, people. If you challenge a Shaper, they will approach it as an exciting challenge. They are usually extrovert and dynamic people, who will motivate the rest of the team to overcome challenges and improve on themself. If the team falls into a groove or becomes complacent, it is the Shaper who will provide the disruption to shake things up and initiate the discovery of new ways of problem-solving. This drive can, however, provide challenges within the team. The Shaper is excellent at pushing team members to improve, but in this process, they risk pushing others too hard or offend other team members' feelings. The Shaper will often appear as a brass personality with a direct and often provocative speech. Team members with this personality are great motivators and enjoy stimulating others to improve, just as they enjoy questioning the norms of the team.	Thrives on pressure Stimulates and challenges other Drives and inspires the team to overcome obstacles	Can be provocative for others Can risk becoming aggressive and bad humored in an attempt to get things done
Implementor (IMP)	Implementers are the engine of the project group. These people turn the group's creative ideas and suggestions, into concrete actions and plans. They form a comprehensive strategy and plan for the work to be performed and expect you to perform according to it. They are hardworking disciplined people but will often come across as conservative. Implementers do not always respond well to change. They expect their plan to be followed, and it will take quite an amount of convincing for them to abandon a set plan. Often Implementers will actively resist changes, even if it might be for the better. They value structure and their work methodic is systematic, organized, and efficient.	Practical Reliable Efficient Does not care about creative details, but will plan and execute the work that needs to be done	Inflexible towards changes Slow responds to new opportunities
Completer Finisher (CF)	The perfectionist of the group, the Completer Finisher will insist on doing the final proofreading one more time. They are detail orientated and observant, holding their work to the highest standard. Often, the Completer Finisher will be the person to drive the project over the finishing line. This attention to detail, will often what other team members lack and what elevates a project to the next level. Their concerns with regards to deadlines and detail can often come across as tiresome, especially for the faster-moving team members. The perfectionistic mindset of the Complete Finisher can also prove a challenge regarding delegating assignments to others, as they are more confident in their own skills and tends to be anxious when not being hands-on. The Completer Finisher is an invaluable asset to the team in the finishing stages of a project, as they are key to maintain focus on the objective.	Detail orientated Painstaking Holds any task to high standards and makes sure everything is polished and perfected	Worries untimely Reluctant to delegate tasks

All nine roles can further be combined into three different categories. Each with different common traits and personalities. We have the Action Orientated Roles. This includes the Shaper, Implementer, and Completer Finisher. These roles enjoy undertaking tasks and getting work done. Deep philosophic discussions are often viewed as unnecessary. People Orientated Roles, Co-Ordinator, Team Worker, and Resource Investigator This group is often concerned with team cohesion and collaboration. They value interpersonal work and are often extrovert and attentive to other people's needs. A high focus is getting the group to work in a way that results in combined value, greater than the sum of the individual parts. Thought Orientated Roles, the Plant, Monitor Evaluator, and Specialist In this group, the deep questions roam. Roles in this group will not act without thought, they value considering all aspects of a case, but seldom in-depth. This group is often invaluable when the need for new solutions arises. They have the tendencies to both innovate and question.

It is not uncommon, that the roles overlap, meaning that a person with strong traits from, for example, Shaper will also show traits from Implementer and/or Completer Finisher. It is not always a given, but quite common.

Application

Constructing a team is a process that requires quite a lot of thought. It can in many ways be compared to the process of building a car. You want the car to go fast, which means it needs power and therefore an engine! But you cannot build a car solely from engines, you also need wheels to transfer the power to the road and a steering wheel to determine direction. In this way, Belbin’s 9 Roles determines, who is the engine of the team, who is the wheels, and who is direction determining steering wheel. As mentioned most people contain attributes from all roles in varying degrees and as such can cover more than one role within the team. Belbin’s 9 Roles can apply effectively in two different ways, the first being the aforementioned team composition, but it also has a personal benefit. By completing the test and obtain knowledge of your own inner workings, it is possible to create awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses. By doing so, you can improve on your own contribution to teamwork. If you are aware of weaknesses, you can work to negate them, while enforcing your strengths. Using Belbin’s 9 Team Roles first requires the completion of Belbin’s Self-Perception Inventory. This is the written test that Belbin developed. Based on different situations and the personal reaction and action in those situations, the test determines a person’s composition of the roles. This role composition can then be considered when combining employees in teams or groups for a project. It is not necessary to appoint a person for each role, as mentioned before, a person is able to cover multiple roles.

Limitations of the Belbin's 9 Roles

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