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

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Application

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Limitations of the Belbin's 9 Roles

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