Team Roles at Work

by R. Meredith Belbin

Belbin's follow-up to the best-selling Management Teams: Why They Succeed Or Fail, develops his ideas using feedback gained from the users of his work. The nine team roles, now familiar to managers and management trainers all over the world, are explored further, adding value to the original team-role concepts. Operational strategies are laid out which provide ideas, techniques and a new range of information and advice which can be used to the organization's advantage. Team Roles at Work paves the way for all those in management education, including industrial trainers to put Belbin's seminal thinking on teams into practice.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Management, Psychology

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 1993

About the author

Raymond Meredith Belbin was a British researcher and management consultant best known for his work on management teams. He was a visiting professor and Honorary Fellow of Henley Management College in Oxfordshire, England.

Reviews

[Lkhamsuren Dashkhorol]

Хүн бүрт байдаг сэтгэл зүйн ур чадварыг, бие хүний онцлогтой уялдуулах нь хамгийн зөв бөгөөд төгс шийдэл юм. #NPC&MANDAL LLC
.... Хэн ч бүхий л үүрэг даалгавар бүрт ижил тэнцүү ур чадвартай биш. Сайн мэдээ гэвэл эн тэнцүү ур чадвартай биш байх нь өсч дэвших, үр бүтээлтэй байх зэрэгт саад учруулдаггүй. Харин хүн бүр адилхан чадвартай байх нь хэн юу хийх бол, хэн нь хэнтэй хамтрах бол гэсэн бөөн бөөн эргэлзээ дунд төөрөх байсан......

[Raluca]

Probably the most useful lesson for me from reading this book, was to start see people from a team beyond their skills or technical abilities. Also the fact that cohesion between different roles has impact on outcome of team's milestone/project.
The downfall for me was language used, the words domain specific.

Few key points:
- Belbin model has 9 roles: Plant, Resource Investigator, Co-ordinator, Shaper, Monitor Evaluator, Teamworker, Implementer, Complete Finisher, Specialist.
- awareness about 'allowable weaknesses' for each role, not only the positive contribution to the team
- looking at a candidate from two perspectives: suitability and eligibility. Surprisingly when combining these two in matrix, the observed outcome was different than the expected one. By that I mean that 'those who are ineligible but suitable often come to be longest-term successes'
- 'Concept of coherence - greater success from those with strengths and weaknesses of one Team Role, rather than strengths of one and weaknesses of another'.
- 'Some Team Role relationships have better prospects of success than others'. And the most interesting part about this statement is to see it around you, considering people's natural team role. The book presents a somehow simplified types of relationships: with their boss, with colleagues, as boss with subordinates
- 'Difficult relationships often come from the lack of understanding of the different roles colleagues are inclined to take.'
- 'Willingness to adopt a secondary role at key times can avoid clashes, treading on toes, or misunderstandings.'
- 'Poor teamwork is often engendered by clone cultures, a very dominant outlook and mindset that results in only employing one type of person.'
- 'Different team roles are needed at different stages in projects, and teams should have flexibility to allow for this.'
- Industry, as it is today rather embraces team leaders, not the old type of solo leaders.
- A team leader develops colleagues, encourages the growth of personal strengths; also creates mission, projects vision which others can act on as they see it. In parallel, solo leader projects objectives, makes it clear what everyone is expected to do.
- 'New forms of organisations are developing to replace hierarchical structures. They include the shamrock, the honeycomb, and the trapezium organisation.' Shamrock is formed from core workers, part time workers and sub-contractors.
- 'Small firms gather in cellular clusters as in a honeycomb'

Book ends with an idea as food for thought: the challenge to help those who do not engage in work, who are role-less. How to enroll the role-less and 'create and restore personal and work identities in those on the fringes of society.'

[Seb]

Some nice ideas. I've found it hard to read as it didn't hook me.

[Sergei]

The author debates on the subject of team roles that have nothing to do with functional team roles, although the latter is usually overrated while the former is under-looked. I get that, great and utterly useful note. But the book is somewhat vague in the roles themselves. I have still no clue what are my primary and secondary natural roles. The only role that is clear, thanks to the vivid example of Margaret Thatcher, is "Motivator." It may well be, that I'm missing on some other work by the same author, that covers the roles, provides the means to test oneself against and come up with more or less defenit predispositions toward certain roles.

[Seyed]

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