Individual Roles in Teams

   "Nobody's perfect but a team can be!"

We've all met people whose characteristics may drive us mad: the person who jumps from idea to idea, the steady plodder, the knocker of ideas, the one who wants action without thinking first, the loyal company worker - they can be very annoying and unproductive when working on their own. However, give them a role in a team and they could help to knock the opposition's socks off.

No one individual can combine all the qualities of a good manager but a team of individuals certainly can - and often does. And it can be in 10 places at once. This is why it is strong teams that are the instrument of sustained and enduring success in management. A team can build up a store of shared and collectively-owned experience, information and judgement that can be passed on as its membership changes.

Belbin' Team Types

Dr. Meredith Belbin, of the Industrial Training Research Unit at Cambridge has developed an understanding of how teams work, and how to make them work better. Belbin's perception is that all members of a management team have a dual role. The first role, the functional one, is obvious: a manager belongs to the team because he is an accountant or production engineer or regional service manager or group marketing executive, or whatever. The second role, the team role, is much less obvious.

Through extensive research at Henley Management College Belbin isolated and identified eight key roles as the ones available to team members. Over the years of his research, first at Henley and subsequently within the real business world extending from Britain to Australia, Dr. Belbin and his colleagues learned to recognise individuals who made a crucial difference to teams and to whose team types he gave descriptive names.

The reason for these names is not always obvious, and the names themselves are sometimes a little misleading. When using them it is the descriptions, not their labels, which are important.

Here are the eight Belbin team types:

Creators

• Plant
• Resource Investigator

Leaders

• Co-ordinator
• Shaper

Implementer

• Team Builder
• Team Implementer

Completers

• Monitor Evaluator
• Completer Finisher

Plant

Think of the Plant as the one who scatters the seeds, which the others nourish until they bear fruit. The Plant was named when it was found that one of the best ways to improve the performance of an ineffective and uninspired team was to 'plant' one of this role in it.

The Plant is the team's source of original ideas, suggestions and proposals: the ideas person. The Plant tends to be the most imaginative as well as the most intelligent member of the team, and the most likely to start searching for a completely new approach to a problem if the team starts getting bogged down, or to bring a new insight to a line of action already agreed.

• Positive qualities: genius, imagination ,intellect, knowledge
• Negative qualities: up in the clouds, inclined to disregard practical details or protocol

Resource Investigator

The Resource Investigator (RI) is probably the most immediately likeable member of the team. Relaxed, sociable and gregarious, and easy to interest and enthuse. RI's responses tend to be positive and enthusiastic, though they can dismiss things as quickly as they take them up. The most popular; the salesperson; the diplomat; the 'Fix-It'; extroverted; enthusiastic; curious. The RI's. ability to stimulate ideas and encourage innovation can lead people to mistake them for an ideas person, but the RI does not have the radical originality that distinguishes the Plant. They are, however, quick to see the relevance of new ideas.

• Positive qualities: a capacity for contacting people and exploring anything new; an ability to respond to challenge
• Negative qualities: liable to lose interest once the fascination has passed

Co-ordinator

Co-ordinator is one of those slightly misleading titles - they are best suited to lead the team even though that may not be their 'formal' role. The Coordinator is the one who presides over the team and co-ordinates its efforts to meet external goals and targets. They are the social leader; calm; self-confident; controlled.

• Positive qualities: a capacity for treating and welcoming all potential contributors on their merits and without prejudice; a strong sense of objectives
• Negative qualities: no more than ordinary in terms of intellect or creative ability

Shaper

The Shaper is full of nervous energy: outgoing and emotional, impulsive and impatient, sometimes edgy and easily frustrated. Quick to challenge, and quick to respond to a challenge the Shaper is the task leader of the team. The principal function of the Shaper is to give a shape to the application of the team's efforts, always looking for a pattern in discussions, and trying to unite ideas, objectives and practical considerations into a single feasible project, which the Shaper seeks to push forward urgently to decision and action.

• Positive qualities: drive and a readiness to challenge inertia, ineffectiveness, complacency or self-deception
• Negative qualities: proneness to provocation, irritation and impatience most prone to paranoia, quick to sense a fight and the first to feel that there is a conspiracy afoot and he is the object or the victim of it.

Team Builder

The Team Builder is the most sensitive of the team; the most aware of individuals' needs and worries, and the one who perceives most clearly the emotional undercurrents within the group. If you want to know the mood of the team ask the Team Builder. Supportive; uncompetitive; mediator; socially oriented; rather mild; sensitive

• Positive qualities: an ability to respond to people and to situations and to promote team spirit
• Negative qualities: Indecisiveness at moments of crisis

Team Implementer

The Implementer is the practical organiser; the one who turns decisions and strategies into defined and manageable tasks that people can actually get on with. If anyone does not know what on earth has been decided and what they are supposed to be doing they will go to the Team Implementer first to find out. A practical organiser; conservative; dutiful; predictable. Research has shown that a high proportion of Team Implementers end up in leading roles in industry - they do the tasks others find too uninteresting but are necessary for progress and survival!

• Positive qualities: organising ability, practical common sense, hard-working, self-disciplined
• Negative qualities: lack of flexibility, unresponsive to unproved ideas

Monitor Evaluator

In a balanced team it is only the Plant and the Monitor-Evaluator who need a high IQ, but by contrast with the Plant, the Monitor-Evaluator is a bit of a cold fish. By temperament serious and not very exciting. The ME's contribution lies in measured and dispassionate analysis rather than creative ideas. Analytically rather than creatively intelligent; sober; unemotional; prudent

• Positive qualities: judgement, discretion, hard-heartedness
• Negative qualities: lacks inspiration or the ability to motivate others

Completer Finisher

The Completer Finisher worries about what might go wrong and is never at ease until they have personally checked every detail and made sure that everything has been done and nothing has been overlooked. Completer Finishers are not common in business and when you find one , treasure them! Checks details; worries about deadlines; chivvies; painstaking; orderly; conscientious; anxious.

• Positive qualities: a capacity for follow through, perfectionism
• Negative qualities: a tendency to worry about small things, a reluctance to "let go"

Significance of Belbin Team Roles

In general

Where there is an uneven spread of roles in a group, then there may be problems in addressing the task allocated. Therefore it is important for team members to appreciate their own driving team role, know their second and third-best roles and see if these can complement the other group members' roles. In this way an effective team can be constructed.

There is a tendency in top teams for too many 'Shapers' and 'Plants' with few if any 'Completer-Finishers'. This means that everyone likes to talk, wants their own ideas to be accepted by all and relies on others to take the follow-through actions. Another role that often is lacking in top teams is that of 'Monitor-Evaluator' - this person is often seen as trying to prevent things from happening by introducing balance and reality into the discussions.

Specific teams

Knowing the predominant Belbin roles of your team can often offer an explanation for the dysfunction of the team. This can be adjusted by the leader asking some of the team members to move to their second or third strongest roles. Where there is a role that is not fulfilled at all in the team then either the leader assigns someone to that role or all the team members must take responsibility for ensuring that this role is carried out.