Belbin’s Model Of Team Building

"Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. " (Vince Lombardi)

A process of a planned set of steps and executions which involves the team assessing the problem and acting against the problem with keeping a common goal to be achieved.

Why is team building important?

Team Building consolidates the power of collaboration of different individuals to work for an object to be accomplished. Team building is important in every aspect of life to extract and blend talent and creative skills from different mindsets to achieve the targets at ease. The end-result is that effective team building produces better, faster results and provides a satisfying and motivating experience for team members. Reasons why team building is important are:

• Most organizations are so complex and with less amount of transparency, there must be team building for them to succeed.
• Everyone needs to be working towards common goals which need to be accomplished and clearly communicated.
• Team building process will outperform non-team based environments.

Belbin’s ideology for teams

The research led by Dr. Meredith Belbin and his research team at Henley Management College in the 1970's had an objective of observing. They wanted to see how an individual reacted to different situations. International management teams were studied for a period of 9 years. Each participant completed a set of psychometric tests to identify the different individual behavior and their effects on the team could be thoroughly considered. With the progress in the research, Belbin and his Team of researchers observed people with different personalities and concluded that the main distinguishing factor between a success and a failure for a team was behavior rather than intellectual ability. This led to the formation of Belbin’s 9 different Team Roles. As a part of this research led by Dr. Belbin, the roles were classified into nine clusters of behavior that individuals adopt when participating in a team. It was also observed that unbalanced teams were less competent in front of the teams which had a balanced mixed of Team Roles.

The nine team rolesplant (PL)

Plants are innovators and creative. They provide the source of original ideas to support innovation and are good at solving problems. They are good at generating newer ideas which support the problem statement and are useful in handling tough situations.

Resource Investigator (RI)

Resource Investigators are usually enthusiastic extroverts. They are genuine communicators and are friendly with the people. The engage themselves and are committed to the task. They take the keen interest during the initial stages of a task.

Co-Ordinator (CO)

The distinguishing feature of Co-Ordinator’s is their propensity for helping others to work towards shared goals. They are mature enough to handle the responsibility thrown towards them and they are also confident enough to clarify the goals and work towards achieving them. SHAPER (SH)Shapers are highly oriented people with great drive and energy. They motivate themselves and others to overcome obstacles by sheer determination. They can handle pressure very well and deliver as expected.

Monitor Evaluator (ME)

Monitor Evaluators are serious-minded, prudent individuals with a built-in strategic mind which tend to work in their favor as they analyze the situation properly from each aspect carefully and then effectively work towards it.

Implementer (IMP)

Implementers are known for their practical approach to the problem and possess higher levels of self-control while reacting to any situation that arises. They are disciplined, efficient enough to convert ideas into actions. They are good at organizing things with ease.

Teamworker (TW)

Team workers possess a diplomatic attitude and are generally supportive and concerned about others. They are Co-operative and listen carefully. Good at understanding the situation and take the decisions whether to step-in or step-out.

Completer-Finisher (CF)

Completer Finishers have a great ability of conciseness. They constantly strive for perfection and correct errors. They always see to the fact whether things have completed the way they want.

Specialist (SP)

They are Single-minded personalities with a dedicated nature to whatever they commit They provide specialist knowledge while working in a team which can be a motivational factor for the other members & adds values to the work with their skills.