Through his study, Belbin identified the following nine team roles:īelbin sub-categorises the nine roles into thinking roles, social roles and action roles: Thinking rolesīelbin groups the following team roles together as being thinking-oriented: The Plant A balanced team is one with a mix of individuals, with strengths that complement each other and help offset any gaps other people may have in their skill set. It's important to try and avoid having a team made up of members with similar styles or behaviours, as such teams can become unbalanced. Information on which Belbin team roles individuals more strongly associate with can also be used to assess how well a team may work together and to help identify the best candidates to fill a role in a team.

You can then discuss the best team roles to use and how and when each can be utilised to tackle these tasks. What's important is to determine the team objectives in a job and work out what tasks need to be undertaken. Anything beyond this and individuals aren't really working closely enough to constitute a team and are defined rather as a group. Indeed, Belbin himself believes that the optimum team size is four people. Related: Top strategies to define your team's roles and responsibilities Using Belbin team roles in the workplaceĮven though there are nine Belbin team roles, an effective team can still work with fewer than nine members. A person can (and often does) express traits from multiple roles. Rather than sort people into a defined personality type, Belbin team roles are designed to score people on how strongly they express traits from the nine team roles. The test involves a person's own assessment of their behaviour along with feedback from observers and contrasts how a person sees their behaviour with how it's seen by others.īelbin makes clear that his test differs from psychometric personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. What is the Belbin test?įirst devised by Raymond Meredith Belbin through a study at Henley Management College, the Belbin Team Role Inventory test is a behavioural test to assess how an individual operates in a team environment and their preference for any of the nine team roles identified. In this article, we explore the various Belbin team roles, how understanding them can give you certain insights and how they can help you achieve better team working. To get the most out of a team, it's beneficial to understand the skill set of its members and divide up the work accordingly. An effective team is usually made up of a mix of people with different, complementary attributes. The Belbin Team Role Inventory test identifies the behavioural traits of an individual and defines them under a team role.

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