Dr. Meredith Belbin, a professor at Henley Management College, Europe's oldest business school, and his team have derived organizational team composition and management theories from nine years of long-term research to track the behavior of managers around the world.
After observing and analyzing successful teams, Belbin found that each team consists of 9 different roles (8 in 1981 and 9 in 1988), and they are all divided according to the personality and behavior characteristics of the members, and are responsible for various aspects of activity execution, creative development and process management. When a team has these 9 roles, its organizational activities work well.
The nine roles can be divided into three categories: "action-oriented" who performs team tasks, "interpersonal-oriented" who coordinates interpersonal relationships within and outside the team, and "strategy-oriented" who is responsible for generating ideas and providing expert wisdom.
Each role may not be limited to one person, but one person can play multiple roles, and even switch roles if necessary. Planning and finding team members through these 9 roles can make the composition of the team more diverse and reasonable, and the members perform their own duties. In addition, by allowing members to analyze their own abilities and characteristics, they can also identify the roles they are good at and are willing to play.
Move-Oriented Character (Action)
Completer Finisher
Supervise the team's task objectives and activity schedule, review whether there are errors or omissions in the execution of tasks, reinforce the urgency of the task, avoid procrastination, and ensure that the task is perfect.
Personality traits: diligent and conscientious attitude, always maintain a sense of urgency in work, and pursue the perfection of things. But it's easy to be impatient and impatient, and even unwilling to let go of authorization.
Shaper
A leader who acts as a team, bringing motivation and momentum to the team. Propose a plan, help shape tasks and goals, and drive teams to agree and act towards goals.
Personality traits: Courage to challenge, high achievement motivation, desire to succeed in tasks, and a positive attitude to push everyone forward together. However, it is easy to be impulsive and impatient, and when provoked, it will get caught in a battle of will and lose control.
Implementer
Able to carefully consider reality, translate conversations and suggestions into concrete steps, do things not well and ambitiously, and pragmatically achieve team goals, is a trustworthy practitioner.
Personality traits: self-disciplined, submissive, pragmatic and reliable, often showing tolerance and respect for traditional behavior. But sometimes they are inflexible and overly conservative, not interested in change or innovation.
Strategy-oriented character (thinking)
Monitor Evaluator
With a calm attitude and strategic perspective, calmly analyze problems and situations, clarify ambiguous or complex issues, and evaluate the judgment and role of others to avoid valuable opinions being ignored.
Personality traits: Cautious, intelligent, with a broad vision, able to take into account the big picture and make the most favorable judgments. However, sometimes it is too nitpicking or confined to the regulations, which brings anti-encouragement to the members.
Innovator (plant)
Propose new ideas and ideas, and criticize existing practices, guide the team to think in multiple ways or even in reverse, and avoid rigidity and limitations in thinking.
Personality traits: Break the rules, know how to introspect, and dare to put forward different opinions. However, he often oversteps the rules without sticking to the details, and is prone to disputes with others.
Specialist
A new role was added in 1988 when Belbin revised his theory, providing the team with specialized knowledge and skills to provide excellent advice or assistance in specific problems.
Personality traits: possess a high degree of professional knowledge and a dedicated work attitude. However, he is too professional, and sometimes he is introverted and not good at communicating with others.
Social-oriented personas
Co-ordinator
Deeply recognized and trusted by members, able to summarize the opinions of the team, synthesize the feelings of everyone, assist the team to establish goals, clarify problems, find out the strategic direction, and assist in the reasonable arrangement of team division of labor and responsibilities.
Personality traits: calm, self-confident, able to control the situation, more objective in looking at problems, able to accept all kinds of opinions without prejudice. But he is not outstanding in terms of intelligence, and sometimes he is manipulative of others.
Resource Investigator
Diplomats in the team assist in bringing in external information, reaching out to individuals or groups with different views, and representing the team in consultations, negotiations and other activities to obtain the support of others.
Personality traits: Outgoing, enthusiastic, well-connected, well-informed, and curious to constantly explore new things. But the focus on the topic was not enough, and the interest quickly shifted. Prone to lack of original opinions.
TeamWorker
Through harmonious communication, actively solve potential frictions within the team, know how to support others in a timely manner, break the deadlock, unite team spirit, and avoid disputes caused by disagreements.
Personality traits: good at listening, gentle and polite, will pay attention to the feelings of others, have good connotation and social skills. But because he doesn't want to offend people, he is easy to be indecisive or submissive, and become a bad person.
The possible absence of Belbin's team role theory
In his follow-up research, Belbin himself admitted that this theory only considers the allocation of roles and functions of personnel, ignoring uncertain factors such as hierarchical hierarchy and possible friction when people get along. Therefore, a good team should have these 9 roles, but there is no guarantee that a team with these 9 roles will be successful, because personal emotional factors are also a key to the success or failure of the team, which must be taken into account when applying.
Source: Team Roles at Work, published by Butterworth-Heinemann