Belbin Team Roles

What Belbin team roles are

Belbin team roles (أدوار الفريق عند بيلبن) are a model that describes the patterns in which individuals contribute to the work of a team. The model holds that a team succeeds when these contributions are distributed in a balanced way, and not when the people with the highest individual abilities come together. It is attributed to the British researcher R. Meredith Belbin and is associated with his 1981 book “Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail”. Establishments use it to form teams, to analyse why teams stumble and to allocate tasks by what each member does well.

The model concerns team building. What follows is an explanation of the model and of its limits. It does not claim that roles explain all behaviour in a team, or that following them guarantees a successful team.

Where the model comes from

We verified the details of the book in the Crossref record of a review by Dill in R&D Management in 1982 (volume 12, issue 3, pages 147 and 148), which gives the title, the author, the publisher (Heinemann) and the year.

Secondary summaries describe the research that preceded the book as carried out at Henley Management College on teams that competed in a management exercise. They say that teams including those with the highest results in ability tests did not outperform others, so Belbin concluded that balance among roles matters more than individual ability. We did not read the text of the book, so we quote nothing from it and do not claim that our description of the roles matches it word for word.

The same summaries say that the first edition described eight roles, that a ninth role, the specialist, was added in later work, and that some early names, such as Chairman and Company Worker, later became Coordinator and Implementer. Lists in circulation differ between eight roles and nine, and the translations of the role names differ too.

The nine roles

The English names are given below. The descriptions are summaries from secondary sources:

1. Plant. Offers new ideas and solves problems in unconventional ways.
2. Resource Investigator. Looks outward, builds relationships and brings in opportunities and information.
3. Coordinator. Clarifies goals, distributes tasks and involves members in decisions.
4. Shaper. Pushes the team into motion and challenges slackness, and can put pressure on others.
5. Monitor Evaluator. Weighs options calmly and sees what enthusiasts can miss.
6. Teamworker. Supports colleagues, eases tension and keeps the team in harmony.
7. Implementer. Turns plans into organised practical action.
8. Completer Finisher. Checks details and makes sure the work is finished without errors.
9. Specialist. Provides deep expertise in a specific field.

A member is not assumed to hold a single role. An individual can do well in two or three roles and can take a secondary role when needed. The point is that the team covers the roles that its work needs, not that the team has nine members to match the nine roles.

How the model is used in an establishment

Roles are used to explain what happens to a team and to form it, and they are not used to pass judgement on individuals. They appear in practices that are described in other terms:

• The stages that teams pass through, from forming to performing, are described in the Tuckman model. Roles describe who contributes at each stage: a team at its start can need a plant and a coordinator, and a team at the end of a project can need a completer finisher.
• A team’s goals, roles, procedures and relationships are examined in the GRPI model. Belbin roles add detail to its roles element from the angle of personal contribution.
• In a self managed team, members coordinate among themselves, so the team needs members who perform the coordinator and implementer roles without a manager appointing them.
• Responsibility for tasks and decisions is distributed among individuals in a RACI matrix. The matrix answers who handles the task, and the roles answer in what style the person contributes.
• Understanding the roles helps to explain a disagreement between a member who hurries and one who checks details. Ways of handling such a disagreement are the concern of conflict management.

How the model differs from the Myers Briggs type indicator

Individuals are classified by their general psychological preferences in the Myers Briggs type indicator. Belbin roles describe a member’s contribution to a particular team, so a person can play one role in one team and a different role in another, according to what each team needs.

In this sense a Belbin role is not a fixed trait of the person, although measuring instruments try to record a tendency toward particular roles.

A hypothetical example: coverage of roles in a team of six

Take a hypothetical team of six members at a hypothetical establishment, with each member’s most prominent role recorded: one plant, two implementers, one shaper, one completer finisher and one teamworker. The total is 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 6 members. The roles covered are five of nine, which is 5 ÷ 9 = 55.6%, and the roles absent number 9 minus 5 = 4. They are coordinator, resource investigator, monitor evaluator and specialist.

This does not mean that the team is weak. Its work may not need all four of those roles, and some members may be performing secondary roles that were not recorded. The value of the record is that it raises questions: who coordinates the team, and who evaluates ideas before they are carried out? If an absence is real, it can be filled by assigning a member or adding one.

The figures are hypothetical and set to illustrate. They do not represent an establishment or a study, and the example does not mean that a team of six covering five roles is customary.

Where the model is limited

• Reliance on self rating. The common instruments ask individuals about themselves, and a person’s view of themselves may differ from actual behaviour.
• Debate over measurement. In 1993 Furnham, Steele and Pendleton published an evaluation of the psychometric properties of Belbin’s self rating instrument in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (volume 66, issue 3, pages 245 to 257), and Belbin replied in the same issue. We note only that a published debate exists over the validity of the instrument, and we report none of the findings of the evaluation.
• Simplification. Classifying behaviour into nine roles compresses a wider variety of behaviour.
• Difference of context. The model was formed in a particular management setting, and what is said about its roles in another work environment needs testing.
• Other factors. The model does not account for clear goals, management support or team size.

How roles can be discussed in one meeting

No long session is needed. A meeting can run as follows. This is our suggested order and not an approved procedure:

1. The members are shown a short description of each role, and each member names two roles that the member believes fit the member’s contributions in teams.
2. What the members named is written in one table in front of everyone, and colleagues are asked whether they agree, because the view of other people can balance self rating.
3. The roles that nobody named are examined, and the team asks whether its work actually needs them.
4. A specific assignment is agreed to fill each significant absence, with a date to review its effect after a short period.

The aim is that the team leaves with clearer assignments and not with a classification kept in a file. If the discussion produces no change in the distribution of work, it has become a theoretical exercise.

How the roles are misused

• Using them for final classification. An employee is labelled as cautious and is not given creative work, though the employee may be able to do it.
• Using them in hiring or promotion decisions. The instrument describes a style of cooperation, and it does not measure a person’s suitability for a particular job.
• Demanding a team balanced by number. Nine members are gathered because there are nine roles.
• Using a role as an excuse. A member says “I am a shaper” to justify pressing colleagues.
• Generalising the result of one questionnaire. The role that appears can change with the team and the task.

The role of the manager in using the roles

A manager can use the roles in a conversation with the team and not in a report about it. The manager can ask who handles the details before delivery, who tests the idea before the team commits to it, and who communicates with parties outside the team.

If a task has no owner, it is assigned to someone who does it well, and if a role is missing, someone who can fill it joins the team. This needs no paid questionnaire, because a list of the roles and questions that the members answer together can be enough.

Is there proof that balance of roles raises team performance?

We state no measured effect of the balance of Belbin roles on team performance. In the sources we reviewed, we found no published figure that we adopt for such an effect, and we propose no figure of our own. The roles are treated as a framework for questions and dialogue about team building, and the effect of any change is measured in the team concerned. Did delivery quality rise? Did project time fall? Did disagreement over who handles what decrease?

Belbin team roles remain a way of reminding those who form teams that high individual abilities do not remove the need for a variety of contributions. The roles point to a gap that can pass unnoticed, and what is decided afterwards rests on the nature of the work and on the members who are available.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.