Meredith Belbin
Meredith Belbin is a British researcher
and management theorist, best known for his work on management teams. He
is a currently a Visiting Professor and Honorary Fellow of Henley
Management College in the UK.
Meredith Belbin, the British management guru, was born in 1926. A
graduate of Cambridge University, he spent his career in both industry
and academia, working for prominent boards and organisations such as the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, and
writing numerous publications. In 1988, he founded Belbin Associates
(www.belbin.com) and the trading name is now synonymous with
understanding relationships within a team.
Belbin takes the stance that it is teams, not individuals, which are the
building blocks of successful organisations. His practical experiments
on the theory that an effective business management team could be
created based purely on the applicants� IQ ratings lead to a
breakthrough in management thinking after the �genius group� was found
to have serious unpredicted weaknesses. Examples are: lack of
collaboration between team members, egocentric viewpoints and
overcritical analysis of others� ideas, which gave rise to the term �The
Apollo Syndrome�.
Meredith Belbin concluded that a team is made up of nine critical roles
(Team
Role Model):
* The Completer
* The Coordinator
* The Implementer
* The Monitor/Evaluator
* The Plant
* The Resource Investigator
* The Shaper
* The Specialist
* The Team Worker
To the contrary of some who like to compare the nine roles to the eight
personality types of Jung, Belbin maintains that they are clusters of
characteristics that cannot be rationalised so simply.
Over the years, Belbin has published a series of books, including
Management Teams: Why the succeed or fail (1984), in support of his
developing theories, which became more popular as the team culture
flourished through the 1990s.
Early Life and Work of Meredith Belbin
Dr. Raymond Meredith Belbin was born in
1926. He took both his first and second degrees at Cambridge University.
His first appointment after his doctorate was as a research fellow at
Cranfield College (now Cranfield School of Management at Cranfield
University). His early research focussed mainly on older workers in
industry. He returned to Cambridge and joined the Industrial Training
Research Unit and it was while he was there, in the late 1960s, that he
was invited to carry out research at what was then called the
Administrative Staff College at Henley-on-Thames. The work which formed
the basis of his 1981 classic took several years and, after publication,
it was some time before its real importance was recognised. In 1988,
Belbin established, with his son Nigel, Belbin Associates to publish and
promote his research.
Belbin's Research
Meredith Belbin's 1981 book Management
Teams presented conclusions from his work studying how members of teams
interacted during business games run at Henley Management College.
Amongst his key conclusions was the proposition that an effective team
has members that cover nine key roles in managing the team and how it
carries out its work. This may be separate from the role each team
member has in carrying out the work of the team.
Plant
A creative, imaginative, unorthodox
team-member who solves difficult problems. Although they sometimes
situate themselves far from the other team members, they always come
back to present their 'brilliant' idea.
Resource Investigator
The "Resource Investigator" is the
networker for the group. Whatever the team needs, the Resource
Investigator is likely to have someone in their address book who can
either provide it or know someone else who can provide it. This may be
physical, financial or human resources, political support, information
or ideas. Being highly driven to make connections with people, the
Resource Investigator may appear to be flighty and inconstant, but their
ability to call on their connections is highly useful to the team.
Chairman (1981) / Co-ordinator (1988)
The "Chairman/Co-ordinator" ensures
that all members of the team are able to contribute to discussions and
decisions of the team. Their concern is for fairness and equity among
team members. Those who want to make decisions quickly, or unilaterally,
may feel frustrated by their insistence on consulting with all members,
but this can often improve the quality of decisions made by the team.
Shaper
A dynamic team-member who loves a
challenge and thrives on pressure. This member possesses the drive and
courage required to overcome obstacles.
Monitor-Evaluator
A sober, strategic and discerning
member, who tries to see all options and judge accurately. This member
contributes a measured and dispassionate analysis and, through
objectivity, stops the team committing itself to a misguided task.
Team Worker
The "Team Worker" is concerned to
ensure that interpersonal relationships within the team are maintained.
They are sensitive to atmospheres and may be the first to approach
another team member who feels slighted, excluded or otherwise attacked
but has not expressed their discomfort. The Team Worker's concern with
people factors can frustrate those who are keen to move quickly, but
their skills ensure long-term cohesion within the team.
Company Worker (1981) / Implementer
(1988)
The "Implementer" is the practical
thinker who can create systems and processes that will produce what the
team wants. Taking a problem and working out how it can be practically
addressed is their strength. Being strongly rooted in the real world,
they may frustrate other team members by their perceived lack of
enthusiasm for inspiring visions and radical thinking, but their ability
to turn those radical ideas into workable solutions is important.
Completer Finisher
The "Completer Finisher" is the detail
person within the team. They have a great eye for spotting flaws and
gaps and for knowing exactly where the team is in relation to its
schedule. Team members who have less preference for detail work may be
frustrated by their analytical and meticulous approach, but the work of
the Completer Finisher ensures the quality and timeliness of the output
of the team.
Specialist (1988)
Belbin later added a ninth role, the
"Specialist", who brings 'specialist' knowledge to the team.
Practical Implications
Based on Belbin's model of
nine team roles, managers or organisations building working teams
would be advised to ensure that each of the roles can be performed by a
team member. Some roles are compatible and can be more easily fulfilled
by the same person; some are less compatible and are likely to be done
well by people with different behavioural clusters. This means that a
team need not be as many as nine people, but perhaps should be at least
three or four.
While comparisons can be drawn between Belbin's behavioural team roles
and personality types, it is important to remember that the roles
represent tasks and functions in the self-management of the team's
activities. Tests exist to identify your ideal team roles, but this does
not preclude an extravert from being a Completer Finisher, nor an
introvert from being a Resource Investigator.
Criticisms of the Team Roles Model
While Belbin's team roles model has become world famous and is taught as
a standard part of much management training, there are possible
criticisms of both the model itself and the way it is sometimes used.
The research which identified these roles was conducted on established
executives studying at the Administrative Staff College at Henley (now
re-named Henley Management College); they were selected for the
prestigious course by their firms who had identified them as high-fliers
expected to go on to senior management. The sample was therefore already
highly selective. Belbin himself points out in his book that many people
that might otherwise have made excellent managers might have de-selected
themselves from attending the programme.
The exercises given consisted of a game designed to simulate business
decision-making with an emphasis on generating profit in a fictitious
company, and a version of Monopoly specially adapted to remove the
chance elements and enable groups to play in teams against other teams.
While Belbin draws on examples from real organisations, the development
of the model is based on the behaviour of subjects in the artificial
environment of the business school exercise.
Some people teach that all eight/nine roles must be present for a team
to function well. Belbin himself acknowledges that some teams consisting
of one Shaper and a group of "yes" men perform well, especially where
predictability was high. His book identifies a number of combinations
that performed well in the exercises, especially where the teams were
aware of "missing" roles within their ranks.
Some people attempt to match Belbin's roles with Carl Jung's eight
personality types, with the nine types of the Enneagram of Personality
or another personality type classification. Belbin is at pains to point
out that the team roles are not personality types. He regards them as
are clusters of characteristics, of which psychological preference is
but one dimension.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Belbin
http://www.mangurus.com/sections/gurus/?article_id=meredith_belbin&selected_seq_num=7
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