Assessments

What are the nine Belbin team roles?

• The social roles - Resource Investigator, Team Worker, Chairperson
• The thinking roles - Plant, Monitor-Evaluator, Specialist
• Task roles - Shaper, Implementer, Caretaker

Below is a brief, clear description of each role, including strengths and possible weaknesses:

1. Chairperson (Coordinator)
• Strengths: Leading, organizing, delegating, keeping the team together.
• Weaknesses: Can come across as dominant or lazy (lets others do the work).
2. Shaper
• Strengths: Drives the team forward, keeps up the momentum, stress-resistant.
• Weaknesses: Can be blunt, impatient, or confrontational.
3. Plant (Idea generator)
• Strengths: Creative, original, solves difficult problems.
• Weaknesses: Sometimes gets lost in theories, forgets details, communicates vaguely.
4. Monitor / Evaluator
• Strengths: Analyzes logically, makes balanced decisions, critical thinking.
• Weaknesses: Can come across as too critical, distant, or passive.
5. Caretaker (Completer Finisher)
• Strengths: Perfectionist, eye for detail, finishes things neatly.
• Weaknesses: Overprotective, has difficulty letting go, micromanages.
6. Teamworker
• Strengths: Promotes a good atmosphere, ensures harmony, empathetic.
• Weaknesses: Can be indecisive, avoids conflict too much.
7. Implementer
• Strengths: Practical, reliable, turns plans into action.
• Weaknesses: Rigid, inflexible, resistant to change.
8. Resource Investigator
• Strengths: Enthusiastic, easily makes contacts, seizes opportunities.
• Weaknesses: Loses interest quickly, does not always follow through.
9. Specialist
• Strengths: In-depth knowledge, expertise, essential for professional input.
• Weaknesses: Tunnel vision, limited to own field of expertise.

Could you put together a team that was guaranteed to be successful based on a number of individual personality tests?

According to Belbin, the success or failure of a team has everything to do with the psychological characteristics of the team members. Based on those characteristics, people develop a favorite team role. How someone behaves in a team is determined by six factors:

• personality
• mental skills
• values and motivation
• environmental influences
• experience
• ability to play other roles

Belbin concludes that the best team results are achieved in teams with a balanced composition, in which team members with different personality traits complement or correct each other.

Belbin sees the most important factors contributing to team failure as the absence of essential team roles (particularly the plant), competing team roles, conflicting team roles, or a division of tasks within the team that is poorly suited to the natural team roles of its members. The latter can occur when portfolios within the team are divided based on the professional experience of team members, whereby, for example, the talents of the creative plant are insufficiently utilized when he is assigned the role of secretary.

According to Belbin, the best team workers distinguish themselves by good timing and pacing of their input, the ability to take on different team roles in different situations, and the willingness to take on unpopular tasks.

It should be clear that no one fulfills one role 100%. Anyone who is 100% a shaper is a disturbed, troubled soul who should be institutionalized. No, people actually always possess a mixture of characteristics. That mixture means that some people mainly take on the chair role and others mainly take on the plant role. You can also see this when you take the test developed by Belbin. The result is a kind of diagram that shows how the roles are distributed among you.

In summary:

• No role is "better" than another.
• In a balanced team, multiple roles are represented.
• Everyone usually has 1-2 dominant roles and can adapt reasonably well to some others.

Would you like to know which roles suit you best? Or are you conducting a team analysis? Take the test.