Team roles: what Belbin can teach us about a functioning team

Some teams work even though none of the members are extraordinary individually. Other teams filled with skilled individuals still stall. The difference often is not about how skilled people are individually but about how their different ways of contributing work together. It is precisely this question that Briton Meredith Belbin investigated when he developed his model for team roles.

Belbin's model describes nine team roles, which are divided into three overall groups: the action-oriented, the people-oriented and the thinking-oriented. The action-oriented roles make things happen and keep focus on deadlines and quality. The people-oriented roles ensure that collaboration works and that everyone is heard. The thinking-oriented roles contribute ideas, overview and professional depth.

• 01Action-oriented: get things done, meet deadlines, ensure quality in the final stage
• 02People-oriented: creates cohesion, brings in resources from outside, coordinates and delegates
• 03Thinking-oriented: come up with ideas, assess suggestions soberly, contribute specialist knowledge

According to Belbin, most of us have a natural inclination towards two or three of the nine roles — not just one. This means that a small team of three to four people can cover all nine roles between them if their preferred roles complement each other. However, this requires knowing each other's strengths and actually using them, rather than everyone trying to do the same.

Why stars don't always win

A point that often surprises is that a team filled with the same strong profiles — for example all idea people — often performs worse than a team with a conscious mix. Without someone who handles details or converts ideas to action even the best ideas never happen.

Belbin discovered the roles through observations of leadership groups solving the same task in simulated experiments — some groups clearly performed the task better than others, and the difference could largely be explained by how well the group's composition of roles covered the different needs the task posed.

• 01Use the model to talk about which tasks in a team lack a clear owner
• 02Ask yourself which roles you naturally gravitate towards – and which you rarely take
• 03Be aware of whether the team is missing a particular type of contribution, e.g. someone who pulls threads together or someone who challenges suggestions
• 04Use it for dialogue about cooperation, not to label colleagues

Belbin's team roles are one of several recognized approaches to understanding collaboration and group dynamics — other models look at personality, communication style or the group's development phases. What they all have in common is that they provide a language for something most team members feel but rarely put into words: that diversity, used correctly, is a strength and not a problem to be weeded out.

Context with psychological safety

Team roles only really come into their own when there is room to use them. A team where only one type of contribution is rewarded — for example, the person who talks loudest or comes up with the most ideas — risks overlooking the quiet but crucial contributions from those who pick up details or ensure everyone is heard. Psychological safety and awareness of different team roles are therefore closely linked: both are about making room for different strengths to come into play.

“A team of stars often loses to a team where roles work together.”

— About Belbin's team roles