It matters a lot how you compose your team. You should take into consideration not only job title and the tasks they’ll be responsible for but also a personality in order to give them space for dynamic and valuable work.
It’s not a secret that actual using people’s strengths make them more engaged and efficient in work. Connect right people with the tasks and find a balance in your team!
What’s important – don’t try to guess the roles but find it out by official tests developed by Belbin, http://www.belbin.com/.
Dr. Meredith Belbin, a British researcher and management theorist said that “Simply putting a number of people together and expecting them to work as a team is not enough.” He defined a team role as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way” and named nine key clusters of behaviour of individuals.”
The nine team roles are categorized into three groups: People Oriented, Thought Oriented and Action Oriented. To have a successful team each of the nine Team Roles should be present but it doesn’t mean that you’re team has to consist of nine teamers. Belbin’s theory assumes that individuals can act more than one role in the team.
Team roles are closely related to our typical behavioral acts and personal attributes.
Having in a team people who perform in a very similar way can translate to unbalance. You can counteract by using Belbin team roles model as a tool for analysing weaknesses and strengths and managing your team’s difficulties as well. What’s more it can be helpful for you to develop your personal skills as a team member.
People Oriented
Coordinator (CO) referred to as a mature and confident person who can effectively delegates tasks and responsibilities. Coordinators guide the team to the goals.
One of the potential weaknesses is that they can be seen as manipulative.
Team Worker (TW) have an excellent capacity for adapting to different people and situations. They avoid conflicts and support other people within the team what make the work more effective. Team Workers are perceptive, diplomatic and cooperative.
In crunch situations they’re indecisive which can be seen as a weakness.
Resource Investigator (RI) is enthusiastic, communicative and outgoing. They are perceived as natural negotiators who easily explore new opportunities and developing contacts. Finding out the available resources is their domain and specialization.
Resource Investigators tend to be over-optimistic. They lose interest when the initial enthusiasm has passed.
Thought Oriented
Plant is a type of person who propose new ideas and approaches. Perceived as a creative and free-thinking innovators. Because they prefer to act by themselves they are also independent. It is an often practice that Plants are often involved in first steps of projects or when there’s no progress in work.
Allowable weaknesses is that they ignore incidentals and may also be poor communicators as they’re too preoccupied.
Monitor-Evaluators domain is analyzing and evaluating ideas of other. They are sober and strategic; their decision is based on many factor they firstly analysed. Monitor Evaluators are regarded as over-critical and even boring.
The potential weaknesses is also lack ability to inspire other.
Specialist are providers of specialized skills and knowledge essential for the project. Being an expert in their area often guide them to the professionality but in the same time can be seen as contributing only on a narrow front.
Action Oriented
Shapers are dynamic, thrives on pressure and goal oriented people. They push the team to overcome obstacle by the determination. Many people are impressed by their courage and leadership style. Sharpers look for challenges and urge others to get things going.
They tend to be provocative and can offend other’s feelings.
Implementer
Is a person who turns ideas into action and drives the team. Because of being task-oriented and practical he/she takes care about the things which need to be done. Sometimes can be seen as slow and not ready for new (unclear yet) ideas.
Completer-Finisher
As the name suggests he/she takes care about finishing the task. They’re perfectionists who make sure that the project (or a task) is done right way. It’s a person who monitor the quality by checking and focusing on the details. His/her contribution to the team can be also in doing risk analyses. Sometimes can be too worried and overprotective; have a difficulties with delegating tasks to others.
Many of companies pay attention of team building and it’s good to realise that the integration in teams can have better dynamic also when each of the team member perform in according to personality and predispositions. Deeper knowledge about each character, its strengths and weaknesses will revenue by connecting right people with particular tasks.
Working under diverse conditions, doing various kind of things and taking new responsibilities can cause the ‘evolution’ of our role. To be precise after some time we can naturally transform differently and get away from the characteristic which we used be.
About Romeo Man:
Romeo Man is a Business Automation specialist and founder of MAN Digital. If you can get him on your side, you’ll start attracting the right people and converting them to customers with a custom-built sales funnel built on data, not hunches. Find out how he does it at MAN.Digital, and follow him @RomeoMan
