Belbin Roles are a key way to understand how people behave in teams and how these roles create collaborative value.

Why are Belbin Roles Important?

Have you ever been on a project or in a team of any kind where there were unclear roles or too many who wanted to direct the work and not enough who wanted to do the work? Or maybe three people who wanted to debate the pros and cons of an idea endlessly?

This is why establishing Project Functional roles (Project Manager, Designer, UI developer) is important. And generally, projects have clear content roles. What is often overlooked is establishing a way of working — the human interaction dynamic. In fact, this is one aspect of the internal team's User Journey. How things get done by a team has another dimension beyond who the individuals are and what their assigned job is. 

Have you ever thought about all of the Roles you play? 

You may be a staff member and a leader at work. While at home, you may be a conductor (organizing the many family activities) or a taskmaster (focusing others on their task completion), or a coach (giving pep talks to your spouse, roommate, or others). Each of these roles demands a different side of your personality, but they don't represent who you are. They represent aspects of your behavior that can be used for a specific purpose to increase your productivity and, often, your senses of purpose. They are also the touchstones for how you interact with and are perceived by others.

So how did the idea of Team Behavioral Roles get started? 

Dr. Meredith Belbin originally identified the Team Roles based on a study. He later expanded his idea to create a method for codifying team behavior to improve project outcomes. The Belbin Roles provided the language to ensure that individuals and teams communicate and work together with greater understanding.

The Belbin Roles later were adopted by large organizations to introduce a better understanding of role-based behaviors and the team dynamic to business. Raising awareness of these natural behaviors and how they impact our work and work relationships increases productivity and reduces interpersonal friction. And a more productive environment is enjoyable for people and profitable for organizations.

This is why projects use Belbin roles. Helping projects and people mindfully understand how we each do what we do. And find our individuals roles in the group dynamic.

What are the Belbin team roles?

The Belbin Roles were designed to identify three natural role categories and nine role types. If you are a project manager or team member, you may associate these roles with some aspects of project functional roles, project activities or project phases. 

Each of these roles has the ability to maximize your way of working or team potential by determining behavior that fits you, what the strengths and weaknesses of that role may be and how this role can improve your contribution to the team. Each person generally has 2-3 roles they naturally use, 2-3 roles they can use as if needed, and some roles that do not fit them.

Which role do you gravitate toward? Do you take on different roles based on the work you are doing? The phase of the project or something else? Which are not a fit? Are you aware of your potential strengths and weaknesses? 

Which team members role behaviors do you work well, and which do you struggle with? Do you see a strength in a team members behavior style that you can benefit from?

How to increase team effectiveness with Belbin Roles?

The natural roles help not just the individual be more effective but also increase the team's productivity. Belbin understands people can recognize their own way of working and natural roles. Teams also recognize the natural roles of team members. Understanding these typical behavior patterns can help create a working “shorthand” where everyone knows what to expect from each other.  

Project Managers can balance the team's natural way of working to make sure there are not “too many cooks in the kitchen” or that naturally creative people are not given too many administrative tasks. Technically minded staff may be coached by people-oriented staff in communication before a big presentation. This team balance can create a high performing group that gets into the groove. Project “groove or flow” is that wonderful place where work is easier because the team is working seamlessly. 

Balancing a team may include team:

• Awareness of the Belbin Roles.

• Self-assessment of Personal Role choices and related strengths and weaknesses.

• And 'role reassignment' of some team members.

• An overview of how each team member's roles creates a unique user journey for that team member. And contributes to the group dynamic journey for the team as a whole.

How would the team “reassignment” work? Based on team member self-assessment, a manager may ask a team member to focus on their natural behavior to increase their performance. When adding new team members, managers can assess the team "Belbin Roles map" to assess behavior styles' gaps. This can help the manager select new staff members who represent a diverse viewpoint. This can benefit the new team member and the overall team's performance.

  Each of us is different, and so too are the roles we play in our team. Will we coordinate, inspire, or direct? Maybe our role changes during the project phases. Either way, recognizing each team member's respective contributions and the resilience this diversity provides can help any team. 

Recognizing natural behaviors may seem awkward to a project manager. However, this is one of their most important roles: ensuring optimum team dynamics for a high performing team. Projects can fail when team roles and behaviors are not accounted for. Doing so makes the project a more authentic place to work since people are valued for their unique qualities.

What are the limitations of Belbin Roles?

Belbin Roles are a powerful tool to help people work better as individuals and as a team.

However, be mindful that Belbin Roles do not:

• replace functional team roles (analyst, developer, etc.)

• reflect personalities, they codify behaviors, not values

• rank team member’s value or contribution to the team

• represent who people are, it represents how people sometimes behave in some situations

Teams working to create a product to meet the end-users' needs face another kind of challenge, as do teams working in a fluid ecosystem. Both of these teams will benefit from understanding each member's User Journey and how Belbin Roles help clarify that journey.

When can Belbin Roles improve the User Journey?

Creating something new is hard. Projects often have high expectations to be realized in little time and minimal funding.  

Optimizing the ecosystem (teams of team) can ensure every action, outcome, and deliverable counts toward the end product. The better people communicate, the more likely the chance that deliverables are first time right.  

Diverse viewpoints and behaviors can be positive or negative; it depends on how the project's culture is protected. And In fact, we should enjoy the fact we have differences, things in common, and unique life experiences. This is where the power of our diverse viewpoints comes from. 

The User Journey ecosystem can be used to see how each member maps on to the project as a whole. It can also show work handoffs, actions, and checkpoints to ensure that our way of working is optimized. 

In the case of a User experience for the project's product. The team can use Belbin Roles to consider part of the user experience. Which Persona, will use what preferred behavior when interacting with the product or service your project will create?   We will discuss is topic in the next blog: The User Journey.

Beyond Belbin understand your teams framework preferences?

Belbin is a great tool, go beyond by evaluating the best structure for your team. Team Frameworks or structures are key to how the team works. See more on this here.

In Summary:

Belbin Roles gives awareness to the different behaviors we use to communicate and execute project work. With this knowledge, we should be better able to manage our own behaviors and understand our team members. This will allow us to improve our own interpersonal skills and the team's performance.

What do you think of Belbin Roles? Have you used them before? Let me know in the comments below.