Belbin®  Team Role theory

Dr Meredith Belbin defined a Team Role as:

“A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate in a particular way”.

Each Team Role has its particular strengths and allowable weaknesses, and each has an important contribution to make to a team. 

Henley Management College, a pioneering management educational institute in the UK, aimed at developing those in managerial positions into effective board members and directors. It was the end of the 80’s, when the College puzzled by the way in which some teams failed to pull together, whilst other supposedly similar teams were much more effective, asked Meredith Belbin to investigate. The pursuit began and developed into a project conducted by a research team for nine years. Dr M. Belbin identified nine clusters of behaviour, termed Team Roles and proved that individuals work more effectively when there is a balance among their skills and work behaviour
(please note that we need to have behavior always and not mix it with behaviour) their skills and work behaviour
(please note that we need to have behavior always and not mix it with behaviour). 
Those participating in the study completed a battery of psychometric tests. They were then placed in teams of varying composition to take part in a complex management exercise. Participants' core personality traits, intellectual styles and behaviours were assessed during the simulation. The exercise consisted of various enterprising games where the teams in a free market would have to lead the enterprise to an advantageous position and profitability.

The Team Role discovery

Well trained observers recorded every thirty seconds the attendance and behavior of individuals in these exercises, while teams that were judged as successful, were observed even more closely. In time, the researchers were able to identify key people and their behaviors, which had played a significant part in the successful outcome.

Two key figures were revealed. The first was the person who came up with a potential winning idea. The second was the person who could recognize that contribution and make the best of it. From then on, the researchers began to recognize other useful players in the team, whose functions gave balance to the team and enabled it to perform well.