What Is My Role?
Thankfully, there are no set roles in a team. You have to make do with what you have, and sometimes this involves taking on more than one role, depending on the size of the team. Because of this, it’s important to know the different types of roles that you may have to undertake in order to work successfully, and this includes what they are, why they’re important and what are these role weaknesses.
The Belbin Team Inventory, was devised by Raymond Meredith Belbin who is an English researcher and management consultant, who is best known for the Belbin Team Inventory. The reason for this creation was to measure preference for nine different team roles, in order to create effective team work and team management.
The Belbin Team Inventory is as follows:
PLANT
– The plant is the creative, idea-generating team member. This member is often able to come up with ideas to both create, and solve problems that the team might face.
– The issues that the plant faces are that they can often ignore incidentals. This means that they can be too focused on the main issue at hand, and not fix the smaller problems that could well be contributing to the overall difficulty of the issue. On top of this, they can also be too preoccupied to communicate effectively with other team members.
RESOURCE INVESTIGATOR
– The resource investigator is someone who will make connections with other people. They are often outgoing, enthusiastic and will want to explore potential possibilities that the team can take.
– With being a resource investigator, interest can be lost once the initial enthusiasm has passed. They can also be over-optimistic, and can set out to achieve more than what’s currently possible.
CO-ORDINATOR
– The co-ordinator will need to be mature, and not afraid of managing other team members effectively. In doing so, communicating will be an important trait, as they will need to delegate work, and clarify the goals that the team has, wants to get, and needs to achieve.
– With delegating and managing, it can be seen as manipulative if not completed correctly or fairly. This can cause rifts in teams, especially if this is added to by the co-ordinator offloading their own work onto others for the sake of ‘the team’.
SHAPER
– The shaper is often the driving force behind the team. They need to be able to thrive under pressure, be versatile and have self-confidence in their own ability. They will need to face challenges and obstacles head on, and have the courage to bounce back should they not succeed.
– Given that they will need to be driven and resilient, they can potentially hurt other people’s feelings if they assume that they’re not pulling their own weight, or are giving up too easily. They may also suffer from being relatively easy to provoke and anger, particularly if something doesn’t work as intended.
MONITOR EVALUATOR
– The monitor evaluator is the team member that will need to be grounded and strategic in reality. They will need to make assessments on all possible solutions, being able to fairly analyse and critique them with minimal bias for the best possible outcome.
– The monitor evaluator can potentially be unable to motivate other team members, and lack the drive needed to strive for a better outcome. Given the nature of their role is to judge and assess the options, they can sometimes be overly critical of certain solutions.
TEAM WORKER
– The team worker can be seen as the people pleaser of the group. They will need to be approachable, friendly, and have the ability of working with multiple people in multiple different sectors. It’s also the duty of the team worker to make sure that the other team members stay positive, and try to avoid friction and arguments.
– The main issue with being the team worker is that given the nature of the job is to please others, and make sure that they stay positive, is that during a critical decision, they can oftentimes be indecisive. Should they fail at their responsibilities, and friction and conflict does arise, they can avoid it and leave it for the other team members to solve.
IMPLEMENTER
– The implementer is a reliable, practical member of the team who turns ideas and thoughts into actions. They decide what work needs to be done.
– The implementer can be inflexible at times. This could mean that they are too focused on one idea, that they are unable to focus on another, which could be crucial. Should they respond to a new idea, whilst focused on another, they could react slowly, meaning that the idea could be redundant by the time they come to give it some thought.
COMPLETE FINISHER
– As the name might suggest, the complete finisher is the team member who polishes and perfects, looking for any errors that other team members might have missed. Because of this, the complete finisher will need to be patient, thorough, and painstakingly analytical.
– The nature of the job indicates that the complete finisher can be too anxious at times, and therefore want to find a problem even if there isn’t one. Should they find a problem, they can also be reluctant to delegate blame and therefore show a lack of good communication.
SPECIALIST
– The specialist is a single-minded individual who proves very knowledgeable about specific things. They will need to be dedicated to solving and helping where they can.
– The problem with the specialist is that they are only useful in certain instances, and even when they are useful, it’s only a specific area that they are useful in. This could result in them being entirely useless should their specialised field not need fixing at all. On top of this, they can also dwell on technicalities too much, which again, could get them out of doing work, particularly if that ‘work’ isn’t entirely related to their field
In every team you will be a part of, you should be able to categorise people into these roles, including yourself. Whilst there might not be nine team members, or there might be more, people should fit into these categories based on their personalities, work rates, and general mindsets towards work.