The Belbin Team Role model is a way of measuring preferred behaviour when working within a team. There are no right or wrong answers, and no particular Team Role is ‘better’ than any others. The underlying idea is to understand your or your team’s behavioural strengths and allowable weaknesses, and hence use them to best effect.
Understanding preferred roles is an eye-opener for most people. At last they are able to understand why their past teams succeeded or failed. They also are fascinated by learning their own preferred roles and the strengths and weaknesses that are implied. There is a sense of liberation in realising that they have weaknesses because they have strengths…and that these weaknesses are okay as long as they are managed. In fact, the strategies described suggest there are no bad traits, just roles which need to be comprehended to make teams effective.
Most importantly, a team needs to be aware of each individual’s preferred role(s) and use that knowledge to make the team more effective.
Use the downloads below to run a team development session.
Downloads
Belbin Model prework 1 (questionnaire)
This is a questionnaire which needs to be completed before the group exercise. Send this out to the participants, collect the results and use the results template to determine the role types. Just click enable editing
Belbin Model prework 2 (reading)
This is some pre reading that accompanies prework 1 and is to be read before the group exercise. Ask the participants to read and bring this along on the day of the meeting.
Belbin model results template
Use this template to capture the results from the questionnaire (pre work 1). This will determine the personality type of each person in the team. Follow the instructions on the "instructions" tab and complete by enable editing.
Belbin's Model results explanation
This document can be used at a group discussion. You could include a graph which summarises the analysis and shows the distribution of the roles. If not needed then just delete the red text.Just enable editing to use.
Belbin's Model Team Roles explained
A table view of the team roles showing allowable and non allowable weaknesses