Understanding your team

There are many theories that attempt to identify the skills necessary to make a team operate at its optimum capacity. Generally, a team needs a mixture of personalities and skills to function effectively. Over the years, there have been a number of studies conducted and I would like to discuss with you the team building theory pioneered by Belbin in the early 1980’s.

Belbin observed that different people naturally undertook one of 8 different roles when working in a team. Charles Margerisson and Dick McCann continued on with the research and identified 8 key roles that they believed to be essential for high performance.

• Reporter Adviser - has a preference for gathering and reporting information for the team.
• Creator Innovator – the team experimenter and ideas person.
• Explorer Promoter – the team salesperson, who enjoys exploring and presenting opportunities.
• Assessor Developer – likes to assess and test ideas and approaches.
• Thruster Organizer – is the team organiser, the person that ‘makes things happen’.
• Concluder Producer – enjoys bringing tasks to a conclusion.
• Controller Inspector – prefers controlling and auditing work for the team.
• Upholder Maintainer – works hard to uphold team standards and systems.

More recently, T-Mobile commissioned Honey Langcaster-James to research workplace motivation and she came back with the following results.

Honey identified 8 different team roles (or typologies) during her research that she felt described the behaviour of most individuals when working in a team. She identified these roles as:

• Mother Hen – nurturing, approachable and empathic.
• Cool Dude – unfazed by things and has a calming influence.
• Realist – pragmatic, logical and able to see through spin.
• Geek – technically minded, quiet, good with detail
• Joker – sociable and witty.
• Cheerleader – enthusiastic and optimistic.
• Link – sociable and flighty, and believes it’s all about ‘who you know’.
• Innovator – creator of big ideas.

Whether you subscribe to either theory or not, it is easy to see that the two studies have some things in common. For example, all researchers agree that teams which contain people of the same ‘type’ will not be as successful as those which contain a mixture of personalities and skills. A team full of ‘ideas people’ may well come up with inspiring and creative ideas but will invariably fail because their focus will be on generating more fantastic ideas rather than selecting the best ones and seeing them through to completion.

While the most successful teams have a mix of people with different role preferences, the downside is that they may disagree due to a conflict in natures and the common goal is lost in office politics. Team development theories can therefore help identify personality and skills traits and help the team understand and appreciate their individual difference. Skilled management programmes can help cultivate these relationships and make them more effective and productive.

In today’s uncertain economic climate, any manager worth their salt will want the very best from their team. No one wants to be managing a group of individuals that are constantly competing and eroding each other’s morale and ultimately, performance. Competition in this sense is not healthy and should be discouraged. Whichever theories you believe suit your team and workplace most, they can play a valuable role in helping to enhance team motivation.