5 Identifying roles in team tasks
Re-read Case study 1 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] from Week 3, where Mark described how his team completed their task of interviewing people in France.
In Activity 6, you’ll apply what you’ve learned about Belbin’s behavioural model to the individuals in the case study.
Activity 6 Identifying strengths and weaknesses
Consider the different personalities involved in Mark’s team and identify their strengths and weaknesses. If you had to compare them to the 9 team roles Belbin describes, which role do you think would best describe each of them?
| Positive traits | Negative traits | Possible Belbin identifying team role | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sam | |||
| Mark | |||
| Ahmed |
Comment
You may have come up with something like this:
| Positive traits | Negative traits | Possible Belbin identifying team role | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sam | Coming up with ideas; confident to have a go; confident in front of people and meeting people | Does not think things out strategically so can waste time | Plant/Resource investigator |
| Mark | Keeping the task on track and ensuring the job got done in the time; smooth over disagreements between other team members | Not an ideas person or strategist | Co-ordinator/Team worker |
| Ahmed | Considers and plans strategy for success | Strategic thinking may take too long to complete task in time allocated | Implementer/Monitor/Evaluator |
Don’t worry if you did not use the same Belbin identifier for each of these characters. As noted before, many of these roles overlap and it can be hard to put one person in just one of the roles.
When you considered your own preferred team style you may have found it difficult to identify just one that seemed like a good fit for you. This does not matter. The key here is to understand that different personalities all bring something to a group task. If the group was made up of people who were all the same, while this may be very comfortable and lead to fewer disagreements, it may not lead to the best results. Each person in the case study brought different skills and strengths and it was only by recognising and making use of these that the task was performed so well.
Before you finish this week’s learning, spend a few minutes reflecting on teams you have been part of. Can you identify some of the team roles that people have played? Would the team have worked better with a different mix of people or did the mix of people within the team contribute to the success of the team effort? Record your thoughts and any examples you have to evidence this in the toolkit (Use this link to open the toolkit in a new tab or window and come back here when you are done).
If the various activities have allowed you to identify any additional roles that you have played yourself in different teams, go back to Activity 1 and add them to the mind map in your toolkit.