Improve your skills
Try this: What’s your team role?:
Have a look at this table of Belbin’s team roles:
| Role type | Description | Characteristics |
|---|---|---|
| Implementer | Likes to get on with the team's task(s) and sort out practical details | Dutiful, practical and quite cautious; predictable and sometimes inflexible |
| Coordinator | Encourages team members to make their point but keeps the team going in the right direction | Calm, self-confident and supportive; does not get involved in matters of detail |
| Shaper | Provides drive and energy to the team's work, but can try to influence it with their own views | Outgoing, dynamic, challenging; impatient and sometimes provocative |
| Plant | Offers lots of imaginative ideas or specialist knowledge to the task | Creative thinker, often unorthodox; likes to work alone and not very practical |
| Resource investigator | Provides lots of information and has lots of useful contacts | Highly communicative, enthusiastic and curious; easily bored |
| Monitor/Evaluator | Likes to observe and measure how well the team are doing | Prudent, hard-headed and a good judge; at times rather unemotional |
| Teamworker | Does things to keep up team spirit or morale | Socially orientated, sensitive and responsive; sometimes indecisive |
| Completer/Finisher | Makes sure that all tasks are finished off completely | Painstaking, orderly, conscientious; can be anxious and find it difficult to ‘let go’ |
It is important to bear in mind that Belbin's roles are not something anyone is born into. They do not mean that, if you spot one or more of the characteristics in yourself or others, you must maintain a certain role. The roles are rather like acting roles in that they can be chosen and played. Indeed, in many groups – of smaller than eight people – some members need to play more than one role, switching between roles according to the needs of the team and the task. Changing roles from time to time is not only possible, but sometimes necessary as we change jobs and teams. Having said this, most people do tend to have a preferred first role, one that they feel most comfortable with. Can you recognise from the descriptions and characteristics in the table which role you would tend to feel comfortable with? Could you manage to play any of the other roles without too much of a problem?
Try this
This activity asks you to reflect honestly on your own experiences. In particular, it asks you to consider how some of the ideas you have just read about interpersonal skills may help you to develop a better understanding of your experiences.
Think of a project or an activity in which you worked as part of a group or team. Then do the following tasks:
Write a short paragraph of no more than three sentences briefly describing the project or activity.
Write another short paragraph of no more than three sentences identifying from the descriptions and characteristics in the table which role(s) you played in the activity? Bear in mind that in small groups some people have to play more than one role.
Write another short paragraph of no more than four sentences, commenting on how effective communications were between the members of the group or team and identify any barriers. Bear in mind what you have read about the communications process and interpersonal relationships for this task.
Think about this
In completing the activity you may have looked at the boxes headed ‘Characteristics’ in the table to give you an idea of the type of role you may have played. Think about which of the characteristics most closely match yours? It is likely that you will find your characteristics in more than one box, which indicates that you may have taken on more than one role. How about the other members of the group or team? Is there anyone else you clearly recognise from the descriptions and characteristics?
For the last part you may have generally agreed that communications were good, or you may remember particular problems. The important thing is to recognise why you think communications were or were not effective, based on what you have read.
To find out more about interpersonal Skills try the Open University OpenLearn Unit – The Importance of Interpersonal Skills