Team Roles

Roles in the team

During the confrontation phase, roles are checked out and distributed. Roles arise from personalities, inclinations, and group composition. Sometimes an individual has several roles. It can also happen that one has to fill a role in order to close a gap

Belbin's roles

According to Belbin[1], teams work effectively when they are made up of a variety of heterogeneous personality and role types, and he distinguishes three main orientations in his outline, which in turn each encompass three of the nine team roles:

The Innovator/Inventor (Plant)

• Characteristics: The Inventor is introverted, creative, imaginative, and possesses unorthodox thinking. He brings new ideas and strategies to the discussion and seeks alternative solutions.
• Strengths: His special skills lie mainly in finding solutions to difficult problems.
• Weaknesses: As he tends to ignore details and side issues, he makes mistakes in accuracy as a consequence. Moreover, he is difficult to criticize.
• Application: Inventors should focus on their high problem-solving potential and the ability to develop new strategies, while also taking into account the ideas of the other team members

The Trailblazer/Director (Resource Investigator)

• Characteristics: The Resource Investigator is extroverted, enthusiastic and communicative. They make friends quickly and are social and gregarious
• Strengths: He finds it easy to establish and use useful contacts with sources outside the team. Furthermore, he finds new opportunities and alternative solutions
• Weaknesses: Switchers are often too optimistic and easily lose interest after initial enthusiasm. They also tend to become preoccupied with irrelevant things, which is why they digress from the core topic.
• Scope: Trailblazers should intensively cultivate contacts with the world outside the team and use the sources thus found intensively für their idea generation.

The Coordinator/Integrator (Co-Ordinator)

• Characteristics: The Coordinator is self-confident, decisive and communicative and a good listener. He coordinates the work process, sets goals and priorities, recognizes relevant problems and delegates tasks to those colleagues who are best suited to complete them. He pays attention to the compliance with external target and time specifications.
• Weaknesses: His colleagues can often perceive him as manipulative. This can lead them to distance themselves from the coordinator, especially on a personal level. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that he also tends to delegate personal tasks
• Application: People with the characteristics of a coordinator are suitable v.a. as team leaders, whose tasks should lie in the coordination and allocation of the subject areas.

The Doer (Shaper)

• Characteristics: The doer is dynamic, energetic, and constantly under pressure, rejecting vague and inaccurate statements and focusing on the essential core problems.
• Strong: He challenges his colleagues and takes responsibility quickly. He formulates sub-goals, seeks structures, ensures für rasch decision-making and causes tasks to be completed immediately.
• Shapers: Shapers tend to be provocative and get into arguments with their teammates easily, but are not vindictive. They are perceived as arrogant, especially by observers outside the team. They also cause unrest within the team due to their hectic demeanor.
• Application: Doers fühlen themselves in a team of peers most comfortable. As soon as they have to take a leadership position, increased control and coordination are necessary, which require a high degree of self-discipline, especially for this role type. Here, too, the concentration and the use of the strengths are useful.

The Observer (Monitor Evaluator)

• Characteristics: The Observer is nüchtern, strategic, analytical. He gets a good ¨overview from a distance, is rather introverted and rarely takes the floor without prompting.
• Strengths: The Monitor Evaluator takes into account all relevant possibilities and has good judgment.
• Weaknesses: He is hardly able to motivate others due to lack of enthusiasm, tends to lose interest after criticism has been made and can be perceived as tactless and condescending by teammates.
• Operating: The observer should make sure that his opinion is heard. He accomplishes this by trying to be less cynical and skeptical.

The team worker/co-player (team worker)

• Characteristics: Teamworkers are personable, popular, communicative, diplomatic, and often know the private backgrounds of their colleagues.
• Strengths: They provide a pleasant working atmosphere and harmony, which is why they can also be called the "social soul" of the team. Team workers avoid rivalry and have the ability to motivate even introverted colleagues to participate more actively
• Weaknesses: You are indecisive in critical situations and tend to leave decisions to others.
• Application: The presence of team workers is particularly significant in conflict situations, where they can use their diplomatic skills to settle disagreements. They often act helping from the background and are responsible for the contribution of social services.

The Implementor

• Characteristics: The implementor is reliable, conservative and disciplined. He works efficiently, systematically and methodically.
• Strong: Implementers convert concepts into feasible workplaces, need stable structures and therefore also work on building them.
• Weaknesses: You are critical of environmental changes and often react inflexibly to new solution proposals.
• Scope: Implementers should be responsible for defining a clear objective, practical approaches, and structuring the approach.

The Perfectionist (Completer)

• Characteristics: The Completer is perfectionistic, accurate, punctual, reliable, and anxious.
• Strengths: He avoids mistakes and ensures that timelines are met and also pays attention to details.
• Weakness: For fear that something will be übersehen, überprüf and control he prefers to personally ünlich, rather than delegate. He is often üanxious and too meticulous, which can cause him to lose üoverview.
• Area of application: Completers make an important contribution especially when the team runs the risk of working too superficially or not meeting time targets.

The Specialist (Specialist) - complemented character by Belbin

• Characteristics: The Specialist is self-focused, dedicated and concentrated on the technical/expert part of a subject. He has extensive expert knowledge, background information and skills that the other team members lack.
• Strengths: He reformulates general statements into the technically correct terms and makes the professional contribution to the respective topic.
• Schwächen: Specialists tend to get lost in technical details and therefore tend to make only informative contributions.
• Scope: The function of specialists is to compensate for information deficits of the team and to contribute the necessary expertise.

References

[1] http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8