Research by management authority Raymond Meredith Belbin has shown that the most successful teams are made up of employees with a variety of behaviors. In total, he identified nine such types, which he called “team roles.”
To become highly effective, a team must engage in each of the nine behavioral roles. However, this does not mean that the team must have nine people. Most employees will have two or three team roles in which they are most comfortable. Over time, these roles may even change. Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses, but they are all equally important.
Team roles
These roles are not always needed by the team at the same time: first, the goals must be defined, and only then decide which team roles will be needed to achieve them. Using the Belbin method, you can realize your strengths, assemble a productive team, or improve relationships within an existing team.
- Resource Investigator.
His inquisitive nature helps him find ideas to share with the team.
Strengths: communication skills, enthusiasm. Explores opportunities and develops contacts.
Acceptable Weaknesses: May be overly optimistic, may lose interest in a project once initial enthusiasm wears off.
- Soul of the team (Team Worker).
Helps team members work together, leverages their versatility, and prioritizes tasks.
Strengths: Collaboration, insight and diplomacy. Able to listen, smooths out rough edges in communication.
Acceptable Weaknesses: May be indecisive in critical situations and tends to avoid confrontation. May hesitate when making unpopular decisions.
- Coordinator.
Focuses on team tasks, encourages employees to work and delegates responsibilities correctly.
Strengths: Maturity, self-confidence, ability to identify talent and clarify tasks.
Acceptable Weaknesses: May be manipulative and over-delegate, leaving little work for oneself.
- Idea generator (Plant).
He is generally creative and good at solving problems in unconventional ways.
Strengths: creativity, imagination, free thinking. Generates ideas and solves complex problems.
Acceptable Weaknesses: May ignore unexpected expenses, often too busy to communicate effectively. Can be absent-minded and forgetful.
- Analyst-strategist (Monitor Evaluator).
Has a logical view of things, judges everything impartially and soberly evaluates the solution options proposed by the team.
Strengths: Sound-minded, strategic, insightful.
Acceptable Weaknesses: He sometimes lacks drive and the ability to inspire others, and can be overly critical. He thinks for a long time before expressing his opinion.
- Specialist.
Gives the team in-depth knowledge in an important area.
Strengths: Purposeful and selfless. Provides specialized knowledge and skills.
Acceptable Weaknesses: Often highly specialized and may obsess over technical details. Overloads colleagues with information.
- Motivator (Shaper).
Provides the necessary drive that allows the team to move and not lose focus.
Strengths: Complex and dynamic employee, thrives under pressure. Has the drive and courage to overcome difficulties.
Acceptable weaknesses: may be prone to provocations, sometimes even offends other people's feelings.
- Implementer.
Plans a workable strategy and executes it as efficiently as possible.
Strengths: practical, reliable, efficient. Transforms ideas into actions and organizes work.
Acceptable Weaknesses: Lacks flexibility, slow to respond to new opportunities.
- Completer Finisher.
They are most effectively used at the end of a job to polish it and carefully check for errors. Follows the highest quality control standards.
Strengths: attentive, conscientious, anxious. Finds errors, polishes and improves the product.
Acceptable Weaknesses: May be prone to excessive worrying, reluctant to delegate authority.
Staff and team
Psychologists pay special attention to the study of two groups - the collective and the team.
Team
- this is a group of people, representing a part of society, united by joint activities, subordinate to the goals of this society. The idea of collectivism was developed in Russian science by A. S. Makarenko.
A group can be considered a collective if we observe in it a voluntary association of people in order to achieve a certain socially approved goal, a distribution of functions between members, a transparent structure of leadership and management, a form of mutual understanding between people that ensures the development of the individual only in accordance with the idea of the collective, thanks to mutual demands and responsibility. The team presupposes the priority of the public over the individual. Collectives flourished to their maximum in Russia during the Soviet period, since they corresponded to the maximum extent with the tasks of the ideology that existed at that time.
So, team
- This is the highest level of development of the group, subordinated to a rigid ideology.
If this ideology has a religious context, then such groups are most often called sects
.
In organizational psychology there is such a concept as work collective and structure. In addition, in recent decades it has become common to talk about teams created in organizations. The common factor among all these formations is that they are all groups. The main difference lies in the principle of interaction.
A production team brings together people engaged in solving a common production problem.
The structure is a collection of employees registered in a network company and linked to a specific information sponsor.
A team is a group of people with specific functional roles, united by a common goal, ethics and attributes, that is, having special features that distinguish it from others.
Team formation
Today, many modern organizations prefer the team management style, considering it a new method of working with subordinates. But the ideas for this method appeared quite a long time ago, in the middle of the last century.
Even before the outbreak of World War II, Harvard University professor Elton Mayo, in the course of scientific experiments, found that almost all hired employees believe: “The main thing in a team is a sense of team, a sense of community.” As a result, a new term has emerged in management science: “team sense.”
A team is a group of people with specific functional roles, united by a common goal, ethics and attributes, that is, having special features that distinguish it from others.
In addition to those specified in the definition, the characteristics of a team include complementary skills, a high level of interdependence, and the sharing of responsibility by all team members for achieving the final results.
The main difference between teams and traditional formal work groups is the presence of synergistic
effect. We are talking about the presence of a synergistic effect when the combination of common efforts produces a greater effect than the sum of individual actions.
In organizational practice, there are two main types of teams:
Cross-functional,
formed for a certain time from representatives of different departments to solve a common problem and
intact,
created from representatives of one department and existing permanently (for example, a work team).
The need to form teams is determined by the nature of the task being performed. There are three types of tasks:
1. simple tasks of a technical nature;
2. ordinary tasks with a moderate degree of uncertainty;
3. assignments with a high degree of uncertainty and relatively complex problems that are important to all stakeholders.
To perform the first type of tasks, people require only some social skills, and they are performed well by employees working independently of each other. To complete tasks of the second type, employees need general information and ideas, which they can obtain through moderate cooperation if they have negotiation and coordination skills. And only to complete tasks of the third type requires a high level of teamwork skills.
Having determined the need for a team, you should begin to form it. In this case you need:
1. determine the purpose of the command;
2. formulate its goals;
3. set tasks;
4. define the role of the team;
5. develop group norms.
The moment of formation for a team is an energetically charged period. The novelty of situations and relationships generate an excess of human energy. But despite this excess, there is usually not enough energy for a long time. Where does she go? First of all, to overcome internal contradictions and doubts, to work together. And only after the successful completion of these processes can one expect to increase the team’s efficiency by incorporating a “synergetic effect.”
The main stages of team development are shown in the diagram:
At the “formation” stage
» tasks have already been defined, but there is no tool for their implementation - a team as such. The most important role here is played by the manager (leader). He selects and introduces employees to each other, creates an atmosphere of ease, he determines the roles they will play, he organizes all the work until the team members get used to working together.
At this stage, the team is not yet a team. It can rather be described as a working group.
A work group is a group of individuals from whom no significant increase in productivity or capabilities is required. Group members interact primarily to exchange information, work experience, or to gain perspective and make decisions to help each person work within his or her area of responsibility.
Having quickly passed this stage of development, the group enters the “seething” phase and becomes a pseudo-team.
Pseudo teams have the lowest performance indicators. Their sum of the whole is less than the potential of its parts, and their methods of work reduce the individual productivity of each member
Seething
- the most difficult phase. Group members become impatient due to lack of progress. This is a period of accusations and defenses against them, clashes, suspicion, tension and hostility. The team struggles to define its mission, its goals, the roles played by team members, and agreements on how to work together. Productivity either falls or increases.
During the simmering stage, a team leader can help successfully resolve disputes that arise during this stage by listening to concerns, facilitating the exchange of ideas, and encouraging the team to achieve its goals. At such a point, the team may reject the established leader and determine an alternative way to manage its affairs.
If the team manages to survive this stage, then it moves to the next level.
At the next stage, a “potential team” is formed, which roughly corresponds to a team that is in a transitional stage from the “seething” phase to the “normalizing”
. Team members recognize the need for productive work and make serious attempts to influence it, but they still lack clarity of purpose, discipline and shared responsibility (“norms”).
During the norming stage, the leader must convince the team that establishing shared norms actually promotes effective performance. The time spent developing and adopting new rules by which the team is going to work will more than pay off later. At this stage, the leader needs to help team members align individual aspirations with common goals and values.
From the moment the “norms” are formed and accepted, the potential team turns into a real team.
A real team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common direction, goals and work approach for which they feel mutually accountable. Such a team is at the functioning stage.
At the "functioning"
the team does the very job for which it was created. This is the most productive stage, where each team member realizes their abilities and capabilities. Team leader behaviors at this stage include the following: approving, evaluating, reducing coaching, and listening to helpful feedback.
Strengthening the integration process, which generates a deep interest in the personal development and success of each team member, can lead it to the level of a highly effective team. A high-performing team is a real team whose members are super-committed to doing teamwork.
However, sooner or later the team comes to the next (last) stage of its functioning - change
or separation. This is the last stage of the team’s work, but no less important. The goals have already been achieved, and all tasks have been successfully completed, now it is necessary to summarize the work done. Each team member must understand how successfully he completed all tasks, what new things he learned from communicating with colleagues, what new skills or competencies he acquired.
The team leader should reduce the tension associated with change and transition whenever possible. Team members may feel some regret at the end of a job if their knowledge and experience gained during the team's work brought them particular satisfaction. If necessary, the team leader should encourage members to stay in touch with each other and maintain relationships while pursuing new work and projects.
How to combine team roles
To make a team a highly effective team, you need to define goals, understand what team roles are needed to achieve them, and how to combine these roles.
You can combine roles in a team based on your job characteristics:
- "Intellectuals". Strategic analyst, idea generator, specialist.
- "People of Action" Motivator, Completion Controller, Worker.
- "Socially oriented." Resource Researcher, Soul of the Team, Coordinator.
Or by type of activity:
- "Generation of ideas". Strategic Analyst, Idea Generator, Resource Researcher.
- "Organization and Management". Motivator, Coordinator, Soul of the Team
- “Performing work tasks.” Worker, Specialist, Completion Controller.
Teamwork: Key Features
A team is completely different from an ordinary workforce. It is created for specific purposes. The task is completed - the team is no longer needed. When new tasks arise, they usually create a new team with a different composition and number. That is, we can consider that its creation is an operational and time-limited process. At the same time, the psychological effect is noticeable: understanding this time limitation , employees work more effectively.
Important indicators of the ability to work in a team are the ability of its members to independently redistribute and flexibly change their functions, as well as accept responsibility for the final product.
https://youtu.be/Rdklm8JBEeQ
Creating a team
- There is a specific project for which you need to create a team. Psychologists recommend focusing primarily on professional skills, and not on the subjective nature. It is believed that contact between group members, trust, flexible entry into one or another role in the course of communication will arise naturally - naturally.
- From the first day, clear, understandable operating rules should be established. To do this, you need to think about its “structure”; each member is assigned a personal task, as well as their area of responsibility; acquaint with material, and moral, motivation; organize working time so that project participants do not have to wait for a colleague to complete his task.
- It is necessary to explain popularly what the need for the work of this micro-team is, and then regularly ask how things are going, so that people understand whether the direction of work has been chosen correctly.
NOTE!
It has been practically proven that employees who regularly receive feedback on their activities work much more efficiently and have a lower percentage of errors.
- It is worth starting work on the project with ambitious tasks, but which can be completed in a fairly short period of time. This will allow the “small group” to see not only their capabilities, but also the effect of their work. The manager's interest can also be expressed in supplying the team with the latest information on the topic of the project, the necessary resources, but only those that are not available to the group members themselves.
- When the first moments of crisis have passed, the leader can only develop together with the “small group” and switch to the “moderation style” - leadership through questions. This encourages employees to make independent decisions, be active and creative.
Remember
- According to the study, the success of a team depends in part on having employees with different types of behavior.
- Raymond Belbin identified nine types of team behavior and called them “team roles.”
- To be successful, a team must use all nine behavioral types, but this does not mean that the team needs a minimum of nine employees - team members can play several roles at once.
- These roles are not always needed right away: first define the goals, and then decide which team roles will be needed to achieve them.
- They can be grouped into three, depending on preferences: by labor characteristics or types of activity.
- The Belbin method will help you understand your strengths, create a productive team or improve relationships within the team.
Source
Translation by Ivan Ilyin
