Belbin Team Roles Model and Its Application

Belbin Team Roles Model and Its Application
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Belbin Team Roles Model and Its Application
Teams are the anchor of most economic, social and political entities in the contemporary world. In the business world, organisations have teams that collaborate to prosecute certain projects. The collaboration of teams within an organisation and the members within a team is boosted by the Belbin Teams Roles theory, which defines each team member's function based on their strengths and passions. Meredith Belbin developed the theory to establish the ideal roles for individual members to assume within a group. This paper discusses the significance of Belbin in small groups, how it relates to my industry and how it could be useful in my future career.
Why Belbin is Useful Concerning Small Group Work
Belbin is a useful theory for small group work. It helps understand the strengths and weaknesses of team members, allocate roles and responsibilities effectively, improve communication and collaboration, and improve self-awareness among the group members. The theory has nine primary team roles grouped into three specific categories based on each member's roles (Keeler and Brown, 2023; Gudur et al., 2020). These categories include the thought-oriented, action-oriented and people-oriented team roles.
The thought-oriented team members are the monitor evaluator, specialist and plant. They are critical thinkers who may present new perspectives or ideas, analyse issues by assessing their advantages and disadvantages, or offer specialised knowledge or skills to the group (Keeler and Brown, 2023). The second group is the action-oriented members, who are the shapers, implementors and finishers. These action-oriented group members help the group accomplish tasks. They help their groups or organisations by completing their duties on time, meeting deadlines, and converting challenges into valuable opportunities (Keeler and Brown, 2023). The last category is the people-oriented group members, who are the team coordinators, team workers and investigators. These people-oriented team members use their relationship and networking skills to accomplish given tasks. They listen actively and support other team members to build group cohesion. These three categories are significant in showing the usefulness of Belbin in small-group work.
Small groups understand the strengths and weaknesses of each team member using the Belbin model. The model's primary role is to understand each team member's personality, strengths and weaknesses for easy collaboration and division of tasks within the group. All the team members are categorised into thought-oriented, action-oriented and people-oriented based on their strengths and weaknesses (Romanova, 2018). This allows the group members to appreciate each other's contribution to the teamwork. It also allows them to maximise the strengths of each team member and minimise their weaknesses. This way, each team member helps the group solve the problem based on what a member is best at.
The Belbin model helps small teams when allocating roles and responsibilities. It is vital to learn the strengths and weaknesses of all team members before allocating tasks. Belbin's model provides a platform for the smooth identification of each member's strengths and weaknesses to easily allocate responsibilities. Thought-oriented members are allocated tasks that need critical thinking and analysis of ideas. Those whose strengths are action-oriented are allocated responsibilities that help the team accomplish its task faster (Aranzabal et al., 2022). Also, the team members whose strengths are people-oriented are assigned duties requiring networking and relationship roles to help the team accomplish tasks faster. For instance, a task requiring thorough investigation requires a member whose strength is action-oriented to investigate and report the findings to the group. This way, small teams utilise the efficiency and effectiveness of each member's speciality.
The Belbin model helps small teams improve communication and collaboration for effective and efficient task handling. The Belbin model is anchored on assessing the individual strengths and weaknesses of team members. This can only be achieved through communication and collaboration where each team member is open about what they like and dislike. Each member should also be open to being analysed and criticised by the rest of the team members. Therefore, the model helps team members understand each member's communication style and work preferences, resulting in a more cohesive team through collaboration (Roser, n.d).
Belbin enhances self-awareness in the members of a team. Each member undergoes thorough scrutiny from the team members when analysing the strengths and weaknesses. The individual member may not know some of these strengths and weaknesses. Instead, team members can observe each member and deduce observable strengths and weaknesses. This increases members' self-awareness because they learn more details about their personalities, which they may not have before joining the group. This will help members develop their skills to handle more group and individual tasks more effectively.
Therefore, the Belbin model is a crucial tool for small teams in assessing each member for strengths and weaknesses. This helps optimise the team members' performance through understanding the wise allocation of roles and responsibilities, improving communication and collaboration, and increasing self-awareness among individual members. This helps the members work together efficiently and effectively.
How Belbin Relates to My Industry (Art and Design)
The art and design industry is anchored in creativity and imagination. The industry broadly comprises dimensional designing, fine art and graphic design, fashion and textile design, photography, interior design and display (Mateus-Berr, 2015). These fields need teamwork to ensure the final results satisfy the client. Belbin's model was originally designed for business and management contexts, but they are crucial in art and design. The model is used to understand how individuals contribute to group dynamics and performance.
Art and design entail teamwork, with team members exhibiting diverse team roles for the success of any design project. These diverse art and design sets include designers, writers, artists, project managers and marketers. This means that a team in art and design, like other industries, ...