Belbin team roles

A role could be defined as "a combination of values, attitudes and behaviour assigned to an individual who occupies a social position" (Aritzeta et al., 2007, p. 97); basically who we are in order to do a job. 'Who' we are will influence how we behave: "the behaviour expected from an individual occupying a specific position" (p. 97). 

We have long tried to work out what makes teams work: behaviouralists thought that we fell naturally into two groups; those of us who focus on the task, and those who focus on the relationships (Daft, 2008). Contingency theorists thought we also considered the situation. And then along came John Holland (1959) who proposed six environments: those of motoric, intellectual, aesthetic, supportive, persuasive, and conforming (1959, p. 35-36), which developed over time into occupational codes, or RIASEC: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional (Nauta, 2010). If we have certain attributes we are more naturally suited to some roles than others, because of who we are. 

There are six categories that Belbin came up with which drives our "tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way", including our personality, mental abilities, values and motivation, our work environment, our experience and cultural factors, and our role learning (Belbin, 2010, p. 24). Belbin also established the Team Role Self Perception Inventory, or TRSPI (Aranzabal et al., 2022). When I was doing my undergrad degree, I remember hearing about Belbin's team roles (1997), where each person in a team filled a different role depending on how they started with the team, and what the team needed:

• Advising: Gathering and reporting information
• Innovating: Creating and experimenting with ideas
• Promoting: Exploring and presenting opportunities
• Developing: Assessing and testing the applicability of new approaches
• Organising: Establishing and implementing ways of making things work
• Producing: Concluding and delivering outputs
• Inspecting: Controlling and auditing the working of systems
• Maintaining: Upholding and safeguarding standards and processes
• Linking: Coordinating and integrating the work of others

Belbin's team roles (2010), although not necessarily terrifically scientific, provides a useful lens to consider how people fit together as a team. 

Sam

References:

Aranzabal, A., Epelde, E., & Artetxe, M. (2022). Team formation on the basis of Belbin’s roles to enhance students’ performance in project based learning. Education for Chemical Engineers, 38, 22-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ece.2021.09.001

Aritzeta, A., Swailes, S., & Senior, B. (2007). Belbin's team role model: Development, validity and applications for team building. Journal of Management Studies, 44(1), 96-118. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2007.00666.x

Belbin, R. M. (2010). Team Roles at Work (2nd ed.). Butterworth Heinemann.

Belbin, R. M., & Brown, V. (2023). Team Roles at Work (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Margerison, C., & McCann, D. (2026). Team Management System. https://www.teammanagementsystems.com/

Nauta, M. M. (2010). The Development, Evolution, and Status of Holland's Theory of Vocational Personalities: Reflections and Future Directions for Counseling Psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(1), 11–22. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018213