Belbin Associates

XenerGie Consulting Ltd, is one of the main certified, accredited Belbin team performance consultancy in Ireland for Team Role profiling, training and team coaching.

What are the benefits of identifying team Roles?

A Belbin team role profile produced using both SPI (Self Perception Inventory) and Observers' Assessments (OA) with the computer based system eInterplace shows how an individual behaves, contributes and interrelates with others in a particuliar way. The information is valuable at an individual and team level:

Team Roles as a 360 Self-Awareness Tool

It is only by knowing ourselves that we have any chance of improving ourselves and achieving our full potential. The Belbin Team Role process offers a unique insight into the perceptions, which we hold about ourselves, as well as the perceptions, which others hold of us.

The Belbin profiling exploits both self and observer inputs to derive a profile, and one of the most interesting experience to be gained from the analysis is to discover the differences between self perception and the perceptions of others.

Team Roles as a Tool for Effective Teams

The effective performance of a group of people - a team - is dependent on the way the team is able to interact and draw on the strengths of its members. Nine different clusters of behaviour, or "Team Roles," were identified as underlying the success of teams.

People working within a group or team bring to the group two key things. The first is their competency - specialist knowledge, qualifications, experience, etc - which are typically the reasons why they have been recruited such as computer skills; typing proficiency; knowledge of health and safety, etc Let us call this the "Task" focus.

The second is the way they work with and contribute to a group, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of the group. We will call this the "Team" focus.

Obviously, the Task focus is concerned with getting the job done. Less obviously, the Team focus is concerned with how the job gets done.

Team Roles as a tool for Effective Staff Selection

Typically and traditionally staff selection and recruitment is based on what we earlier described as the Task focus - the qualifications, experience and practical skills an individual has, which are usually defined as an individual's eligibility for the job.

Belbin's research shows clearly that much of the uncertainty associated with achieving a successful job placement is related to job "suitability" (i.e. what a person is, or the "Team" focus already mentioned) rather than job "eligibility" (i.e. what a person knows or a "Task" focus).

Further, it is now clear that a person recruited to a job who is "unsuitable" in Team role terms will be, at least, a poor fit for the job.

Using the Belbin? process to support recruitment efforts, firms can now easily produce a profile of any individual job in terms of its "suitability" requirements. Individual job applicants, or an existing organisational database of staff, can then be compared to determine the most suitable likely appointee.

What do the Belbin practitioners say?

Belbin team roles beat all other measures in that they are immediately identifiable, easy to relate to team leaders and followers alike. It is especially appropriate as an aid to the climate, goals, roles, leadership, and relationship processes method of diagnosis in team building events and team coaching.