Belbin Team Roles
Unlock your team’s Hidden Potential with Belbin Team Roles
What are Belbin Team Roles?
After many years of research into team behaviour and performance in the workplace, Belbin identified nine key types of behaviour. We call these the nine Team Roles. Each successful team had one of each of the nine Team Role behaviours present. This does not mean that each team needs to have nine people in it, since individuals can perform more than one Team Role.
Discover Team Roles
Belbin produce personalised behavioural reports for both individuals and teams. These reports identify which combination of the nine Team Roles individuals prefer to adopt, and pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses.
During the workshop participants will be engaged in discussions and exercises to demonstrate how the Belbin team diagnostics can be used to bring about immediate and enduring improvements in the performance of teams.
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We facilitate sessions with teams at all levels, from boards of directors to new recruits
A workshop will increase peoples’ understanding of themselves and their colleagues, helping to resolve conflict in the work environment and focusing the team on achieving its objectives more effectively.
The purpose of a Team-building Workshop is to increase communication and effectiveness within the team or group so that it achieves its objectives. The team will have a common language and a framework to discuss their collective strengths and how best to use them.
The official guide to Belbin Team Roles
What does a typical Belbin program look like?
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 13.00 – 13.05 | Welcome by Jambar, general briefing |
| 13.05 – 13.15 | Warm up and pre-framing activities |
| 13.15 – 14.00 | Context and discussion about the day We allow the team to express their current mood before creating connection through authentic communication in pairs or groups of 3. Using objects found around the room to help introduce and describe your partner to the group. |
| 14.00 – 14.15 | Introduction to Belbin Team Roles What is Belbin all about? How does it empower you to reach your full potential at work? |
| 14.15 – 15.15 | Understanding individual reports Guided discussion on how to use the reports. Show the team how their profile can help themselves and their team. Methods include: profile interpretation, short inputs, paired and group discussion. |
| 15.15 – 15.30 | Tea / Coffee Break |
| 15.30 – 16.15 | Practice, practice and practice! There is no right or wrong opinion on how each person views the case study — only the realisation that different profiles have different ways to connect effectively. Methods include: group discussion, paired discussion and short inputs. |
| 16.15 – 17.45 | Team activity and debriefing — Virus Virus is a cooperative strategy game, and as such provides a refreshing change of pace from most board games. Rather than competing against each other, players all work together to try to defeat the game itself. The activity is engaging, yet there are excellent learning points and conclusions to be drawn from it — and how those can be transferred and implemented in the business world. |
| 17.45 – 18.15 | Taking the team forward and wrap up Finding an action plan to bring the team to be more cooperative and communicate more effectively in the future, with new insights on individual profiles. |
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 09.00 – 09.05 | Welcome by Jambar, general briefing |
| 09.05 – 09.15 | Warm up and pre-framing activities |
| 09.15 – 10.00 | Context and discussion about the day We allow the team to express their current mood before creating connection through authentic communication in pairs or groups of 3. Using objects found around the room to help introduce and describe your partner to the group. |
| 10.00 – 10.15 | Introduction to Belbin Team Roles What is Belbin all about? How does it empower you to reach your full potential at work? |
| 10.15 – 11.00 | Full description and interaction about the 9 Belbin Team Roles Over 10 years Dr Belbin isolated each of the team roles and generated detailed identifiers and behaviours that compose each role. We look at these in detail and individuals begin to determine their primary roles. |
| 11.00 – 11.15 | Tea Break |
| 11.15 – 13.00 | Understanding individual reports Guided discussion on how to use the reports. Show the team how their profile can help themselves and their team. Methods include: profile interpretation, short inputs, paired and group discussion. |
| 13.00 – 14.00 | Lunch |
| 14.00 – 14.15 | Post-lunch warm up |
| 14.15 – 15.00 | Discussion game based on Belbin Team Roles There is no right or wrong opinion on how each person views the case study — only the realisation that different profiles have different ways to connect effectively. Methods include: group discussion, paired discussion and short inputs. |
| 15.00 – 16.00 | Understanding the group report The Belbin Team Roles group report provides a grouped, detailed analysis of the current team roles in your team, as well as suggestions on where the team may currently be very effective and areas where there may be gaps. |
| 16.00 – 16.15 | Tea Break |
| 16.15 – 17.45 | Team activity and debriefing — Virus Virus is a cooperative strategy game, and as such provides a refreshing change of pace from most board games. Rather than competing against each other, players all work together to try to defeat the game itself. The activity is engaging, yet there are excellent learning points and conclusions to be drawn from it — and how those can be transferred and implemented in the business world. |
| 17.45 – 18.15 | Taking the team forward and wrap up Finding an action plan to bring the team to be more cooperative and communicate more effectively in the future, with new insights on individual profiles. |
Who would benefit from attending a Belbin Workshop?
An existing team which needs to re-focus for a new challenge or strategy
A new team which is not yet a cohesive unit
A team in the aftermath of major change/re-organisation
A problematic team, where conflicts are getting in the way of effectiveness
An international project team whose members only meet occasionally
A high performing team which wants to achieve even greater success
Download a full sample of a Belbin Report
Individual Reports
An individual report will identify which combination of the nine Team Roles an individual exhibits, and comes full of personalised direction and advice for that individual, and for his or her manager.
Team Reports
A Belbin Team Report will identify how groups of individuals will perform together. In order to generate a Team Report, each of the people making up that team will need to have completed a Belbin Individual Report. Once the individual reports have been generated, nothing else is needed. The information from the individual reports can be used to generate the Belbin Team Report.
What People Say About Our Workshops
Frequently Asked Questions, answered
What are Belbin Team Roles?
Belbin Team Roles are nine behavioural roles identified from research into what makes teams work, with the key finding that every successful team had all nine present. Most people naturally take on more than one, so it’s less about labelling individuals and more about discovering what your team has and what it hasn’t yet got.
How does a Belbin session run?
Before the session, each participant completes a quick online Belbin Self-Perception Inventory (about 15 to 20 minutes) and, ideally, invites four to six colleagues to give Observer feedback, which is what makes a Belbin profile so revealing. On the day, a facilitator brings the nine Team Roles to life through games, role plays and lively group challenges: people discover their natural and manageable roles, map the whole team to see where the strengths cluster and where the gaps are, and laugh at how accurately the “allowable weaknesses” describe their colleagues, leaving with practical, memorable ways to get the best out of each other.
What do we get out of it?
Each participant takes away their own printed Belbin Individual Report, which sets out their preferred, manageable and least preferred Team Roles, how their colleagues actually see them (when Observer feedback is used), and practical advice on playing to their strengths and managing their allowable weaknesses. The team gets a Belbin Team Report: a single picture of how the nine roles are spread across the group, which roles are over-represented or missing, and what that explains about how the team works, from who ends up doing the finishing to why ideas stall. Together these give a shared language for talking about contribution, clearer expectations of who is best placed to do what, and concrete ways to cover the gaps, whether by flexing individual roles or by changing how work is shared.
Who is it for?
Teams at every level, from boards of directors to new recruits! It works best with an intact team that wants to understand its own mix of strengths, rather than a mixed group who don’t work together.
How is Belbin different from DISC and MBTI?
Belbin is about the team, not the person. DISC and MBTI tell you about individuals and how they differ, while Belbin shows which roles your team already covers and which it’s missing. That’s why it lands best with a team that works together day to day.
