Today, we will explore one of the most powerful frameworks in building high-performing teams: the Belbin Team Roles Model.
This model helps you understand the unique strengths that each person brings to a team and how these strengths—when used correctly—can dramatically improve the way your team works together.
I’ll guide you through Belbin's nine distinct team roles.
You’ll learn how to recognise your team role and the roles of others.
By the end, you will clearly understand how to use this knowledge to increase your team's productivity, collaboration, and success.
Whether you're a leader, a manager, or a team member, understanding team roles is critical to unlocking your team’s potential.
Explore the Belbin Team Roles diagram, categorising roles into thought-oriented, action-oriented, and people-oriented groups.
Often, we find ourselves stuck in miscommunication or missed opportunities, not because of individual shortcomings but because we're not leveraging the right people in the right way.
This knowledge is your chance to overcome those barriers.
You’ll leave with actionable insights to ensure your team operates at its best—working together with greater understanding, mutual support, and shared purpose.
Here’s the truth: most teams fail to perform at their highest level because they don’t understand how to balance roles.
Many teams have too many people trying to lead or not enough detail-oriented members to ensure quality.
When roles are unclear or unbalanced, tension rises, progress slows, and morale drops.
The missing piece is often the clarity about who should do what based on their natural strengths.
This workshop solves that problem.
Team success isn’t just about having talented individuals; it’s about understanding how to fit those talents together. The most effective teams don’t just work hard—they work smart by using their diversity of strengths to create synergy.
Key benefits of this workshop
- Clarity on your role: You’ll discover which of Belbin’s roles you naturally fit into, allowing you to maximise your strengths.
- Team synergy: Learn how to bring out the best in your team by understanding the balance of roles and ensuring that each member’s strengths are properly utilised.
- Conflict reduction: Understand the root causes of common team conflicts and learn how to resolve them by aligning roles with tasks.
- Improved productivity: By assigning the right people to the right tasks, your team will work more efficiently and progress faster.
- A plan for the future: You’ll leave with an actionable strategy to apply what you’ve learned, leading to long-term improvement in your team’s performance.
Here’s a simple workshop designed to help teams explore and understand Belbin's Team Roles, fostering better collaboration and performance.
This session aims to identify each team member's primary and secondary roles, discuss team balance, and develop strategies for leveraging strengths while managing weaknesses.
Let’s get into it…
"Discovering and Leveraging Our Team Roles"
Duration: 2 - 3 hours
Objectives:
- Introduce the team to Belbin Team Roles model.
- Identify each member's preferred team roles.
- Explore how the team's roles can be balanced to enhance collaboration and performance.
- Develop strategies to leverage team strengths and manage weaknesses.
Materials Needed: Flip charts and markers, printed descriptions of Belbin’s nine roles, printed Belbin Team Roles questionnaire (included in the download), sticky notes and pens
Workshop Outline
1. Introduction and Overview (15 minutes)
- Activity: Start by briefly explaining Belbin’s Team Roles model, focusing on the nine roles and their characteristics. Then, display the roles using flip charts or a presentation slide.
- Discussion: Highlight how balanced teams benefit from having a mix of roles and how knowing each other's strengths can improve teamwork.
2. Self-Assessment (30 minutes)
- Activity: Provide participants with the Belbin Team Roles questionnaire and ask them to complete it individually to identify their primary and secondary roles.
- Reflection: After the participants complete the questionnaire, give them a few minutes to reflect on their results and compare them with their self-perception.
Note: The official Belbin Team Roles Questionnaire is a proprietary tool available for purchase through the official Belbin website or licensed distributors. The download on this page includes a simplified version of the questionnaire that can help identify a person's natural tendencies towards specific team roles. This version is not the official assessment but is a starting point to explore potential team role preferences.
3. Group Role Sharing and Discussion (30 minutes)
- Activity: Have each participant share their primary and secondary roles with the group. Use a flip chart to list each team member's roles so everyone can see the overall team profile.
- Discussion: Facilitate a discussion on:
- How do these roles reflect their behaviour in the team?
- What role gaps or overlaps do they notice within the team?
- How might these roles complement each other or create potential conflicts?
4. Team Role Mapping (20 minutes)
- Activity: Draw a simple grid with the nine Belbin roles listed on a large flip chart. Have participants place sticky notes with their names under their corresponding roles.
- Discussion: Use this visual to discuss the team's balance:
- Are there too many people in some roles and not enough in others?
- How might this distribution affect team dynamics?
- Where might the team need to adjust responsibilities to balance its effectiveness?
5. Leveraging Strengths and Managing Weaknesses (30 minutes)
- Activity: Split the team into smaller groups. Each group will focus on one of the action, people, or thought-oriented roles. Have them discuss and note down:
- How can these roles be best utilised within the team?
- What strategies can be employed to manage the weaknesses associated with these roles?
- Sharing: Each group shares their insights with the entire team, facilitating a broader discussion on leveraging each other's strengths while mitigating weaknesses.
6. Action Planning (20 minutes)
- Activity: As a team, develop a set of action steps to apply the insights gained from the workshop. This might include:
- Adjusting role assignments in projects to match team roles.
- Setting up regular check-ins to discuss how the team is leveraging its role diversity.
- Identifying areas where team members can support each other’s weaknesses.
- Documentation: Write down the agreed-upon action steps on a flip chart for everyone to see.
7. Closing Reflection (15 minutes)
- Activity: Go around the room and ask each participant to share one takeaway from the workshop and one action they will personally commit to based on their identified team role(s).
- Wrap-Up: Summarise the key insights discussed and the importance of continually revisiting and reflecting on team roles for effective collaboration.
Post-Workshop Follow-Up
- Share a summary of the workshop outcomes, including the team's role distribution and action plan, with all participants.
- Schedule a follow-up session in a few weeks to review the action plan's progress and make any necessary adjustments.
This workshop creates an engaging space for team members to discover their roles, understand the team's composition, and strategically leverage everyone's strengths for improved collaboration and performance.
Final Thoughts
By using this workshop, I never have to struggle with misalignment or guesswork when assigning tasks to team members.
Instead, it becomes a simple process of identifying each person’s strengths, aligning them with the proper responsibilities, and watching team collaboration and productivity improve.
Well, that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed it.
See you next week.