The Role of Meredith Belbin in Helping Businesses

Meredith Belbin sounds like a character from Lord of the Rings, aged 110, but he is not! Belbin was a UK citizen who had a background in Psychology. He worked as a research fellow at Cranfield Business School and took a particular interest in the role of team-working in Business, something the Japanese were credited with inventing in their car and electronics factories. In fact, team-working was more widely adopted in the USA and imported into the UK. In the 1980s, it can be seen to play a major role in transforming the UK's industrial landscape.

Prior to the 1980s, much of UK industry was run on hierarchical lines, with Managers making key decisions in their specialist fields and being answerable to the Managing Director. The workforce were simply there to do as they were told and had no real say in the decision-making process. They therefore had no responsibilities or motivation to enhance their own potential. Belbin's ideas on team-working were published in 1981.

Belbin saw the Management of a workplace as a team effort, with each team needing 8 roles to function well ( though not necessarily 8 people). They were as follows -:

* The "plant" was the ideas person, who came up with great ideas, but lacked the wherewithal to carry them out. He/she was a bit of an introvert.

* The "resource investigator" was skilled at bringing all the resources needed to make the idea possible. These included human resources (known as "people" by most of us), physical resources, such as machinery and technology and financial resources. They were usually dynamic extroverts.

* The Chairman/Co-ordinator involved all of the team in discussions to ensure a fair decision was made (could be annoying for those who wanting to do things quicker, but usually led to a a better quality decision).

* The Monitor/evaluator tended to spot flaws in the process and paid a lot of attention to detail.

* The Shaper tended to want to get things done and moulded the ideas and the detail into a workable plan, by bringing together the the Plant and the Monitor/evaluator on the one hand, and the resource investigator on the other.

* The Company worker is the practical thinker that can produce systems and processes the team wants.

* The team worker is the "people" person that can mediate between team members when tensions and differences arise.

* The completer/finisher is the targets or deadlines person.

Some of these roles were compatible, but clearly the plant would be likely to be a terrible completer ( and vice-versa), and the Monitor/evaluator would probably not be a good team-worker. However, it is precisely the diversity of roles that is likely to lead to better quality decision-making in a business, with a more active and interested workforce being a likely by-product of these ideas. For these reasons, Belbin has been a hugely important figure in the business world, despite (or because of..) his psychological background.