Team Roles at Work [Paperback]

R Meredith Belbin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0750626755 | ISBN-13: 978-0750626750 | Publication Date: March 14, 1996

'A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is understood by other members. Members of a team seek out certain roles and they perform most effectively in the ones that are most natural to them.'


Team Roles at Work is a follow-up to Belbin's highly successful book Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail. The nine team roles, now familiar to managers and management trainers all over the world, are explored further, adding value to the
original team-role concepts. Operational strategies are laid out which provide ideas, techniques and a new range of information and advice which can be used to the organization's advantage.

Team Roles at Work paves the way for all those in management education, including industrial trainers to put Belbin's seminal thinking on teams into practice.
* How to manage the self in a team * How to create working partnerships * How to recognize potential for the 'surprise' fit * How to encourage interdependence between members of a team * How the team should fit into the organization.


This book shows you:
How to manage the self in a team
How to create working partnerships
How to recognize potential for the 'surprise' fit
How to encourage interdependence between members of a team
How the team should fit into the organization

Editorial Reviews

From Book News

A follow up to Belbin's Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail, explores how people must fulfill not only their functional roles, but also their roles as team members. Explains how to find the right structure for the personalities and function, and ways in which people can be fit in. No bibliography. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

'If you are really interested in learning and developing skills in teambuilding, there are certainly no books on the market that can beat Belbin's books in this subject area. Exceptional!'
Senior Lecturer, University of Westminster

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann (March 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750626755
• ISBN-13: 978-0750626750
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,870,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable handbook for better performing teams, April 4, 1999

By 

P. D. Cox (Caerdydd, Cymru) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Team Roles at Work (Paperback)

This is the authorative update on the English team guru's work on high performing teams. Less academic than his earlier seminal work, really focussed on the team at work. There's plenty of new stuff as well: Belbin's thoughts on the evolution of HR strategies, team leaders and the eligibilty versus suitabilty issue are all well explored.

Managers needs this to learn how their teams tick. Trainers need it to facilitate learning. Individuals need it to understand their own roles and to be comfortable with them.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great practical book to back up work with teams, October 17, 2001

By 

Chris Woodman (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Team Roles at Work (Paperback)

Belbin has become one of the world experts on teams, and written a number of books on team work, and has a web site devoted to his consulting business on teams. You can get profiles done on line etc. Whilst I don't think his work is leading edge on group dynamics and the complexity of human teams, he offers a great practical methodology for working with people on teams. I have used this material with real success with real managers and real people in the work place, and it has been a useful catalyst for improving peoples understanding of different styles and roles, and how to work to peoples natural strengths.

4.0 out of 5 stars Necessary foundation for applying Belbin theory, December 27, 2010

By 

Glen Mohr - See all my reviews

This review is from: Team Roles at Work (Paperback)

The Belbin model works well for characterizing individual styles and diagnosing team strengths and weaknesses:
- It is team focused. It focuses people outward on how they work with other people and how they are perceived, not inward on their own personality traits
- It is results-focused. Rather than starting with personality traits and extrapolating how those might interact on a team, it starts with the behaviors that a successful team needs and asks people how their team can fill those roles
- The underlying research is based on empirical observation and the results hold up well.
- The model is intuitive and makes sense without significant background study
- The observer data gives the results credibility and highlights incongruities between the role people perceive they are playing in a team and the role others see them performing.
- The inventory is quick and doesn't force choices where none of the options apply
I frequently use it with short-duration teams of high-potentials focused on innovation and the team roles easily map onto the innovation behaviors the teams need to practice.

This book provides the foundation necessary for applying the Belbin Team Role theory. In particular, the chapters on the team role language, eligibility versus suitability, coherence and self-management will serve as a solid grounding.

The new edition largely just fine tunes the presentation, with summary points at end of each chapter. There has been some updating, for example an added brief analysis of the distinction between the leadership styles of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (to update the Reagan-Thatcher comparison) . I would like to see some updating of Belbin's predictions - for example in the 1993 edition Belbin wrote "I believe the future looks brighter for team leaders than for solo leaders." Nothing has been added to the 2010 version to confirm or refute that.