The one-page role map
Make a grid: people down the side, the nine roles across the top. Mark each person's preferred roles with a filled dot, manageable roles with an empty one, least preferred with a dash. Ten minutes with the reports.
The grid shows you two things straight away:
- Pile-ups: four people with Shaper preferred and nobody with Implementer. Lots of drive, not much delivery.
- Gaps: no Monitor Evaluator anywhere. The team will keep being surprised by problems someone should have seen.
Neither is a reason to change the team. They're things to design around.
Designing project teams
When you put a group on a piece of work, check the roles before you check availability. A working team needs, at minimum:
- someone to generate options (Plant or Resource Investigator),
- someone to judge them (Monitor Evaluator),
- someone to drive (Shaper or Co-ordinator),
- someone to make it real (Implementer),
- someone to finish it properly (Completer Finisher),
- and someone to keep people together when it gets hard (Teamworker).
Small teams can't have all of these preferred. That's fine: people cover manageable roles. What doesn't work is a team where a needed role is everyone's least preferred. If that's the case, add structure for it (a review gate, a checklist) or borrow someone.
Delegating to roles
| Work | Give it to | Not to |
|---|---|---|
| A brief with no shape yet | Plant, Resource Investigator | Completer Finisher |
| A plan that must be executed reliably | Implementer | Plant |
| The final check before release | Completer Finisher | Shaper |
| A decision with real risk | Monitor Evaluator | Resource Investigator |
| Finding partners, contacts, options | Resource Investigator | Specialist |
| A deep technical problem | Specialist | Co-ordinator |
| A stalled, tense piece of work | Shaper (to move it), Teamworker (to mend it) | — |
Delegating to a least preferred role isn't forbidden; it's a development opportunity, and sometimes unavoidable. Do it with support and say so: "This is Completer Finisher work and I know it isn't your natural territory. Let's agree how we'll check it."
Turn this into advice for one person on your team.
Managing allowable weaknesses
Belbin's most useful idea for a manager is that each role's weakness is the flip side of its strength, and you manage it rather than fix it:
- Plant
- Original ideas
- Impractical, poor at communicating them
- Pair with an Implementer; ask for one idea, not twenty
- Shaper
- Drive and courage
- Abrasive, impatient
- Give them a goal and a sounding board; protect quieter colleagues
- Monitor Evaluator
- Sound judgement
- Slow, can seem negative
- Ask for the risks early, then a decision date
- Implementer
- Reliable delivery
- Inflexible when plans change
- Give notice of changes and the reasons
- Completer Finisher
- Quality and follow-through
- Reluctant to delegate; anxious
- Agree what “good enough” means up front
- Co-ordinator
- Draws people in, delegates
- Can offload their own work
- Check what they’ve kept for themselves
- Teamworker
- Keeps the team together
- Avoids confrontation
- Ask directly for the view they haven’t given
- Resource Investigator
- Finds opportunities
- Loses interest after the start
- Hand over to an Implementer early
- Specialist
- Deep expertise
- Narrow focus
- Connect their work to the bigger picture explicitly
The sentence that does most of the work: "That's the flip side of what you're good at. Here's how we handle it." It turns a criticism into something the person already half knows.
Belbin in 1:1s
You don't need the reports open. You need to remember what each role wants from the conversation: the Plant wants to float an idea without being told it's impractical; the Shaper wants a decision; the Monitor Evaluator wants to raise a concern and be taken seriously; the Teamworker wants to be asked how the team is, not how the project is. Give each person their opening in the first five minutes.
When a Belbin report is old or self-only
A report without observer assessments is how the person saw themselves on the day. It's still useful, but hold it more lightly, and check it against what you've seen. A report from years ago usually holds for preferred roles; if the person's job has changed a lot, suggest a retake with observers. Either way, the person is the best source on which roles they'd rather not be handed. Ask.
Questions managers ask
What if the team has a gap, say no Completer Finisher?
Name it, assign it deliberately to someone who can manage the role, and add structure (checklists, a review step) to cover what the role would do naturally. Don't hire for it unless it's a persistent problem.
Should I share the team role map with everyone?
Yes, with agreement. Teams that know each other's roles stop arguing about who should do what and start asking.
My own roles are all thinking roles. Can I manage well?
Yes. Knowing it is the point: you'll need to borrow action and people roles from the team, or build structure for them, and be deliberate about following through.