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Meridith Belbin’s explanation of how teams work has stood the test of time and spread across the Globe .While now in his eighties he is still active as a consultant and as a visiting professor at Henley Management College.

It was he who first expounded the 1970’s the idea that teams with a balance of different types of people were the most effective. This discovery followed detailed observation over many years of different groups taking part in management exercises. In 1981 he published Management Teams: Why they succeed or Fail.

It was first thought, he said, “that high intellect teams would succeed where lower intellect teams would not”. However the outcome of his research was that teams predicted to be excellent based on intellect failed to fulfil their potential. It was team balance that enabled a team to succeed.

Belbin identified nine distinct clusters of behaviour and called them “team roles”. Each role defines a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way and can be used “as a common meaningful language to bridge the gap between ourselves and our colleagues”

Belbins Team Roles

Plant: A creative imaginative, unorthodox team member who solves difficult problems. Sometimes they situate themselves far from other team members.

Shaper: A dynamic team member who loves a challenge and thrives on pressure. This member possesses the drive and courage required to overcome obstacles.

Recourse Investigator: The networker within the team. Being highly driven to make connections with people, he/she may appear to be flighty and inconsistent but their ability to call on their connections is useful to the team.

Co-ordinator: Seeks fairness and equity among team members. Those who want to make decisions quickly or unilaterally may feel frustrated by their insistence on consulting with all team members, but this can improve the quality off the decisions, made by the team.

Implementer: The practical thinker who can create systems and processes that will produce what the team wants. They may frustrate other team members by their perceived lack of enthusiasm for inspiring visions and radical thinking, but their ability to turn radical ideas into workable solutions is important

Complete Finisher: This is the detail person within the team. Some could become frustrated by their analytical and meticulous approach, but their work ensures the quality and timeliness of the output of the team.

Team Worker: Someone who seeks to ensure that interpersonal relationships in the team are maintained. This concern with people factors can frustrate those who are keen to move quickly, but their skills ensure long-term within the team.

Specialist: He or she who brings expert knowledge to the team.

Belbin is of the opinion that teams do not necessarily need all roles to function well, however having the right people for the right task is important.

Unless organisations value diversity, they can repeat mistakes because of an individual’s natural strengths interacting with the organisations culture. “If a company’s culture does not allow challenge, if people who suggest alternatives are castigated for not being “team players” you produce an environment of fear, stagnation and antipathy,” he says.

Finally he makes an interesting statement when he indicated that social insects know far more about team working and co-operation than humans do. Strengths based on their genetics he observes include the division of labour, complex communication systems, an ability to adapt and having no criminals and waste. He identified the classic Resource Investigator as the bee who has to look for good spots for the honey and do a dance to communicate its location. The hive (team) decodes the dance –distance, direction and amount – and the follow.

Interesting!

How will rapid changes in technology, demographics and society change us as workers?

The Future of Work Consortium believes they will transform our world – for good or ill.

We came across a recent publication (by Lynda Gratton – professor of management practice at the London Business School) recently and thought that some of her predictions may be of interest to you.

While these are exciting times there are forces at work that, over the next decade, will fundamentally shift much of what we take for granted about employees, work and organisations. We live at a time when the schism with the past is oif the same magnitude as that last seen in the Industrial Revolution of the late 18^th century: a schism of such magnitude that work – what we do, how we work and with whom- will change possibly unrecognisably, in our lifetimes.

At that time the drivers of change were the development of coal and steam power. This time is not the result of a single force, but rather the subtle combination of five forces that will fundamentally transform much of what we take for granted about work: the needs of a low carbon economy, rapid advance in technology, increasing globalisation, profound changes in longevity and demography and deep social changes.

The five forces that are shaping work

• Technology capability will increase exponentially: one of the key trends will be the rapid and continuous fall in the cost of computing. We can expect this to continue and to see even more complex technology available in relatively inexpensive handheld devices.
• Added to this, within the next decade more than five billion people will become connected. This will take place in the “megacities” of the world, and also in rural areas. The extent of this connectivity will create the possibility of a “global consciousness” that has never before been seen.
• The extent of this global consciousness will also be shaped by “the cloud” becoming ubiquitous, creating a global infrastructure upon which services will become available –applications and resources. It will allow anyone with a computer or handheld device to rent services on a minute-by-minute basis, and this has enormous potential to bring sophisticated technology to every corner of the world.
• We can expect mega-companies and micro-entrepreneurs to emerge. Technological advances will lead to an increasingly complex work and business environment with the emergence of mega-companies that span the globe, at the same time, millions of smaller groups of micro-entrepreneurs partnerships will emerge.
• Expect China and India’s decade of growth to play and enormous role. Over the past decades, both countries have experiences massive growth – fuelled by a joint domestic market of over two billion costumers, and the capacity to be the “factory” and “back office” of the world.

We are in the midst of a change in the nature of work that is greater than anything ever experienced before. We have more choice available to us than even before and more opportunities to craft work in ways that bring value, meaning and purpose.

The challenge is to embrace these changes and transform both work for individuals and for organisations.

Leadership style is often talked about in terms of the effect of the leader’s personality and ability to communicate effectively. However very few consider the effects of leadership consistency?

Leaders are considered to be consistent when their communications and actions match up and inconsistent when they don’t. So the question is why is leadership consistency so important?

Leadership consistency can motivate employees to exhibit the desired behaviours.

Employees whose leaders exhibit consistency will evaluate the leader’s behaviour positively and therefore emulate it. This result is employees can project their evaluation of the leader’s behaviour as being the organisational culture and consequently if they wish to affiliate with the team they are more likely to exhibit the behaviours required. Furthermore, trust in the leader is developed as a result of leadership consistency and consequently employee’s display organisational citizenship behaviours (i.e. they go beyond the call of duty !).

Additionally the need for affiliation results is group cohesiveness; multiple employees will demonstrate the desired behaviours in order to belong to the team. Leadership consistency also serves to validate the employees’ behaviours and make clear what behaviours are accepted, or not, within the organisation. Ultimately, leaders who display leadership consistency will motivate employees more effectively.

However, leadership inconsistency can have a negative result on employees’ motivation. Specifically, leadership inconsistency can be viewed by employees as hypocritical and is likely to result in a disillusioned work force. The negative emotions produced by leadership inconsistency results in employees under performing and being unaware of the firm’s priorities.

The table below details the link between leadership consistency and employees motivation outlined here.