How Does the Adoption of the Belbin Team Role Theory Improve Team Performance

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DATE: 21st August, 2014

Introduction

It is commonly believed that team efficiency in companies is important for company development. When cooperating with coworkers, each employee has “positions” in a team which are called roles. How can managers help employees find their optimal role in a team and thereby enhance the team effectiveness? Belbin team role theory is an approach which can be used to identify team members’ in-group behaviour. Meredith Belbin developed this theory in 1981 and identified nine team role types, which are defined as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way”. Belbin’s research demonstrates that the characteristic of a high-performance team is consensus while that of inefficient team is conflict. This essay will argue that the adoption of the Belbin team role theory can raise group effectiveness by helping team members to realize their “behaviour” roles. As the result, the disagreement between team members them will be reduced and the functioning of the whole team will be elevated. The first part of this essay introduces the definition of teams and team efficiency. This will be followed by discussing the importance of team efficiency in companies and possible problems teams face. In order to solve these problems, the Belbin team role theory is then presented. The last part of this essay examines two empirical cases. The conclusion will prove that a “mixed” team performs better than a one-type team.

High team efficiency

Team efficiency is an important concept in companies. Employees consider it because if they perform well, their salaries could be possibly affected, while managers pay attention to it because improving team efficiency could lead to high profits for companies. In fact, improving a team’s effectiveness is one of the managers’ core responsibilities. Therefore, it is necessary to define team and team efficiency, and these definitions may enable managers as well as team members to understand how to enhance group effectiveness.

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