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There now follows a case study by the author on the use of the Belbin Team Roles and their correlation with professional / occupational groups. Please feel free to use this case study in any way that you wish. If you wish to quote from it please advise the author. His web site is at http://www.rogercartwright.net and his e-mail address is Rcartw2058@aol.com

Case Material

The correlation between team roles and professional / occupational group

This material examines the linkage between the team roles managers and supervisors adopt, as measured by the work of Dr M Belbin using the "INTERPLACE computer program and the propensity for the balance between roles to change according to the professional /occupational group to which the subjects belong. The work carried out by Belbin into the types of roles individuals adopt within a group situation formed the starting point for this work. A fuller analysis of team roles using the Belbin model is contained within Chapter 6 of Mastering Team Leadership – the text to which this case material is linked.

From initial observations using groups of management development students from a variety of backgrounds during the 1990s, a hypothesis was formed that those in the caring professions would have Belbin "TEAMWORKER" scores that lay outside the 90% confidence interval for such scores within the general managerial population.

A large number of subjects, belonging to a variety of professional/occupational groups were tested; the common factor being that they all held positions that involved supervisory or managerial responsibilities.

Much of the research was carried out during team building sessions and seminars on the use of teams within the management function and thus there was ample opportunity to validate the ideas postulated by Belbin and to discuss their implications with the participants.

The results bore out the hypothesis and discussions with the groups showed that many common perceptions about professional group behaviour could be partially explained in terms of the Belbin Team Roles.

The major conclusion of the study was that the predominant team role within a profession may well be contingent on the professional values of that profession.

 

"The minute you put on a blue hat [become a foreman], you're automatically a son of a bitch."

Quoted in R Townsend's Further Up the Organisation

The idea for this study grew from a set of discussions with groups of personnel managers. The groups had been through a series of team building exercises that had involved the production of Belbin team role profiles using the INTERPLACE software to assess the team as opposed to the functional role that individuals take up. Belbin proposed that individuals have one or two natural team roles that they adopt whenever possible and that effective teams are formed when there is a balance of team roles. It became clear after the first few groups had been examined that a pattern was emerging in that the balance between the team roles appeared to be different dependant upon the professional /occupational group e.g accountants, general supervisors, teachers, health care workers etc. Discussions with the participants indicated that this could lead to problems if certain professions /occupations tended to pick team members in such a way that the Team Management Wheel (Magerison C & McCann D, 1985) was left incomplete.

The choice of personnel managers for the first sets of data and discussions was deliberate, as they often have a considerable say in the recruitment of staff throughout an organisation and many of them had been involved in the introduction of psychometric testing within their organisations using INTERPLACE, OPQ or 16PF tests, all of which use similar terms to denote natural team roles, a section on which is included with each profile produced.

There has been a tendency, as jobs become more specialised, to recruit on the basis of professional /technical expertise. If Belbin's views that balanced team roles as well as functional roles are correct then effective teamwork requires not only the relevant professional knowledge but also a blend of psycho-social team types.

 

The opportunity to look at a large number of individuals in a range of professional /occupational roles gave the opportunity to look at the team type blends to examine if their was a link between profession/occupation and preferred team roles, (for example did accountants show low creative roles or were social workers highly Teamworker oriented) and to discuss with managers the implications such a finding might have in an organisational context. As a result of work carried out during which large numbers of students undertook team role typing as part of management development programmes, a side issue of examining professional/occupational groups developed. Many of the subjects were present in their /professional/occupational groupings and on a number of occasions a wish was expressed to see if there appeared to be a link between such groupings and a preponderance of team types. The untested opinion of the vast majority of subjects was that the strengths and weaknesses of the Belbin team types as presented to them was reflected in their professional/occupational behaviour. In order to validate the hypothesis that there is a link between the naturally occurring team roles within a homogeneous group of subjects and their relevant professional/occupational groups, both quantitative and qualitative data was collected from over 500 subjects. The quantitative data was analysed using the INTERPLACE software developed by Belbin Associates and then validated by reference to the subject and the subject’s colleagues. Subjects and their colleagues were asked to indicate whether the profiles produced using the Belbin Self Perception Questionnaires were accurate or not. The accuracy rate as reported by both subjects and their colleagues was over 75 Subjects were all supervisors/first line managers or middle managers and came from a variety of public and private sector organisations in the UK.   The results were analysed statistically to investigate the hypothesis that differing professional/occupational groups would show a significant deviation from the norm as established by Belbin. To establish the norm, a random group of results was subjected to analysis, the subjects within this group coming from private, public and voluntary sector organisations. If a link between team roles and professional/occupational groups was to be established, it was postulated that there would be a significant deviation from the norm in certain key team areas and that it would be possible to explain the deviations in organisational terms. To this end, the results were fed back to the participants for their comments and observations based on their professional knowledge.

 

Professional Groups

As stated earlier, initial interest occurred when looking at team role profiles of professional managerial and associated groups. Professionals form an interesting subset of the group dynamic concept. A profession may contain thousands of members. Numbers on this scale hardly fit some of the popular definitions of groups, such as face-to-face contact. However members of professional groups have a shared identity; the research for this work and associated findings (reported in detail later) show that members of professions perceive themselves as a group and relate to a group identity.

Definitions of professionals are notoriously difficult, but in general there seems to be agreement that firstly the population in general must perceive an occupation to be a profession. There are considerable barriers to entry, academic plus professional qualifications and there is normally a high level of educational achievement needed prior to entry. There is then a relatively long period of specialist, often part-time training required after entry and that training covers both skills and the ethics" of the profession. Professions are expected to set standards for their members and to maintain those standards through some form of sanctions e.g "striking off the register".

The concept of the professional as an expert gives considerable power to professions. The "in my opinion, as an authority" syndrome can cut discussion on a topic. This problem has long been recognised and professionals need to keep an open mind and be aware of the abuse of professional power. as postulated by French and Raven (1959). From personal observation as an ex-headteacher, the writer has seen this type of power used and abused widely (and has also been guilty himself of such abuse) as the easiest way to conclude an argument. If a professional has loyalty and shared values with the profession, how is an ideological unease with decisions made by the professional group handled and how can clashes of loyalty between organisational needs and professional needs be handled? A high degree of group identity is actively encouraged by most professions and thus the dangers of inter professional conflicts increase accordingly. A number of the participants in this study were able to give concrete examples of occasions when organisational needs and goals had been affected by inter group and especially inter professional "squabbles".

The research subjects

Over a period of 12 months, a total of 574 individuals were placed through the INTERPLACE software program. The vast majority were involved in courses/seminars on team building and leadership and thus the exercises and activities were seen as an integral part of the programme of study and not as a one off exercise. All of the subjects held management positions, were carrying out management/supervisory tasks or were trainee managers. The youngest subject was 21 years old and the eldest was 57. All of the subjects had held other positions previously. 4 GCE / GCSE '0' levels or their equivalent was the lowest academic achievement by any of the subjects and 78% had or were taking higher education qualifications - the highest of which was a doctorate. 68 of the subjects had completed Belbin Self Perception Questionnaires previously and about 12% were familiar with the concept of team as opposed to functional roles.

The statistical breakdown of the research subjects by gender and professional/occupational group was as follows:

PROFESSION/OCCUPATIONAL GROUP	MALE	FEMALE
Production Managers	17	12
Bank Trainees	5	3
Surveyors	7	1
Health Service Managers	9	19
54
Retail Supervisors/Managers	3	6
Accountants	16	4
District Nurses	1	20
Health Visitors	0	54
Stage Managers	7	4
Personnel Managers	28	124
Social Workers	15	9
Lecturers	15	7
Teachers	19	17
Local Authority Supervisors	16	9
General Managers or unspecified	86	41
TOTAL	244	328	574

 

The writer was aware that there is preponderance of females in the sample and allowance was made for this in the subjective analysis.

All of the subjects whose data has been used gave permission for such usage.

 

The INTERPLACE Program allocates points to each of the Belbin team roles and then produces a profile based on the relative weights scored by the individual. Each subject has 70 points to allocate between the team roles and does this using a set of questions.

The abbreviations for the team roles used both by INTERPLACE and in the analysis for this work are:

• PL PLANT 
• RI RESOURCE INVESTIGATOR 
• C0 CO-ORDINATOR 
• SH SHAPER 
• ME MONITOR EVALUATOR 
• TW TEAMWORKER 
• IMP IMPLEMENTOR 
• CF COMPLETER FINISHER 
• SP SPECIALIST
• DR DROPPED POINTS: a measure of inconsistencies in the answers give i.e. how well does the subject know his or her self   

Using the averaging function of INTERPLACE, it was possible to obtain point estimates for each category depending on the professional/occupational group. The 50 randomly selected subjects (Code Name INTER) were then analysed with the following results face="Arial" size="3">  

  (scores out of a possible maximum of 70, all figures to a maximum of 2 decimal places):   

TEAM ROLE

POINT ESTIMATE

90% CONFIDENCE INTERVAL

(TR)	(PE)	(90CI)
PL	4.8	3.95-5.7
RI	6.6	5.73-7.47
CO	7.9	6.94-8.9
SH	8.5	7.23-9.7
ME	5.0	4.16-5.9
TW	9.2	8.01-10.43
IMP	8.26	7.3-9.24
CF	6.8	5.8-7.8
SP	8.0	6.76-9.2
DR	4.8	4.0-5.7

Were all 70 points to be allocated between the 9 roles and assuming that 5 (whole number) points were dropped; the average score per team role would have been 65/9 i.e: approx. 7.2. Thus the analysis shows that the managers tested, and subjectively they appeared and perceived themselves as fairly typical of UK managers, scored higher than might have been expected were the team roles equally distributed in the following roles: CO-ordinator, SHaper, TeamWorker, IMPlementor and SPecialist. This corresponds to Belbin's work except that he found that successful managers often scored highly as PLants and Resource Investigators as well as the other roles. These roles are sometimes perceived as being the more dynamic and "pushy" roles, with the exceptions of TW and CO.

 

Belbin found that Shapers, Resource Investigators and Coordinators rose to the highest managerial positions whilst Team Workers and Monitor Evaluators did not seem to reach managerial heights as easily.

Team Workers, being socially mild may not have the necessary push and ruthlessness whilst Monitor Evaluators may not wish to indulge in risk taking.

 

Given the analysis above the results from professional / occupational groups could be compared with the test group and explanations for the differences sought via discussion with the subjects. Given the constraints of time, it was decided to examine the data from the caring professions and three of the less vocational roles, general supervisors, accountants and personnel managers.

The following results were obtained for the point estimates of the professions / occupations and the confidence interval for the test group:

 

(TG=Test Group, DN=District Nurses, HV=Health Visitors, SW=Social Workers, TEA=Teachers, ACC=Accountants, SUP=General Supervisors, PM=Personnel Managers)

 

Underlined scores show significant deviations from the test group

PROF./OCC  

	TG	DN	HV	SW	TEA	ACC	SUP	PM
PL	3.95-5.7	3.38	4.46	3.58	5.19	6.6	4.77	4.52
RI	5.73-7.47	5.52	5.85	5.83	4.89	6.5	5.91	6.91
CO	6.94-8.9	5.48	6.57	5.46	5.5	4.7	6.23	6.11
SH	7.23-9.7	3.0	5.54	7.33	7.36	7.2	7.O	7.44
ME	4.16-5.9	3.76	5.56	5.54	4.75	6.8	4.68	5.42
TW	8.0-10.43	16.43	11.17	10.29	9.72	4.6	10.0	9.34
IMP	7.3-9.24	8.71	8.67	10.92	10.03	10.7	9.21	9.16
CF	5.8-7.8	6.00	6.56	6.17	8.0	7.0	7.59	6.49
SP	6.76-9.2	10.0	9-20	8.63	8.92	9.6	6.79	7.87
DR	4.0-5.7	7.71	6.13	6.25	5.64	6.3	7.77	6.28

 

The figures underlined are those one can be 90% confident indicate a significant deviation from the test group and thus merit investigation.

 

Looking at the team roles in order, discussions were undertaken with subjects in an attempt to discover reasons for the deviations and to see if these accorded to any professional / occupational norms and values.

 

PLANTS are highly creative and yet it was the profession that is anecdotally referred to as boring that scored significantly over the norm. The accountants claimed that their profession was basically creative, in the best sense of the word and that it was more than just the factual interpretation of facts and figures.

 

The options for creativity in the National Health Service and Social Services are few, bound as their members are by legal and ethical constraints. All groups expected that teachers would have scored much higher for creativity and the teacher scores could well form the basis of further research.

 

RESOURCE INVESTIGATORS are networkers and capable of taking ideas further. The district nurses and health visitors thought that they would have scored more highly in this category, much of their work being out in the field. Teachers had the same view. Discussions showed that all three groups were happier making contacts with members of their own professions and this will be considered again when looking at the team worker role. It was noticeable that the highest score for this category, although still within the confidence envelope, was personnel managers who have to interface with a large number of other disciplines and occupations as part of their working environment.

 

CO-ORDINATORS; capable of ensuring that all in the group have a say, highly respected etc, does not appear to be a role for accountants. The accountants commented that much of their work was solitary but that senior partners etc often took on this role which was seen as vital. Teachers scored low in this category and the writers own experiences both as a classroom teacher and as a Headteacher (before changing career) collaborate this finding. The teachers questioned stood very much on their professional reputations and whilst they realised that a co-ordination role, nearly always filled by the Head teacher or the deputy Head teacher was necessary, they saw it as detracting from their professional teaching role and removing them away from their pupils. Given the increased managerial role of Head teachers, such a view of coordination could be a problem. Personnel managers also expected to score higher here and discussion centred upon the perception they have of themselves as somewhat removed from the line operations of the organisations as a result of their professional specialism.

 

The Highly Dynamic SHAPER role hardly figured with the district nurses who fell well outside the confidence limits. All other groups were within or fairly close to the limits. The district nurses were concerned that they were not disruptive but conceded that a lack of challenge might be a disadvantage. Many of them saw themselves as the lower end of the medical profession and considered that this might account for the low Shaper scores.

 

The two scores that fell outside the shrewd, analytical MONITOR EVALUATOR confidence limits were accountants who were high; perhaps not surprising and the district nurses who were low. They conceded that this could be a major problem but that they tended to trust the judgement of their seniors and this explanation can, perhaps be linked with the one for Shapers.

 

TEAMWORKER scores were the ones that prompted this study. Accountants were well outside the confidence limits on the low side and reflected that theirs' was a relatively solitary profession. Social workers were just inside the envelope but both health visitors and district nurses were outside. Both groups showed considerable interest in the Blake & Mouton (1964) "Managerial Grid" and agreed that they were very person orientated perhaps to the detriment of the task, i.e that they adopted a -"Country Club" style. Health care professionals can have a problem in becoming what is now known as task or customer orientated. The concept of a "product oriented" service as opposed to one that existed to serve the customer was prevalent in the UK public sector prior to the 1980s. The public sector groups, which include the NHS, agreed that they were often more concerned with group solidarity and professional issues as opposed to the needs of their customers. The writer was made perfectly well aware of this when reviewing a primary school curriculum; members of staff wanted to teach the curriculum they liked as opposed to that needed by the pupils. This becomes a problem if groups recruit

in a homogeneous manner and is one of the problems Belbin's methods are designed to overcome. The TW scores for the NHS groups were very high especially when considered in conjunction with SPECIALIST scores that are also outside of the confidence limits and on the high side. The groups were agreed that recruitment was carried out on purely functional criteria and that there was considerable relevance to the Belbin work within their profession given the recent managerial reforms within the health service. They agreed that they had been given considerable food for thought as a result of the sessions. The majority were in agreement that there is a need for a "Person Centred approach in the caring services but also agreed in discussion that it should be outwardly directed. If the combination of high Teamworker and high Specialist scores caused an inward looking group then this could have considerable implications for the care given to the customer and ultimate public perception of the profession.

 

COMPLETER FINISHER & IMPLEMENTOR scores were nearly all within confidence limits, but all groups except for the teachers dropped points due to inconsistencies. The ability of individuals to know and understand their team as opposed to functional role is a possible area for further study.

 

The effectiveness of a study such as the one carried out will only be seen through the behaviour of the subjects. Those involved agreed that they had been given new ideas to think about and that they were clearer about the way they could use their team role to assist any group they were a member of to function better. They were also aware of the need to consider the dynamics of the existing group and the natural role of applicants when recruiting, a new concept to most of the subjects.

 

The use of such tests for recruitment is relatively new for the UK. The subjective rather than objective interpretation of test results and their use without adequate other selection procedures can be problematic. There is a need to ensure that group relationships are considered in addition to the skills and needs of the task when recruiting and of course this concept forms the major thrust of Belbin's work. In follow up activities that the subjects undertook, wherever possible the teams were formed using the Belbin roles. These teams appeared to perform better than those randomly selected, although no objective measurements were obtained.

 

Belbin's original research 58 gives the results, excluding SPECIALIST, which was a category he had not developed at the time, based on a sample size of 78 executives. The average team role results from this work using 574 managers ranging from junior to senior are compared below:

 

BELBIN THIS STUDY

PL	7.3	4.72
RI	7.8	6.48
CO	8.8	6.34
SH	11.6	7.57
ME	8.2	5.6
TW	10.9	9.1
CF	5.5	6.8

 

Belbin concluded that Shapers were likely to be the most successful managers and that although the team workers scored highly, they were likely to be too mild to be overtly successful unless they had a second high scoring role. The higher proportion of females and members of the public sector tested during this study may have affected the results, many of the private sector results coming closer to the original Belbin results and this may indicate an area for future research.

 

The relative low ME scores may go some way to explaining the "Group Think" problems expressed earlier in this work. Monitor Evaluators may not be the most popular members of the team but their role is vital if balance is to be maintained.

 

Subjects were asked whether the team role profiles they were given manifested themselves in their work situation; 81% of those asked (504) said that they could see how their behaviour appeared to be affected. The personnel manager of a large aerospace company commented that one member of a software team (who came out as a very high shaper) had been able to use the knowledge to alter his working relationships to the benefit of both his colleagues and the organisation.

 

CONCLUSIONS

It must be conceded that this study has opened up areas of study rather than provided an answer to the question of how professional / occupational groups and team roles correlate. However certain conclusions can be drawn that have implications for the professions concerned and those involved in recruiting them.

 

1. The subjects concerned validated Belbin's findings both objectively and subjectively. The large degree of accuracy reported and the interest shown indicates that the work is useful in both the work situation and as a theoretical background to the functioning of groups and teams.

 

2. The statistical analysis showed that there were team role scores that appeared outside the 90% confidence limits. Discussion with the subjects indicated that there may well be professional / occupational values associated with these scores.

 

3. The high Teamworker scores of many of the public sector subjects, especially those in the NHS are worthy of further, more detailed research. These are areas of life that have been accused of being "product oriented" and of professional banding together to the detriment of the customer. The high person orientation and group cohesiveness factors may assist in explaining this phenomenon and point out a need for team role balance within the various groupings formed to deliver products and services.

 

4. The majority of subjects agreed on the need to consider team roles in addition to functional roles when appointing staff. Most said that the knowledge they had gained in studying these concepts with the writer had been most useful and 3 of the organisations had already embarked on some form of testing for team roles.

 

5. Subjects and their senior managers said that the information was useful on an organisational level as a means of avoiding possible conflicts and "not putting square pegs in round holes".

  Belbin's work was concerned with how effectively teams operate as a function of the team roles of the individual members. This work has attempted to see if there is a correlation between team role and professional / occupational group. The conclusion is that there is - based on the statistical evidence from the INTERPLACE program and perhaps as importantly, the views of the subjects, all of whom were in management

positions, who undertook the tests and were able to give feedback based on their organisational experiences. The feedback collaborated the work of all those who have written on teams; Group think, group norms, cohesiveness, risk taking and team roles were all quoted. Such knowledge is likely to be of considerable use to the subjects as organisations move into more matrix style structures where interdisciplinary teams are the norm and certain appointments may be made more on team role criteria than those usually associated with functional roles.

 

If balanced teams are to be formed that have the right degree of person and task orientation, then it is vital that there be a correct relationship between the functional and the team needs; for perhaps too long the emphasis has been on the former with little consideration placed on group needs.