Belbin North America / Team Roles

Everyone knows what dire straits the newspaper industry is in. Facing this fact head-on, Canada’s leading newspaper, The Globe and Mail, knew it was facing extinction. The company needed to completely rethink its business and break its “old conservative” mindset.

The company executives asked 3Circle Partners to help them launch a major “Reimagination” project. They had identified 30 key issues the company needed to address, and called on 3CP’s Team Role analysis to help them create a team around each issue with the right balance of team roles to favor innovation. The teams also participated in Team Accelerator™ workshops to give them the basic skills for working most effectively together, based on their strengths and weaknesses.

This new team-based structure was used to implement a number of major innovations in the newspaper, including a revamping of the physical layout of the editorial/on-line offices to foster more effective collaboration.

Overall, the company reports good results from almost all teams, and outstanding results from several of them. They also discovered several true leaders in the organization (those who could harness the full power of their teams). The Globe and Mail is now viewed as one of the most successful newspapers in North America.

Xerox Corporation has always relied on innovation to drive growth. A few years ago, the company was working on a breakthrough product that combined two very different technologies: a new solid-ink system (purchased from inventor Tektronix) and existing copier technology. The project got a year behind schedule in part because of conflict between key teams representing the two.

About that time, the key VP went through Team Accelerator™ workshop, and realized the 3Circle Partner approach would help break the log jam. All members of two key teams also went through Team Accelerator workshops and learned collaboration skills. One key insight was that both teams were imbalanced in their Team Roles, both having an overabundance of some roles and gaps in other roles (they were imbalanced in different ways). Because of these imbalances, neither team could be very productive on its own, and the differences in working styles practically guaranteed conflict between the groups.

Yet the two groups realized that if they combined their strengths, together they could create a well-balanced team. The groups worked through their differences, developed a better understanding of the each other’s dynamics, and develop ground rules that would help them communicate in ways that would avoid future problems.

Xerox credits this work with speeding up the release-to-market of their new ColorQube printer. The improved collaboration also resulted in significantly fewer post-launch problems compared to other product launches.

Two years after a new CEO took over at the regional office of a national realty company, things were not looking good. The CEO had brought a number of new clients with him, but still profit had dropped and the company was stagnating. The work environment was so poor that high-performing brokers were leaving en masse. The CEO was dissatisfied with his own performance, but felt he had tried everything to get his staff to shape up.

He attended a public workshop given by 3Circle Partners, which inspired him to have Belbin Team Role analyses done for all staff. He also arranged to have them all participate in a Team Accelerator™ workshop as a team. That session focused on understanding gaps and overlaps in roles.

The turning point came when the CEO realized he had been trying to perform the tasks associated with the kind of Coordinator tasks that are required of someone who needs to keep everyone on a team moving forward. Unfortunately, he had no natural interest in that kind of work. What energized him more was making contacts and coming up with new ideas (jobs linked to the Resource Investigator and Shaper roles, respectively).

The CEO was at a critical juncture: if he were to play to his strengths, he could not do a good job of being a CEO. So he “fired” himself, and step aside to become a Managing Partner, where the tasks required of him played directly into his Resource Investigator and Shaper talents.

The changes didn’t stop there, however. The now-former CEO convinced his corporate management to allow him to create a new COO position, and deliberately filled that job with a person who had the Coordinator skills he lacked. The company also formed 3-person “balanced” teams (in terms of Belbin team roles), each which was assigned accounts.

Three years after these actions, the revenues for this division had nearly doubled, and it had gone from the worst-performing regional division in the company to the best.

Sam, a mid-level consultant in small consulting firm was frustrated by lack of career progress. He participated in a Team Role analysis conducted by 3Circle Partners, which opened his eyes to skills he possessed but were not using.

When learning about the nine team roles, Sam could see that he spent much of his time doing the kinds of tasks associated with the Shaper role: people who make things happen no matter the obstacles, who thrive with challenge and pressure.

But the profile report he received showed that both he and others around him saw even stronger talents, those embodied in the role of Resource Investigator: an extroverted person who naturally keeps and maintains a lot of contacts, and uses those contacts to find resources the team needs.

A small portion of the Team Role report is shown in the figure. The numbers reflect how highly both Sam (“Self”) and a number of “observers” (coworkers) felt about his ability to perform the jobs associated with various roles. It surprised Sam that even he rated himself higher in the RI (resource investigator) skills; but what struck him most was just how much higher the observers rated him in that category.

For Sam, this mismatch between the type of work he spent his time doing (Shaper) and the type of work he was even better at (Resource Investigator) had held him back in his career. By focusing more on performing the Resource Investigator role, Sam became even more effective in his job. And within three years his career success allowed him to become a partner in a Big 3 consulting firm.