Belbin Theory of Team Dynamics
Question:
The ability to develop viable teams/groups and enhance their performance is a rare capability sought after by employers. Given your reading, models, team experience and five reflection sheets: What insights have you gained about your ability to build viable relationships and effective teams?
The base of the business model of any organization in the world is the workforce of the organization. The business strategy and the model is generally developed based on the skills and expertise of the human resources available to the management of the organization. So the presence of effective synchronization and dynamics among the teams of employees present in the business model of the organization is one of the most important factors for the high performance of the organization (Andrade, 2015). So the management of most of the organizations focus on effective team building and increasing performance of the teams in the workplace of the organization. The skill of effective team building and increasing the performance of the teams in the workplace has the most demand among the management of the organizations. These skills are generally based on some theories based on the team building. We will go through a few of such theories in the next section.
Belbin’s team roles
This theory defines a number of roles that should be played by different individuals in a team for the presence of efficient team dynamics. There are 9 roles which are defined in this theory of team dynamics, which are mentioned below.
- Resource investigator, an individual who is responsible for finding ideas and the resources to execute those ideas.
- Teamworker, an individual responsible for making the entire team work together with high performance for quicker goal achievement.
- Co-ordinator, an individual responsible for effectively divide the work among the team members and focus on the objectives of the team.
- Plant, an individual responsible for the creation of the innovative ideas to solve various problems in the workplace.
- Monitor evaluator, an individual responsible for monitoring the work of all the team members to determine the progress and direction of the entire team in terms of the end goals of the team (Meinecke, 2015).
- Specialist, an individual having in-depth knowledge of a certain area of expertise.
- Shaper, an individual responsible for driving the team in the right direction.
- Implementer, an individual responsible for creating the business or operational strategies and implement them in the workplace.
- Complete finisher is responsible for the quality control of the work of the team along with the check at the end of the work to ensure the absence of any errors.
I have experienced the implementation of the team roles defined by Belbin in a number of teams I have been a part of. I have played the roles of implementer, shaper and specialist in the teams which I have been a part of.
Tuckman defined four stages of team building, which suggests that any team in any of the organization goes through four stages to get formed and to have high performance. These four stages of team building are forming, storming, norming and performing.
- Forming is the initial stage in which the team is formed and the team members are not acquainted with each other. The team members maintain formality with each other in this stage and not aware of the differences between each other’s opinions.
- Storming is the phase which allows the team members to start understanding the differences of opinions between the team members. This stage allows the team members to sort out the differences between them to focus on the end goal of the team (Ying, 2016).
- Norming is the stage in which the team members go beyond the differences between them and start to work together. This stage allows the individuals presence in the team to surpass the differences between them to create a synergy in the team (King, 2015).
- Performing is the stage in which the members in the team start working together towards the common set of goals irrespective of the differences between them.
I have experienced all of these stages in the teams, which I have been a part of. The forming and storming stages ensure that the members of the team surpass the differences among them to create an effective dynamic. The norming and storming stages allow the team to become an efficient collaboration of the individuals (Bond, 2014).
This theory focuses on a number of factors in the workplace of the organization which are essential for the creation of an efficient team. Howard Schultz defined a number of activities or processes which can be utilized by the leaders in the workplace of any of the organization to ensure the presence of effective team dynamics among the team members in the workplace of the organization. Some of these factors of effective team building are mentioned in this section.
- Effective leadership is the base of an effective team dynamics in the workplace of an organization. The leadership in the workplace sets the tone for the work environment and the work culture in the workplace, which in turn affects the way the team members behave with each other. Hence an effective leadership in the workplace of the organization is essential for the creation of efficient and high performing teams (Baggetta, 2013).
- Forming a team based on the required skills and expertise for the completion of various business activities is another major factor for the creation of an effective team dynamics. So the inclusion of diversity and skills into the formation of a team is another factor, which is essential for the maintenance of team dynamics.
- The activities of building trust among the team members is essential to allow the team members to bond together and to go beyond the differences between their behavior and characteristics.
- The focus of the team activities is another major factor in the team building activities, which allows the team members to work together towards a common set of goals (Leiter, 2013).
This theory defines a number of factors which I have experienced in the teams I have been a part of. The leadership in the workplace, the diversity of the team members, the trust creation activities and the focus of the team are indeed the elements essential for the presence of effective team dynamics (Riener, 2016).
Tuckman Theory of Team Building
In this section of the report, I’ll mention some of my experiences in different types of teams along with my performance in the corresponding teams. The teams that I have been a part of were different in various terms and had different working culture, which affected my performance to a certain extent. Some types of teams which I have been a part of are mentioned below.
- All the team members were working in silos, which were isolated groups or modules. So the team members never collaborated on any work, which in turn caused each of the team members not to have any idea about the work that anyone else is doing. This in turn decreased performance of the team due to the type of the work being tackled by the team required extensive collaboration and teamwork. The lack of collaboration and teamwork also led to loss of resources and inefficient usage of the resources. I would be the least effective in such a work environment, which doesn’t have any scope of collaboration and teamwork.
- Another instance of team that I was a part of allowed all the team members to work closely with each other. In such a setup, the team members were clear regarding the tasks being performed by the entire team and were involved in many collaborations. The collaborations and teamwork by all the team members caused the team goals to be clearly visible at all the times along with the effective maintenance of the direction of the activities of the team (McShane, 2012).
I have a number of core strengths which allows me to be a good team player and allows me to have strong trusts developed with my fellow teammates. Some of these core strengths are mentioned in this section.
- My communication skills allow me to clearly convey my opinion and emotions to the fellow teammates. This in turn allows me to share various information with the team members in an effective manner, which in turn leads to the development of trust with the teammates.
- The interpersonal skills which I possess, allow me to have a clear understanding of the differences between me and any other individual in the team. This in turn allows me to work effectively with the team members by going beyond the differences and focusing on the common set of goals.
- One of my other core strengths is the ability to guide either an individual or the entire team towards the direction to achieve the objectives and goals. This ability allows me to maintain focus in the team activities, which in turn minimizes the loss of any resources and maximizes the performance of the team in the workplace of the organization.
- The ability to bind the team together in various team building activities is also one of my core strengths in a team. This ability also allows me to develop effective trust with my teammates, which in turn results in better collaboration and teamwork.
This section mentions a few of my understanding and experience with culture and power relationships along with their importance in developing and maintaining team dynamics in the workplace of any organization. The power relationships provide a number of guidelines to the management of the organization in terms of the examples of the real-time scenarios of the workplaces having efficient team dynamics (Levi, 2016). Some of these examples are based on the consideration of culture being the most important factor in maintaining team dynamics (Miller, 2015). The presence of diversity in the teams in the workplace of an organization, allows the members of the teams to be from various different cultures. Both the leadership and the fellow team members should respect these different cultures in order to have a good understanding with the other team members. This in turn leads to the presence of effective team dynamics. I have experienced such a leadership in the workplace, which focused on the management of the employees based on their cultural background.
There are a number of areas which I want to focus in order to allow me to enhance the viability and effectiveness of the teams. Some of these areas are mentioned below along with the action I need to take to ensure enhanced viability or team performance.
- I need to improve my interpersonal skills to bond with my fellow teammates at a personal level. This in turn will allow me to have better trust with the team members and will also allow me to connect with them at a deeper level.
- I need to improve my knowledge regarding the various cultures that my teammates are from. This in turn will allow me to ensure that I respect their cultures at all times and also allows me to be a better team player.
References
Andrade, J. and Huang, W.H., 2015. Technological Tools to Enhance Workplace Learning among Virtual Team Members. Handbook of Research on Learning Outcomes and Opportunities in the Digital Age, p.308.
Baggetta, M., Han, H. and Andrews, K.T., 2013. Leading Associations How Individual Characteristics and Team Dynamics Generate Committed Leaders. American Sociological Review, 78(4), pp.544-573.
Bond, M.A. and Haynes, M.C., 2014. Workplace diversity: A social–ecological framework and policy implications. Social Issues and Policy Review, 8(1), pp.167-201.
Dyer, W.G. and Dyer, J.H., 2013. Team building: Proven strategies for improving team performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Guest, D., 2015. Team building, team challenges. Appita Journal, 68(2), p.87.
Guide, S.L.T.B., 2014. Student Leadership & Activities Student Leadership Team Building Guide.
Johansson, M., Skantze, G. and Gustafson, J., 2013. Head pose patterns in multiparty human-robot team-building interactions. In Social Robotics (pp. 351-360). Springer International Publishing.
King, D.D., Newman, A. and Luthans, F., 2015. Not if, but when we need resilience in the workplace. Journal of Organizational Behavior.
Leiter, M.P., 2013. Analyzing and theorizing the dynamics of the workplace incivility crisis. Amsterdam: Springer.
Levi, D., 2016. Group dynamics for teams. Sage Publications.
McShane, S. and Von Glinow, M., 2012. Organizational behavior. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Meinecke, A.L. and Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., 2015. Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway. In The Cambridge handbook of meeting science (Vol. 325, No. 356, p. 5). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, B.C., 2015. Quick team-building activities for busy managers: 50 exercises that get results in just 15 minutes. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Parke, M.R., Campbell, E.M. and Bartol, K.M., 2014, January. Setting the stage for virtual team development: Designing teams to foster knowledge sharing. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2014, No. 1, p. 17244). Academy of Management.
Riener, G. and Wiederhold, S., 2016. Team building and hidden costs of control. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
Ying Liao, Y., Soltani, E., Wang, W.Y. and Iqbal, A., 2016. The dynamics of workplace relationships in a diverse internationally staffed organisation: a qualitative ethnographic assessment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-30.
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