Belbin team roles - what on Earth are they? What am I?

I find it funny when you do a survey expecting one outcome and you end up with a completely different result. Has this happened to you? It did to me recently when I completed a Belbin team role survey. I expected to get ‘Teamworker’, ‘Co-ordinator’ and ‘Plant’ types of roles come up for me, but no. My expectations were way off. I’ll explain (or bore you) as to why I expected those roles…

We need to go back in time just a bit, ok maybe a decade or so. To a phase of my life, the pre-kids phase, where I performed a range of administrative and co-ordinator roles. I worked in a variety of different environments from the strict office at Defence Headquarters in Wellington, to a fast-paced oil trading floor in Grosvenor Place overlooking Buckingham Palace in London, to a prestigious American University in Doha.  By far the most fun was the oil trading floor. Although now I look upon the industry and cringe that I was a part of the oil business. But at the time I was 21 yrs and on my overseas experience and it was the best job; good pay, free food, free gym, nice work colleagues who gave me rides in Ferrari's and Porsche's, and we went to the local pub for pints of Guinness on a Friday. Ah - that’s when my passion for Guinness started. Mmm. Guinness is goodness.

oops, lost focus linking of the tasty black liquid. Ok, back on topic now…

I was extremely committed to my jobs as a secretary/personal assistant, office co-ordinator, clerk and so forth. I enjoyed the challenges the different roles presented. I was well respected and felt appreciated for the work I did in my support capacity. It’s a pretty sweet deal when as a temporary staff member the company would hire another temp to replace me while I went on holidays to Europe, and when I got back I returned to my temp job. 

Recently I’ve read and learnt about Belbin team roles. This classification system was new to me. As I alluded too at the beginning, I feel teamworker, co-ordinator, and plant roles are my best fits as remnant from my admin days and fit with my support role mentality and my sometimes, umm, different ideas I conjure up.  

The Belbin team roles – pros and cons

Out of the roles I’ve performed to-date, I’d say by preferred Belbin team role would be Teamworker. Working cohesively with others and achieving goals gives me a great sense of accomplishment.

When I performed an office co-ordinator role years ago, I definitely performed the Teamworker, Co-ordinator, Plant, Completer finisher roles.  We were a small team, and I had the job of picking up the slack when the Director left. Using my Teamworker skills I helped ‘hold the fort’ so to speak. I maintained the budget, kept the team running and on task, liaised with media companies to get artwork created and in print, took care of invoices and staff expenses, arranged meetings, updated the Dean until a new Director was appointed 6 months later.  That took me out of my comfort zone, but it was a good experience. 

So, after all that are you ready to find out what the survey  identified as my Belbin team roles?  ‘Completer finisher’ and ‘Shaper’! I laughed. Then I thought that maybe these are the roles I should be doing, or will do in the future. Or it could be that the survey was a load of bollocks.  

No matter what other skills I collect on my journey through life, I feel that Teamworker will always feature as a prominent team role of mine.