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Growing the Team |
'Putting the right person in the right job'
Belbin Team Role Theory can be used to recruit new staff, to reassign or promote team members, to set up project teams and for coaching and career advice.
The 'Placement Dilemma':
While skills and knowledge can be acquired by training and experience, they are insufficient by themselves to ensure suitability for a job. Stress and other problems tend to be created when the demands of a particular form of work conflict with the natural or preferred behaviour of the job-holder (suitability).
This gives rise to the ‘Placement Dilemma’ facing most line managers and recruiters - how to achieve the highest fulfilment of ‘eligibility’ and ‘suitability’ criteria from the pool of applicants?
'While a number of applicants may be eligible for the job, who is the most suitable?'
Eligibility can be understood as the ‘entry criteria’ and shows past performance and “What you know” (Task focus):
i.e. skills, qualifications, relevant experience, references, acceptability at interview.
Suitability can be viewed as ‘performance criteria’ and is an indicator of future achievement and “Who you are” (Team focus):
i.e. behavioural tendencies, temperament, aptitude, versatility, assessments, role fit.
Although entry criteria (eg the qualifications etc to secure the interview) are important, they are not in themselves guarantees that the person will be successful in the job. Belbin argues that suitability, even at the total exclusion of eligibility, should be the recruiter’s primary goal. Suitability represents the behaviours specified as being critical or important for the job success. If the applicant is highly suitable the eligibility factors such as experience and knowledge can be cultivated later.
How is Belbin used in Recruitment?
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Assessing a candidate's suitabilty |
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The Belbin Team-Role profile establishes the behavioural propensities of an individual. The report produced contains a section called 'Check at Interview'. For instance, if someone claims to be a Plant, the report might suggest: "...find out about some of John's ideas". This aids the interviewer in establishing whether John can provide any evidence of his preferences. In essence, is he a good example of the Team Role? It can be used to assess candidates from inside or outside the organisation. |
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Evaluating how a candidate might fit into the team |
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Someone may have the Team Role attributes you are looking for, but how will he or she fit in with the existing team? Whilst you can't account for personal differences or "personality clashes", you can use a Belbin Team/Group Report to help assess whether an individual will be providing a much-needed gap-filling contribution or whether their Team Role preferences could cause conflict with other team members.
By completing a team-role inventory of colleagues and examining what is missing, a job specification can be drawn up of the general shape of the candidate the firm would like to recruit. The interview now becomes directed towards the key question that the selectors with be posing to themselves: how far does the candidate match the personal specification?
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Assessing how the candidate fits with job |
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Even if the candidate fits well in the team, staff turnover can only be reduced by matching people to jobs. The Belbin® Job Report allows you to specify the attributes you require in a particular job. This can be used within HR for recruitment and discussion or presented to the candidate at interview.
Research into the level of compatibility between the demands of work and the job-holder has resulted in the development of a Job Requirement Exercise (JRE). The inputs are computer processed to form a Job Requirement Report and a compatibility report on a particular candidate’s suitability (Job Suitability Report) for the job. |
Sample Reports:
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Getting Started
Where Are We At?
The Tools for Teamwork
Establishing the Teamwork Habit
Maintaining Success
Maintaining Team Performance (Coaching)
Growing the Team
Assigning Work Roles
Building Team Leadership Skills
Sharpening The Strategic Focus
Solving Strategic Issues
Leadership Coaching
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