Which Hat fits Best?

One of the most interesting aspects of the communications paper I have been doing, was learning about Belbin team roles.  The 9 Belbin team roles were developed by Meredith Belbin in the 1960’s and give us an insight into why our teams work well, why they don’t, and how to get a team to function at its optimal best.

When first discussing this at the beginning of the paper – after only a few weeks of knowing each other – we casually assigned each other the roles we saw fit (it seemed simple enough - some personality traits were already obvious).  These mostly stayed the same throughout the paper, with the exceptions of the leadership roles and those in red below.  These roles developed as the course went on, as we each found our strengths and worked in with other members personalities:

Gabrielle:	Shaper		Christina:	Specialist
	Completer Finisher			Implementer
	Implementer → Monitor Evaluator			Monitor/Evaluator → Completer Finisher
Myself:	Plant		Cherie:	Team Worker
	Team Worker			Resource Investigator
	Completer Finisher			Monitor/Evaluator → Coordinator
	Coordinator

With three quite head-strong ladies there was a little head-butting as the “leader” role wasn’t firmly established.   

With Gabrielle in the Shaper hat, she seemed to be the obvious choice for leader with her strength and gusto, but as our team members were each very motivated, head-strong and intelligent in their own right, the Shaper approach didn’t work.  She moved into Monitor Evaluator and Completer Finisher roles, keeping us in line with her critiques and helping us to get the small details right.

Cherie as a Resource Investigator and Team Worker fitted the leadership role well.  She was able to listen to all sides, appease any disagreements within the team, and whip the chain should anyone slack off (thankfully this didn’t happen too often!). The Resource Investigator hat proved useful for accessing outside contacts for our primary research and adding to this was a nice touch of Coordinator that helped to move everyone along.

The Specialist role was filled beautifully by Christina, who was very quick to act and come up with great material when it was requested.  This role is essential to any research team.  The one who can find the information.  Add to that the attributes of an Implementer – hardworking and just gets on with it… we would have been lost without her.  Her Completer Finisher skills were also invaluable at the end of the assignments.

For myself, coming up with ideas and brainstorming on how to implement the lecturers’ instructions put me in the role of Plant.  To then bring these ideas to fruition, involved me putting on the Coordinator hat and working closely with the leader to get all the jobs done through team work.  My attention to detail and slight touch of OCD meant I enjoyed proof checking and tidying up all the small details – Completer Finisher hat firmly on.

With both Cherie and I being Team Workers, it helped immensely in coordinating this group of very able, talented, strong-willed women.  All of us had outside issues causing us stress at times, and it is important for leaders to understand these and work around these issues with empathy to those involved.

No team could complete these assignments adequately without careful editing and error checking.  Our team was very lucky to have all of us as Completer Finishers to some degree.  No matter how careful everyone is – there will always be something that one person picks up, but not another!

Some roles we needed at the start of assignments; shaper, coordinator, plants - some during the middle; resource investigator, specialist, implementer - and some at the end; completer finisher, monitor evaluator.  We were very lucky to have all of these roles filled with only four people. 

I’m not sure that I could have hoped for any extra or stronger team members.  I believed we covered everything well.  For this paper, I am quite happy with the team I had and the hats I wore.