Greeting! My name is Ilya Pracht, I am a TeamLead course trainer, Senior Product Manager, Delivery Manager and COO at OTUS. One of my favorite topics is team building and team auditing. There is a whole well of interesting tools and recommendations that provide answers to many of the manager’s questions.

I wrote about team audit earlier here is this article. The main tools and approaches are discussed there.

One of the main tools in the topic of team building is roles. Well, because any team is a set of roles. There are many role models, different role models. But they have one common flaw – excessive abstractness. And you often end up hearing comments like “That’s all great, but I can’t figure out how to define the roles of my employees.”

In order to somehow bring clarity, I want to take the most popular Belbin’s role modeland show, on well-known examples, how pronounced representatives of each type look. Chased!

A team is a set of roles

I want to emphasize this thesis once again. Any team is 2 sets: people and roles. And the main task of the team building process is to connect them together. Sometimes everything falls into place. Sometimes it’s more like “pulling an owl on a globe”. But in both cases, it is necessary to achieve results if you want an efficient and productive team.

There are several types of roles. Conventionally, they can be divided into 4 types:

1. Functional – This is what we should do: developer, tester, PM, etc.

2. Process – these are also functions, but within some process: scrum-master in the project, interviewer in the hiring process, etc.

3. Social – These are roles within the framework of interaction with other people: a colleague, an office worker, a husband/wife and everything like that.

4. Team – these are the same roles in the team that we do so that a group of people can act together and generate results.

Next, let’s talk about team roles.

Belbin’s role model

Model description

Belbin identified 3 groups of roles in the team:

1. Action-oriented roles

2. Social roles

3. Intellectual roles

And marked 3 roles in each group:

• Motivator – inspires everyone to do something

• Performer – simply does, turns ideas into results

• Pedant – Brings things to an end, perfects

• Coordinator – Makes everyone work together, gives instructions

• The soul of the team – just a nice guy, builds relationships within the team

• Researcher – establishes contacts with the outside world and brings new ideas from there

• Idea generator – Creates new ideas (unlike the researcher, his own, well, or thinks that his own)

• Analyst – Seeks the truth, filters all ideas

• Specialist – an expert, knows how to do it right

It is ideal when a team has all these roles. But this, to put it bluntly, is a rarity. It is necessary to ensure that at least the most necessary ones are presented. Belbin believed that there are 5 such:

Many problems in teams can be seen from the point of view of lack/imbalance of roles. And the solution to these problems, respectively, lies in adding/removing roles. This is the main idea of ​​the whole model.

Belbin’s roles in faces

And now let’s look at the vivid images that characterize each of Belbin’s roles. I hope that the characters I have chosen are recognizable and somehow familiar to everyone.

If you have ideas for who else to include in this list, write in the comments.

Motivator. As you know, he is the one who motivates everyone. It ignites, inspires, makes you get up from the couch. In the series “How I Met Your Mother” there was a hero who perfectly illustrates such a role – Barney Stinson. He was constantly arranging some kind of pranks, persuading everyone to do strange things. A real motivator.

Performer. He just takes and does. Does not discuss, does not argue. Differs in diligence and the ability to “grumble, but work”. Purposeful to the point of impossibility. Who does it look like? As for me, minions. To remember one of their trips to New York and the first acquaintance with Gru. The boys set themselves the goal of finding a new monster to bring the whole tribe back to life, and went to him, through all the troubles and even the ocean. Well, the fact that they create miracles by performing their tasks is the reverse side of the Executor. It must be directed and controlled.

Pedant. A perfectionist who does not tolerate any roughness and inconsistencies at all. Due to this, he perfects his work and the results of others in the team. Bright image – Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. This is someone who always has complete order everywhere. This one can strengthen any team.

Coordinator. The one who cuts the tasochki, gives instructions, helps everyone to synchronize with each other. Able to divide the whole into parts, divide everything in the world. A cartoon is mentioned “Aleksii Popovych and Tugaryn Zmiy” and local horse Julius. Especially the episode when they wandered into another hero’s house. “Tikhin goes for firewood, grandmother prepares dinner, Alyosha looks after, Lyubava brings order. And I am a heroic horse. Suddenly there’s a fight tomorrow, and I’m awake? The perfect coordinator.

The soul of the team. Sociable, extroverted, able to support any dialogue and attract everyone to him. Who was that? Donkey from Shrek. This character managed to make friends with an ogre, make a dragon fall in love with him, arrange a relationship between Shrek and Feona. A great example.

Researcher. The role of the researcher is to bring something new from outside. Read smart articles and books, watch talks, listen to podcasts, and then pitch ideas to the team. And thereby, to develop it and make it better. The main researcher of my childhood is baby Stewie from the Griffins. And although the goals of his research were, to put it mildly, strange, the methods and results are always top notch.

Idea generator. Unlike a researcher, an idea generator draws inspiration from within rather than from without. He just constantly invents something. Fantaser and dreamer. Constantly gushes with ideas and proposals, just have time to dodge. For some reason, it immediately comes to mind as an example Winnie the Pooh from the Soviet cartoon of the same name. “Let’s go visit! But they don’t visit in the morning… He who visits in the morning is wise!” He invents any kind of songs, the movers and shakers. Perhaps not the brightest example, but such a familiar one, familiar from childhood.

Analyst. An important person if the team has the previous 2 gentlemen: the researcher and the idea generator. The analyst filters everything they bring, helps to finalize and sow valuable seeds from their ideas, to implement something in life. My top analyst is Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. He was constantly sent to incomprehensible stories, incomprehensible tasks were thrown at him, and he made a result out of it. Useful result. Cool result.

Specialist. The main owner of the examination. So far, everyone is generating ideas, researching something, analyzing, he just knows how to do it. Ready to answer almost any question and do almost any task. Who is he? Walter White from Die Hard. Moreover, like a real expert, Heisenberg very quickly mastered new areas for himself, quickly learned and immersed himself, becoming better there as well.

A combination of roles

Belbin’s roles are functions and tasks. They are simply characteristic of a person, his psychotype, his desires. And so, as a rule, a person will simply fulfill the role (or several roles) that he likes, regardless of motivation or regulations. It is almost impossible to remake the role of a person, and this thing, it must be said, is ungrateful.

Of course, there is no concrete fence between the roles. There are many similar roles. Even in our examples. This is Barney Stinson. We called him Motivator. And he is, in addition, a clear Generator of ideas, the Soul of the team and an Expert in a certain specific field. Also, in life, a person performs several roles at once. And the ability of the team to be a real team, and not just a group of individuals with a prior conspiracy, largely depends on the balance of these roles.

PS

I hope this format makes the variety of team roles clearer. And the answer to the question “how to define roles” is more or less complete.

Want more role models? I have them! August 16 we will spend open lesson of the Timlead course at OTUS just about that. Let’s analyze a few more role models there, consider how to approach solving real team problems through roles. Sign up and come!

---

Join my Telegram channel Gray-haired director. I write there about people and product management, about management in IT. I answer your questions and analyze your cases.