Dr. Belbin will be celebrating his 90^th birthday in June this year!! To mark this special occasion, the team has launched a special initiative called ’90 stories for a 90^th Birthday’. We’d like to invite you to be part of this initiative. We’d  like to invite you to  send in your stories/ experience/ case study describing how you have used the Belbin insights and the impact it has created, the value it has brought to you. It could be a case study of about 500 words or something small yet heart felt such as:

‘The Belbin insights really helped me see my strengths in a new light. I am also able to appreciate my team members better. The Belbin reports have been very helpful. There is a positive difference in how I manage and even my team members are noticing it.’

Or:

‘”In this project we were tasked with increasing productive time by supporting the workforce to be rehearsed and ready to work within the safety and production environment. We chose to use Belbin for a number of reasons; the focus it provides on contribution to the team, providing a common language for them to use, ease of understanding and cost effectiveness. We were able to see where the team had a surplus of certain Team Roles and a lack of others which, along with our other data, allowed us to make a series of interventions and recommendations going into the project execution phase. We will certainly use Belbin for similar projects in future.”

 If you’d like, you could even record a short video of yourself on your phone/ camera, sharing your experience and send it across to info@www.prepearl.net.  The idea is to present Dr. Belbin with sharings of how his work has added value and made a difference to you and your work.

With the long weekend coming up, perfect  to take some time to put down your thoughts! May we request you to send in your stories by the end of March ‘16 please.

So many of us have been touched by the Belbin insights and have experienced value at a personal, team or organisational level.  Would be wonderful to put our thoughts and experience down and share the same!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Knowing our strengths or the contributions that we make that are valuable to our team, can actually help us formulate and articulate our KRAs in a way that they leverage our strengths . A behaviour profiling such as the Belbin can help one identify one’s main workstyle strengths. To start off, the key then is to take a look at one’s KRAs and identify the most crucial of the KRAs.

Now look at one’s list of Work Style strengths in the Belbin Suggested Work Styles report (Fig 2). This is a crucial report that gives one insight into contributions and work styles that one is good at and in all probability will enjoy doing. Consciously leveraging these at the work place would result in enhanced levels of interest and engagement. It also allows individuals to begin looking at their KRAs in a new light, developing and creating their goals in an empowered manner.

The crucial question to answer is ‘How can one leverage this strength in one’s current context to fulfil the KRA’. One will notice creative and exciting ways of bringing in context and life to one’s KRA such that one is leveraging one’s strength and beginning to see one’s KRA in a new light. This makes formulating KRAs not just a bland exercise but allows one to bring in one’s own individuality and strengths in setting performance goals for the year.

Given below is an example of how this is done:

The key is to let the KRAs come alive and to look for how one’s strengths can be harnessed for the various goals that one is setting for the year. In this example, the person can see that the ‘Supporting’ Work Style can be aptly leveraged for the KRA of ‘Developing second line leaders’. Going into details such as which team member the person will  develop during the first few months and how he/she will do so brings the KRA alive. (Fig 3)

In the second example in the KRA sheet below (Fig 3), the person has creatively and smartly leveraged his/her strengths of Shaper- Resource Investigator ie ‘Exploiting opportunities’ to contribute to a KRA where at face value would largely require Implementer contributions. Developing one’s KRAs through the lense of team roles now allows this person to break up the KRA into contributions that are required for success. He/she now realises that opportunities for introduction, for process change have to spotted. Once this is finalized, these changes have to be introduced and followed. The person can now seek help from an Implementer colleague who can support him/ her in  setting the process once he/she as actively looked at opportunities to enhance and benefit the business process. Then he/she can consciously leverage his/her strength to drive things forward once the processes are in place

Once can also discover new areas that one could bring into one’s goal sheet bases one’s strengths and current or future organisation needs. Such an approach allows for a involved discussion between the individual and the manager. Let us know how you have integrated your strengths to create KRAs that you find challenging, dynamic and enthusiastic about.

Have you found yourself in situations where what is demanded of you sometimes actually goes against your grain! But it wouldn’t be prudent to escape the situation and hence for example, you will drag yourself to that networking event since you are now one of the senior managers. There are situations wherein as a leader, one may be required to make contributions that do not play to one’s strengths, may not come naturally to the person. Eg: say you are in a situation where a senior colleague needs to be dealt with tact and sensitivity- and this is not your forte- you have a preference for getting onto a job, getting things done and are known for your outspoken quality and ‘no nonsense’ attitude. However you are well aware that this situation calls for tact, patience and dialogue. Behaving in a way that shows unilateral focus on the task with little or no regard for the sensitivity of the person isn’t going to help the situation. In such cases we realise, a shift is needed. In Belbin Team Role terms, a shift to playing a manageable team role is required- ie contributions/ behaviours that don’t come naturally to us but when the situation demands, we could consciously work on providing what is needed. Now making contributions that don’t come naturally to us needs a conscious sense of self-discipline.

Three steps to effectively contribute what is demanded especially when it’s not your natural strength:

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In this segment on ‘Harnessing the Belbin Team Roles’ in working relationships, we speak to Dr. Michael Thiemann and Ms. Sujatha Patel from ThyssenKrupp India to understand how work pairs can leverage each other’s strengths.

Over the past year we have been using the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process in our interventions and consulting and are excited and amazed at the platform for change management that the AI process provides. By approaching change from a mindset of existing strengths, AI unlocks in organisations, departments and teams, energy, enthusiasm and creativity by discovering the ‘best of what is’ and using this storehouse of energy to infuse and create the best that can possibly be!

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