Week 9: Team analysis

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How would our team fit into the Belbin model of team roles? Is is a little tricky to answer, as there were only 4 of us who stuck it out, and there are 9 Belbin team roles in the model. Also for the most part we didn't observe each other working, due to the geographic and scheduling constraints.

However the core idea of Belbin team roles is that a successful team is comprised of a mixture of personality types, with complementary strengths and allowable weaknesses. I believe our team did have this, with perhaps one notable gap, but more about that in a moment.

Firstly, as our group report topic selection didn't include the "vaccination" question which I had researched for my position report, I felt it made sense to take on the editor role rather than start from scratch researching a new topic. I enjoyed doing this, and perhaps took on the role of Completer Finisher. Fortunately my team mates trusted me with this role and I didn't experience any problems with delegation anxiety.

Our team leader, Cara, turned out to be a great Co-ordinator, keeping everything hanging together, and also realising early on that we were going to have a problem with one of our original team members, who became less communicative and eventually disappeared from view altogether.

This sudden shrinking of the team meant that the remaining two members of the team, Mane and Max, also had their work cut out for them. Nobody got an easy ride in team 18! Certainly they were both Teamworkers, but also Implementers. If they hadn't both stepped up and willingly taken on extra tasks when required then we would have been in trouble.

Finally the role that we were perhaps missing. Our team unfortunately missed a key requirement of the report, which had an impact on our final grade. No single person is to blame of course... we all missed it! It felt like a silly mistake and probably could have been fixed at the editing stage if only we'd realised it. I think that the final role which would have rounded out the team would have been a shaper or a resource investigator. Somebody who would not only go over the requirements with a fine-toothed comb, but also say "Stop! We can do better!". Anyway, lesson learned -- and after all that's what we're here for!