There's much more to Belbin than team building

There’s much more to Belbin than team building!

It always pleases me when I see Belbin being applied in innovative ways that go beyond team building and team development, and we heard of many different applications at the last Belbin Symposium.

For my part, one of my missions - in fact almost an obsession - is to use Belbin to get managers managing people more effectively and it is with this in mind that I would like to share the following thoughts with you:

It is my belief that one of the key things that managers need to address, is understanding and utilising the natural talents and motivations of their staff. They can do this by using their own gut feelings or they can do it in a more structured way by using BELBIN to identify these behavioural talents, preferences and motivations.

The Belbin individual reports provide a rich amount of information and the deep insight managers need to get the best out of each person in their team. I have had some success helping managers utilising these reports so that they can use their team to maximum effect.

If you are not using Belbin for this purpose, give it a try and see if you can play a part in helping managers make the transformation from being effective process managers to becoming outstanding people managers.

Barrie Watson is a management consultant and non-executive director at BELBIN. We can help your managers get the most from their teams, have a look at our Help For Managers course here. Contact us at [email protected]