By Koralia & Nicos Timotheou In business, as in life, complex problems and difficult situations are best resolved by teams rather than by individuals. 

Even for the most brilliant individual, it is practically impossible to know every aspect of every subject and to be able to respond to any situation effectively. 

So, the clever thing to do is to create strong teams to attack problems and challenging situations, to design innovative products and to see businesses through reforms. 


Teams are of two types

> The most common type is the ad-hoc team, assembled on a needs basis, to carry out a project or to handle a situation.  Once the purpose is fulfilled, the team is dissolved and its members return to their previous routines or are assigned new tasks and projects.  For these teams, members are selected based on the requirements of the assignment.

> Less frequently, teams are of a more permanent nature – with respect to their composition – and are assigned new projects and tasks as these crop up.  Such teams are usually created as ad-hoc teams at first and become of the permanent type after one or more great successes.


Are all teams good business-wise and are they all able to tackle any assignment? No!

Many teams are created for good purpose, are assigned a seemingly straightforward task but still fail.  By going through what causes team failures, one may deduct what teams need to succeed:
> The right mix of people;
> A clear and feasible assignment;
> Authority to act and to utilize the required resources.

The team creator is responsible to ensure all three preconditions for team success and therefore he should:

> Draft a specific and clear mandate for the assignment of the team, its members, the purpose and timeframe in which it will operate, who the team will report to and anything else that will facilitate its operation. 

> Grant enough authority and clearances for the team to act and define the boundaries of this authority. 

> Select the team members carefully so that they collectively possess certain technical or specialist skills related to the task, while each individual possesses team-working skills such as:

• Listening
• Participating
• Sharing
• Respecting
• Helping
• Questioning
• Persuading

Individuals with team-working skills are more likely to cooperate between them and arrive at a positive outcome. 

Adding to this, there is still another dimension in team work: structure!

> Teams are corporate units and as such they need structure. 

> They need one leader, not ten and they need people who can take upon them different functional roles.

> Teams are effective only if their members complement each other in terms of their internal assumed roles.

A Team Role is defined as "the tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way."

Specialist organizations have come up with methodologies that can determine which role(s) each individual is naturally inclined to assume, when in a team environment. 

The Belbin Inventory, for instance, scores people on how strongly they express behavioural traits from nine different Team Roles.

A person may and often does exhibit strong tendencies towards multiple roles.

> Some people have strong tendency to more than one roles and are flexible: Depending on the team dymanics they can undertake successfully one or more different role(s) in a particular team or at a particular project stage.

> Other people show a very strong tendency towards a single role -in which they are successful. They are, however, inflexible. They should not be pushed to play any other roles, because they shall fail -themselves, the team and the project!

The nine Belbin roles are:

1. Resource Investigators, who use their inquisitive nature to find ideas and specialist knowhow or assistance to bring back to the team.  They are outgoing, enthusiastic, explore opportunities and develop contacts.  They might be over-optimistic, and can lose interest once the initial enthusiasm has passed!
    
2. Team Workers, who help the team to blend, using their versatility to identify the work required and complete it on behalf of the team.  They are co-operative, perceptive and diplomatic.   They listen and avert friction. They can be indecisive, tend to avoid confrontation and might be hesitant to make unpopular decisions!
    
3. Coordinators, who are needed to focus on the team's objectives, draw out team members and delegate work appropriately.  They are mature, confident, identify talent and clarify goals.  They can be seen as manipulative and might over-delegate, leaving themselves little work to do
    
4. Plants, who tend to be highly creative and good at solving problems in unconventional ways.  They are imaginative, free-thinking and innovative. They generate ideas and solve difficult problems.  They may be too preoccupied to communicate effectively!
    
5. Monitors/Evaluators, who provide a logical eye, making impartial judgements where required and weigh up the team's options in a dispassionate way.  They are sober, strategic and discerning. See all options and judge accurately.  Sometimes, they lack the drive and ability to inspire others and can be overly critical and slow to come to decisions.
    
6. Specialists, who bring in-depth knowledge of a key area to the team.  They are single-minded, self-starting and dedicated, provide specialist knowledge and skills, but tend to contribute on a narrow front and can dwell on the technicalities. They rarely blend with the rest of the team!
    
7. Shapers, who provide the necessary drive to ensure that the team keeps moving and does not lose focus or momentum.  They are challenging, dynamic and thrive on pressure. They have the drive and courage to overcome obstacles.  They can be prone to provocation, and may sometimes offend people's feelings, becoming aggressive and bad-humoured in their attempts to get things done!
    
8. Implementers, who are needed to plan a workable strategy and carry it out as efficiently as possible.  They are practical, reliable, efficient, turn ideas into actions and organize work that needs to be done.  They can be a bit inflexible and slow to respond to new possibilities!
    
9. Completers/Finishers, who are most effectively used at the end of tasks to polish and scrutinize the work for errors, subjecting it to the highest standards of quality control.  They are painstaking, conscientious, anxious, searching out errors, polish and perfect.  They can be inclined to worry unduly, and reluctant to delegate and could be accused of taking their perfectionism to extremes!

Concluding, no two individuals are the same and this is why we have the potential to create strong teams. 

> Clearly, too many Coordinators or Shapers and lack of Implementers or Resource Investigators will not get the job done. On the other hand, in the absence of a Coordinator, the team will suffer from indecisiveness and will be inefficient. 

> A team low on Specialists will have a poor idea of what they are doing, whereas a team populated solely by Specialists is in danger of being engaged in endless technical discussions and no result. 

> A few Completers/ Finishers will make the outcome professional, presentable and as low on errors as possible.  Too many of them will keep rewriting the report, fiddling pointlessly with the dictionary, probably missing the whole point, and the deadline.

> Most of the roles contribute at all stages of a project, while certain ones are more useful at particular stages. 
Do remember:
It is imperative to achieve a balanced people-role mix in the team to start with, in order to increase its chances to succeed.
 
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The following spider diagram shows the Belbin self-assessment results of a group of people. (Each colour represents a particular person.) It is obvious that they could form a balanced team, since they exhibit strengths in all required roles.
    
15.7.2016