Dr. Meredith Belbin is a significant contributor to understanding teamwork, in particular the concept of “team roles” and their importance to a team’s success. Through years of studying teamwork, Belbin came up with nine team roles that, when filled by high-performing members, make for optimal teams. Belbin categorized the nine roles into three groups: 1) action oriented, 2) people oriented, and 3) thought oriented.

Belbin’s Team Roles: How Understanding Team Roles can Improve Team Performance serves as a solid introduction to the nine roles and steps supervisors can use to analyze and improve teams based on this model. More information on Belbin’s Team Roles, as well as testing, training and team building games are available at Belbin Team Roles.

Information on positive and negative group roles was also researched and applied by Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats. Gallup has also made some key discoveries on work teams, employee retention, customer satisfaction, productivity and profitability through its research on optimal workplaces that can be influenced by managers.

To determine how well your team works take the Mindtools.com Team Effectiveness Assessment. The assessment is a 15-question online quiz that helps uncover common teamwork problems. It automatically provides scoring and score interpretation, with detailed advice in each range. The site includes key points and additional resources.