Better Understanding = Better Teamwork.
The main reason teams do not perform as well as they can is seldom due to lack of trying. More often, underperformance is caused by people working in different ways behaviourally, without truly understanding this.
Team development support can help give a team clear purpose and objectives, a shared language for how its members actually operate and practical changes people agree to make and buy into.
As the Licensed Belbin Distributor for Scotland, we build most of this work around Belbin Team Roles.
Team development is about how effectively a team works together: who contributes what, where the gaps are, which pairings are more likely to result in friction and why, and what the team agrees to do differently. It is built on objective evidence rather than opinion, which is what helps prevent conversations from becoming personal.
It is not the same as team building. A team building day is designed to get people talking, getting to know each other better and normally is more of an informal or fun type activity. Team building sessions have real value and we offer this as a service also, but it takes a different approach and has a different purpose. Team development is designed to change how people work once they are back at their desks, not just getting to know each other better.
There is no right or wrong behavioural style, only differences. When a team doesn’t understand this, it can have a negative impact.
Most of our team development work starts by profiling the team, then applying the findings in a practical way.
This forms the core of much of our team development work. Every team member completes a Belbin report, with observer feedback included at no extra cost, followed by a facilitated session exploring individual styles, the team profile, working relationship reports and what they can do to improve. As the Licensed Belbin Distributor for Scotland we supply the full range of Belbin reports, a variety of workshops and access to Belbin accreditation.
A typical day combines a morning looking at Belbin behavioural styles and the team profile, with an afternoon facilitating discussion on any areas the team needs to work on as priorities. This can be at a more strategic, operational or tactical level.
Where an organisation has a preferred report it already uses, or may benefit from a different one, we work with DiSC and a range of other relevant reports. Some of these reports include the ability to profile areas such as group and team culture. We always aim to recommend the best solution and remain independent of any single provider.
For organisations that want to enhance their team development capability in house, we can provide access to Belbin accreditation for your HR, learning or management personnel, along with the range of accredited supporting materials. Accreditation enables teams or organisations to run sessions themselves and reduce the need for, or dependency on, external support.
Reports are completed in advance, so the session itself can be spent on development led discussion rather than paperwork. The example agenda overview below provides an indication of what a workshop covers, and can be amended or adjusted to suit the needs of any team.
Sessions typically run from two hours for an introductory session to a half day for a full Belbin team session. This can be run in person or online. Notes and agreed actions are written up afterwards, and we run a short evaluation so you can see what the session actually achieved. We often extend the session to a full day and support teams to start to work through any strategic or operational actions identified, again with any agenda being adapted to suit.
The same approach can be scaled, whether we are running a workshop for a leadership team of ten, an all staff away day of sixty people, or sessions run across an entire business where reports and workshops can be facilitated for hundreds of employees.
Larger scale rollouts can require some more thought and design rather than more of the same session: deciding which individuals or teams are profiled and attend together, how team reports are grouped, how findings are fed back to management, and establishing how Belbin Team Role language can be helped to remain alive back in the workplace post workshop. Effective design can improve the chance of success so that people still refer to Belbin a year later, not that it was just an interesting day or afternoon.
Team development challenges can be very similar regardless of size, type of organisation or sector. What can change is some of the context around how they work, the pressure they are under and cultural style differences.
Our experience as an Aberdeen based consultancy extends across a wide range of sectors including:
Examples of team work we have delivered can be found on our case studies page, including away days, leadership team sessions, all staff workshops and large scale rollouts.
No, although the two are often confused and both have their place. A team building day is typically designed to be enjoyable and to get people interacting more, usually through activities with little or no direct connection to the day job. A Belbin team session is more about team development: people complete a report beforehand, the session is spent understanding what the reports tell us about the team dynamics and how the team operates, and it ends with specific actions individuals and the team have agreed.
Each participant receives an email with instructions to complete their Belbin or other selected reports, which takes around fifteen minutes. The option of Belbin observer feedback is always included at no extra cost, where colleagues contribute their view of how that person comes across. Self perception on its own is useful, but observers help provide a more rounded view. We then produce the individual reports, one or more team reports and, where useful, working relationship reports comparing specific pairings of people.
No. Belbin is what we recommend most often for team work because it describes behaviour in a team context rather than personality in general, and because the observer element gives it a credibility that other self assessment only tools may lack. We remain an independent consultancy and also work with a range of other report providers. Where a team has already invested in or is aligned to a different report, we can usually build the session around what they use rather than everybody having to start again with a new approach.
Yes. We have run sessions with the whole organisation in attendance at the same time, or with larger organisations of several hundred people through a team development programme approach. At organisational scale some additional consideration is given to areas such as: how teams will be grouped, deciding what information management sees, scheduling delivery around work shifts or operational cover, and making sure the behavioural language is reinforced afterwards rather than fading out. We can also accredit your own people in Belbin so the capability builds internally.
Whether you have one team that is not quite clicking, a leadership group that needs a day together, or you need to develop the whole organisation embedding a common behavioural language for teams, we can help.
Contact us for an exploratory discussion, always on a no obligation basis.