What Makes a Great Team Player?

Remember - that includes you!

Things work well when a group of people know each other, and things break down when it’s a bunch of random people interacting – Jimmy Wales

It’s true! Just because a group of people are brought together by an organisation they don’t automatically become a successful team, even if, as individuals, they have performed well before.  Take football, how often does a club spend vast amounts of money on a player who has an amazing record, only to find that they aren’t winning more games than before?

As a manager it’s easy to think of ‘the team’ as the group of individuals we manage and forget that we are also a team member. 

Various theories have identified roles team members can perform.  The most famous is probably Belbin’s nine roles (1981) Plant, Resource Investigator, Co-ordinator, Shaper, Monitor Evaluator, Teamworker, Implementer, Completer Finisher and Specialist.

Ideally a successful team will have a healthy balance of all nine roles. With a strong co-ordinator, plant and monitor evaluator, and one or more implementers, team workers, resource investigators or completer finishers. Often the ideal isn’t possible, so one person may take on several roles, especially if the team is small, or some roles may be represented more than once – which can cause problems along the lines of too many cooks spoil the broth! Sometimes a team member will take on a role that’s not natural to them – think Tony Stark (Iron Man) in the first Avengers movie, used to being top dog, he had to set his ego aside to collaborate effectively with the other super-heroes. Identifying the role(s) each team member is strongest in, and having the whole team understand each other’s roles goes some way to maximising the team performance. Belbin’s roles can be split into three themes, Thinking, People and Action – these themes give a broad assessment of the strengths the individual brings to the party.

The team needs cohesion and trust. If individual team members don’t get on with each other and don’t know how to work together, then it is unlikely to be high performing.  Like the 2004 USA Olympic basketball team nicknamed the ‘Dream Team’ due to being made up of some of the most famous names in the sport.  Expected to win gold they only achieved a bronze medal as they did not work well together, essentially remaining a group of individuals on the court. Another reason to have a balanced team.

To achieve the best results we need to understand our own strengths and those of our teammates, so that we can use all the various strengths and skills to best effect and ensuring we collaborate effectively.  

It’s the manager’s responsibility to help all the individuals in the team understand what their role(s) and strengths are – and then how the team can best harness those individual strengths – not forgetting our own!

So, how to go about identifying strengths, and using them to build team cohesion?

Here are some questions to assess your team members against, remembering of course that we need to ask ourselves the questions too.  By understanding our own responses, and considering them alongside our evaluations of everyone else, we can start to understand the various strengths across the team.

It may not be possible to answer all the questions in one sitting, it might take a period of time and observation of behaviour to get a proper understanding.  Team meetings will be a good opportunity to make such observations, but any interactions between team members can show where their team player skills lie.  It may help to set up a matrix, questions down the side, team members across the top.  Each time a team member exhibits one of the skills mark it down.  Over a period of time you will build a picture of each team member.

Don’t worry that this all sounds a bit cloak and dagger!  After some observations you can start to raise the question in a more direct way with each team member.  Find out if they are aware of an emerging skill, compliment them on what you’ve noticed and encourage them to develop. Each question shows which role someone might be suited to if the response is positive – nothing scientific, just some suggestions.

Questions… 

Is this person a great listener? (Team worker, Resource Investigator)

Do they make other team members feel valued and respected? (Resource Investigator, Team worker)

Do they have a trusting nature? (Co-ordinator, Team worker)

Are they strong in their technical knowledge? (Monitor Evaluator, Specialist)

Do they help quieter team members participate? (Resource Investigator, Co-ordinator, Team Worker)

Do they make sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute to discussions? (Team Worker, Resource Investigator)

Do they like to provide clarity for everyone? (Completer Finisher, Implementer)

Do they share knowledge?  (Plant, Resource Investigator)

Are they open communicators? (Resource Investigator, Team worker)

Do they have a knack of knowing how others feel? (Resource Investigator, Co-ordinator)

Do they give and receive honest feedback well? (Team worker, Resource Investigator, Monitor Evaluator)

Do they understand their own strengths, and those of the rest of the team? (Co-ordinator, Specialist)

Do they change the team role they play to fill gaps? (Co-ordinator, Team worker, Implementer)

Do they look for the positive contributions everyone brings to the team? (Resource Investigator, Co-ordinator)

Do they encourage the team to be social? (Resource Investigator, Team worker)

Do they often come up with new ideas? (Plant, Specialist)

Are they good at organising the team? (Implementer, Co-ordinator)

Do they have an eye for fine detail? (Completer Finisher, Specialist)

Are they driven? (Specialist, Implementer)

If there are some strengths/roles that the team aren’t currently filling discuss with them what can be done to address the gap, will someone consciously take on that role in the meantime?  Bear this in mind at the next recruitment opportunity, don’t just look for technical experience, consider the team role applicants might fill so that the team dynamic can be strengthened.

As managers we have to remember that we are team members too, and don’t sit ‘above’ the team. We may feel that we have to be all these roles, but that just isn’t the case. Knowing the roles where we are not so strong doesn’t mean we have to rush out and try and improve our performance in that area.  Awareness allows us to look at the strengths of others and see that the team has that role covered elsewhere – someone else’s strength complementing our own.  We can’t all be everything, “Jack of all trades, master of none”.  

If everyone in the team knows their strengths, and those of the other team members, it goes some way to creating cohesion and building trust.  Managers need to facilitate the building of trust between team members by allowing everyone to use their strengths and understand how they benefit the group.  It probably won’t be ‘oh, let Jenny do that as she’s a Plant’, more likely ‘What do you think Jenny? You’re really good at coming up with ideas?’. The more valued and trusted individual team members feel, the stronger the bonds become, and the more effective and efficient the team is. 

Further information

·       Belbin, R. Meredith (2003), Management teams: why they succeed or fail, 2nd Ed, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford

·       Belbin, R. Meredith (1996), Team roles at work, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford