Team Skills is the result of a very extensive research programme carried out over a decade by a team led by Dr. R. Meredith Belbin. This remarkable study not only proved that different people have quite separate and distinct skills to bring to a team but also what they are and how to measure them. It also explains why so many teams fail.

The research programme started in 1969 at the Administrative Staff College, Henley, Oxon. and involved dozens of teams of middle managers. Sometimes these teams were formed by chance, sometimes by the managers themselves and sometimes by the researchers. Some of the teams were designed to fail or to test a hypothesis. All the managers had a proven track record and were being groomed for the Boardroom. A large amount of data was known or acquired about them. They were subjected to a battery of psychometric tests. All this data meant that the researchers were able to measure the 'input'. The main activity they were involved in was to play a business game. Perhaps not quite the real world but a real task and problem and considered to be a good measure of the 'output'; i.e. everybody involved accepted that the best teams won. As well as the input and output, the actual 'process' was measured. Trained observers sat with the teams and noted everyone's contribution. Records were kept of proposals, comments, opposition, building, informing, asking, managing and then the vast amount of data was examined and discussed until hypotheses began to emerge. These were then tested and some were rejected or possibly changed and tested again until towards the end of several years of study, the research team was able to predict the finishing order of the contesting 'companies' by simply looking at the test results of the members and not even having to interview them.

The outcome of all this intense study was the discovery of nine team roles. All teams are made up of these and there are no others. The roles can be predicted by psychometric tests and are adopted by their owners consistently; whether they are in the office, on a voluntary organisation committee or just thrown together with a few others as a project team. Some combinations are very much more effective than others are and organisations that recognise and use people's strengths tend to be more successful than others.

It should be noted also, that they all tend to have allowable weaknesses and these will have to be tolerated in order to have the strengths that go with them. It is interesting to note that many people have remarked subsequently, that it was the realisation that their weaknesses were 'part of the package' that has helped them most of all. They have rid themselves of some self-doubt, a feeling of guilt almost, that has enabled them to concentrate on their strengths, and to good effect. A team does not have to have nine people in it however, as by doubling or even trebling up, all the roles can be brought together in a team of three or so. Dr Belbin's preference for team size is four. Teams can fail because of bad composition, a key role missing or, as he found in his study, often because of too much of a good thing. Teams, which on paper looked like they were completely unbeatable, would often perform abysmally.