Belbin's Team Roles - Free Template

Three pages. The first is the full nine-role diagram - people oriented, action oriented and cerebral - with each role's contribution and allowable weakness set out on its card, so the whole model reads in one view.

The second is a summary card: what the model is, when to reach for it, the nine roles in brief, four steps for running a mapping session, and four things to watch for.

The third connects Belbin to the wider work - where role imbalance tends to show up, and how teams arrange around it.

There is room to map your own team against the roles, so you can see where the clusters sit and which contributions nobody is naturally holding.

Ask each person to pick their top two or three roles before you meet, then do the mapping together in the room. The conversation is the point; the map is what makes it possible.

Look at the three categories before you look at the nine roles. A whole category with nobody in it tells you more, and faster, than a single missing role.

Keep the language structural. A missing Completer Finisher is a fact about the team, not a criticism of anyone sitting in it - and teams that hear it that way stay in the conversation.

Where a role is missing, agree who will hold it, in what circumstances, and when you will look at it again. Behaviour moves, so a map has a shelf life.