Why Behaviour is a Better Indicator of Team Performance than Personality/Psychometric Tests: The Belbin Approach
When it comes to predicting team performance, the debate often centres around whether personality or behaviour provides better insight into how a team will function.
While personality and psychometric tests offer valuable data about individual tendencies and traits, behaviour is a far more reliable and dynamic indicator of team performance.
Behaviours can be reliably observed, measured, meaningfully discussed and extrapolated with actual workplace contexts and performance in mind. Behaviour, when reliably observed, doesn’t lie. This is where the Belbin Team Roles model comes into play, emphasizing observable behaviours as a means of actually enhancing team effectiveness.
Why Behaviour Matters
Behaviour provides a more accurate representation of team performance because it focuses on actions in specific situations rather than abstract personal tendencies. What someone does in a team context, such as how they communicate, make decisions, and collaborate with others, is a better predictor of team success than their underlying personality traits.
Here are some reasons why behaviour is a more reliable indicator of team performance:
Situational adaptability matched to projects: Behaviour is flexible and can change based on the situation. Effective teams are those in which members can adjust their behaviours to meet the demands of different projects and challenges. This adaptability is key to performance, whereas rigid personality traits may hinder the ability to pivot when necessary.
Focus on real workplace interactions: Behaviour reflects how individuals interact with one another, which is critical for teamwork. Successful teams are not just a collection of individuals with the right traits; they are groups of people who know how to behave with mutual respect, collaborate effectively, and leverage each other’s strengths.
Observable, measurable, actionable: Behaviour is visible and can be measured in real-time. This makes it easier to assess and provide feedback on, allowing for continuous improvement. Teams can observe their own behaviours and make actionable adjustments to improve performance, which is harder to do with personality traits that remain static.
It’s all well and good to talk about ‘who I am’ occasionally, but it’s more important to observe and adapt ‘what I do’ in real-world team projects.
In over 35 years of working with workplace people and teams, we have always progressed further, and faster, with behavioural tools than personality-based ones.
The Limitations of Personality/Psychometric Tests
Personality and psychometric tests have been popular for assessing individual differences in traits like openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
While these tests may provide useful insights into individual characteristics, their predictive power in the context of team performance is often limited. Here’s why:
Static Nature of Personality Traits: Personality traits are relatively stable over time. While they tell you who a person is, they don’t necessarily predict how that person will behave in different team situations. For example, knowing that someone is an extrovert doesn’t tell you whether they’ll be a good team leader, collaborator, or conflict resolver in a specific scenario. Personality provides a baseline but lacks situational adaptability.
Overemphasis on the Individual: Psychometric tests focus primarily on the individual rather than the team dynamic. Teamwork, however, is a collective activity that hinges on how individuals interact, communicate, and adapt to others. Personality tests do not account for the synergies or tensions that may arise when different personalities come together in a group setting.
Lack of Behavioural Insight: Personality tests don’t reveal much about how individuals are likely to behave in real-world situations. For instance, a highly conscientious individual may struggle in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment, while a person with high openness may not always be effective when rigid structures are required. Behaviour, in contrast, is context-dependent and can be observed and adjusted as needed.
The Belbin Team Role Model: Leveraging Behaviour for Team Success
The Belbin Team Roles model is a framework that looks at nine distinct behavioural team roles based on actual observed behaviour in a team setting. People tend to possess a few of these roles as natural stronger roles, some as manageable and then a bandwidth of least preferred behaviours.
The roles in brief include the Plant (creative and big picture ideas), Resource Investigator (explores opportunities and builds contacts), Coordinator (people-oriented organiser), Shaper (competitive, direct action-oriented), Monitor Evaluator (critical thinking and analysis), Teamworker (perceptive builder of harmony), Implementer (pragmatic and efficient organiser), Completer Finisher (high standards and detail-oriented), and Specialist (seeker of knowledge and expertise).
Belbin’s model focuses on workplace behaviour rather than personality traits alone. It identifies how individuals behave in specific team contexts and how these behaviours contribute to overall team success. By understanding each member’s behavioural strengths and weaknesses, teams can ensure that all roles are effectively covered, leading to improved performance.
It's all about working with actual workplace behaviours to enhance workplace performance.
We have seen behavioural tools work better for over 35 years
While personality and psychometric tests may provide some useful insights into individual tendencies, behaviour is a more accurate and genuinely actionable indicator of team performance.
The Belbin Team Roles model exemplifies this by emphasizing the importance of observed behaviours in team dynamics. We have seen it work first hand with corporate, governemnt, education, defence and NGO clients for over 35 years.
Teams that focus on understanding and improving behaviour in practical ways, rather than relying solely on static personality traits, are more likely to achieve their goals and function effectively in a variety of situations.
Behaviour, after all, can be adapted and optimised, making it the key to sustained team success.
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