Belbin’s Team Roles provide a versatile and evidence-based framework for looking at human behaviour, teamwork and character development on film sets.
Belbin’s Team Role Model, developed by Dr. Meredith Belbin to describe and measure the natural behaviours that people project, can be a powerful tool for character development and also for enhancing collaboration in crew and cast teams.
The framework provides insight into how individuals behave, react to pressure and conflict and contribute to team dynamics. At one level this can offer a fresh lens for character development with actors, and at another, better collaboration and crew teamwork in theatrical or cinematic projects.
By understanding and applying the behavioural strengths and weaknesses of the nine distinct Belbin roles, actors can create more nuanced performances via Belbin's model, and then work more effectively within an ensemble cast.
Belbin will also help producers and directors to pragmatically undertsand on-set team dynamics during the production and its impact on performance across the shoot.
So much time and money is wasted on film sets from poor communication, collaboration, interpersonal misunderstanding and less than optimal teamwork.
Understanding Belbin’s Team Roles
Belbin identified nine roles, categorised into three groups: action-oriented, people-oriented, and thinking-oriented roles. These roles are:
Action-Oriented Roles: Shaper, Implementer, and Completer-Finisher.
People-Oriented Roles: Coordinator, Teamworker, and Resource Investigator.
Thinking-Oriented Roles: Plant, Monitor Evaluator, and Specialist.
Each role is associated with specific strengths and weaknesses. For example, a Shaper is dynamic and challenges the status quo but can be argumentative and disrupt team dynamics and morale. A Teamworker can be highly cooperative but may avoid confrontation thus ironically impacting team dynamics in this manner.
Great for helping actors to think about how their character may behave in certain situations, and likewise useful to help department heads and crews better collaborate with one-another on-set.
Developing Characters Using Team Roles
Actors can use Belbin’s roles to shape their characters’ perceived behavioural styles, strengths and weaknesses. By assigning primary, secondary and lower roles to a character, actors can explore how these behavioural traits may influence their actions and relationships in the story.
Creating Complexity: Characters with dominant traits aligned to a specific Belbin role become more layered. For instance, a Shaper character might drive the plot forward with assertiveness and ambition, while a Completer-Finisher might focus on the meticulous details of a shared goal, revealing their perfectionism.
Conflict and Collaboration: Belbin’s framework highlights potential conflicts and synergies between people with varying or similar roles. If one character is a Plant, coming up with many innovative but impractical ideas, and another is an Implementer, who will be focused on action plans and realistic execution, their interactions can create dramatic tension or comic relief.
Exploring Growth Arcs: Characters can evolve by shifting roles. An actor portraying a Specialist obsessed with a niche subject might transition toward a Teamworker, learning to value human collaboration. These shifts can symbolise personal growth or a response to challenges in the narrative.
Enhancing Ensemble and Crew Teamwork
Theatre and film productions are collaborative endeavours that can ‘make or break’ on the back of day-today inter-personal relationships, making the Belbin model invaluable for ensemble casts and also for crew.
Lots of creativity and drive in what are often rapidly assembled freelance teams of movie professionals can prove to be highly volatile. The right 'Team Role' styles when well-placed can help to alleviate this, and manage the inevitable clashes and crises that can plague a film production.
Each head of department will bring different team role strengths and weaknesses to set, as will their own teams. An ounce of Belbin prevention can far outweigh a ton of cure on days when production is running off the rails.
Improving Group Dynamics: By understanding the roles that each cast and crew member naturally adopts, producers, directors and actors can ensure a balanced team dynamic on and off stage. A well-placed Coordinator role as an assistant director for example might help to keep rehearsals and shooting organised and calm amidst clashes from Shapers, Plants and Specialists crossing into one-anothers on-set territories (and into one-another's egos).
Writing and Rehearsals: Writers and actors can use Belbin to better inform character back stories, actions and arcs, and on set to see where stated and unstated tensions arise from within the cast team. Rehearsals can also incorporate Belbin roles as an exercise. For example, actors might improvise scenes with characters temporarily adopting unfamiliar roles to uncover hidden dynamics or unlock new interpretations of relationships.
Strengthening Chemistry: Identifying complementary roles within the cast fosters mutual understanding. For instance, a Teamworker and Shaper pairing might form a supportive ‘yin and yang’ type bond, mirroring or enhancing the chemistry required for their characters. On-set dynamics of the crew can also benefit, for example crew members may see the strong Monitor Evaluator behaviours of a critical thinking Production Manager a little more charitably with some knowledge of Belbin.
Practical Application in Training
Acting coaches and directors can integrate Belbin’s Team Roles into workshops. Exercises like improvising scenarios where characters embody specific roles, or analysing scripts to assign roles to characters, deepen understanding. This method trains actors to approach scripts analytically looking at evidence-based human behaviours and empathetically, enriching their portrayals.
By leveraging these insights, actors can craft multidimensional characters, navigate group dynamics, and contribute to compelling narratives.
Producers and Directors who are rapidly assembing teams for the their productions can be far better prepared for why certain roles will inevitably clash on their set, and how to depersonalise and manage such instances and then refocus their team. Not to mention better undertsand the impacts of their own behviours on others.
This evidence-based model and approach not only enhances individual performances but also strengthens the cohesion and creativity of the entire production team.
Some typical Team Role combinations that we see on film sets:
Director: Plant / Shaper
1st Assistant Director: Coordinator / Resource Investigator / Teamworker
2nd Assistant Director: Coordinator / Completer Finisher / Teamworker
Technical Crew: Specialist / Completer Finisher / Implementer
Production Manager: Monitor Evaluator / Implementer
Executive Producers: Shaper / Plant / Resource Investigator
CONTACT US: T - 1300 731 381 E - Team@Belbin.com.au
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