Bruce Tuckman's Theory Of The Belbin

Unit 8
Assignment 1

‘Hundreds of fish swimming together is called a school. A pack of foraging baboons is a troupe. A half dozen crows on a telephone wire is a murder. A gam is a group of whales. But what is a collection of human beings called? A group’. (Forsyth, 2006 P.2) A group can consist of two or more people interacting. Bruce Tuckman and Meredith Belbin both devised theories relating to the interactions and dynamics of groups, whilst Tuckman concentrated on the group as a whole, Belbin focused on the roles individuals played within a group. ‘For centuries, sages and scholars have been fascinated by groups – by the way they form, change over time, dissipate unexpectedly, achieve great goals, and sometimes commit great wrongs’
In the first category he placed plant, specialist and monitor evaluator. In the second category he placed implementer, shaper and completer finisher and in the last category he grouped team-worker, co-ordinator and resource investigator believing that each person in the group would fit into or identify with one or more roles. He devised ‘The Belbin Test’ in which is a series of statements grouped into categories and a points system which will determine which of the nine role types people doing the test would fit into. When completing ‘The Belbin Test’ myself, using the two groups I am apart of (the larger counselling group and the small research group that we were split into for this units task) I emerged as a ME (Monitor Evaluator). According to Belbin the characteristics for this role are; sober, unemotional and prudent and I would definitely agree with prudent and sober however, I would strongly disagree with unemotional although, I do feel that in certain situations I can separate emotion, behaviour and so I can stand back from raw emotion. They are slow deciders who weigh up the pros and cons of options which describe me very well. He talks about the strengths of a Monitor Evaluator’s strengths as being- judgment, discretion and hard-headedness, the latter, in regards to me, I would disagree with. Belbin also thought that their allowable weaknesses were, lack of inspiration or the ability to motivate others, which I feel from doing the research task I have learnt about myself. Whereas, in Tuckman’s ‘Teamwork Survey’ our research group scored as follows; 23 froming,20 storming, 16 norming and 19 performing, which according to Tuckman our team is still in the forming stage but he felt that if the scores were all fairly lose together then the group has no clear perception of the way the team operates. Judging by this I would say