Other Considerations

Personal interaction skills

People’s ability to work well in teams is affected by their personal interaction skills. This factor is discussed in more detail in the “More Effective Individuals and Interactions” chapter.

Personal orientations and roles

Teams tend to perform best when they have a balance of personal orientations and roles. Belbin’s Team Roles theory provides an interesting and useful way to assess the presence of roles on teams. The theory includes an assessment of how each person behaves on a team, how likely a group of people is to work well together, and how to select candidates to fill each role. Belbin’s roles include Company Worker, Chairman, Plant, Shaper, Resource Investigator, Team Worker, Co-ordinator, Monitor/Evaluator, and Completer/Finisher.

Research on IT teams shows a high correlation between having a balance of team roles and team performance (Twardochleb, 2017).