Q: The stuff you wrote about Belbin. What team type is usually the hardest to fill at the top level?


The Plant

To get to the top of most organisations requires a forceful personality and the Shaper fits the Belbin bill. Most top teams I have worked with have a preponderance of Shapers. They run the company's departments, enjoying leadership and power and making things happen. But they can be poor team workers, preferring to compete for company resources rather than allowing funds to be siphoned to where they are most needed. They can be strong on vision and are often role models for industry and drive. Often, too, at this level, there are fewer completer-finishers, coordinators and resource investigators. These types MUST be part of the team that a Shaper runs.

The type that I find least of, is usually the Plant. Belbin's notion of a Plant is what we normally term an 'ideas person'. Creative, rather than innovative (innovative people develop and refine, import and implement what exists already), they bring a total left field freshnes to an organisation. But they can be difficult or eccentric, preferring independence, marginal existence, games playing and frank critique of existing structures to fitting in. I know of one organisation which was offered a post-doctoral student who was so asocial it was as though he had Tourettes - and they built a labratory around him to keep him insulated from staff who couldn't cope with his outlandishness and resourced him to get a Nobel prize. In some professions such as advertising, Plants are naturally thicker on the ground. In public sector organisations they are rare at the top.

That is why the latter tend to use consultants to bring in fresh ideas and stimulate discourse. What they are buying in, mostly, is an innovator. It's safer. Hiring a Plant can be tantamount to opening up traditional systems to a barrage of idea-missiles, only some of which strike where they are desired. But the more moribund a company, the more it may need this heavy duty offensive.

Labels: Belbin. Plant. Organisational change. Top teams.

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