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Imagine you get to put together a team for a business simulation, and you are handed everyone’s test results in advance. You pick the people with the highest scores. That is exactly what researchers did in Henley-on-Thames from 1969 onward. They expected a clear victory. It turned out differently. The story illustrates the Team Principle of Position: everyone has a position where they contribute most – the team wins when everyone is in theirs.
A Laboratory for Teams
Situation
Raymond Meredith Belbin, born on June 4, 1926, in Sevenoaks, Kent, first studied classics and then psychology at Cambridge. From 1969 he conducted research at the Administrative Staff College in Henley-on-Thames, today’s Henley Business School. The project ran for nine years. Each year there were three business simulations with eight teams each. The participants were leaders from several countries. Each of them first completed a series of psychometric tests. During the games, observers recorded who contributed what. The research team included the occupational psychologist Roger Mottram, the anthropologist Jeanne Fisher and the mathematician and chess master Bill Hartston.
Connection to the team principle
The design allowed exactly the comparison that matters when it comes to position: composition on one side, results on the other. The research team itself is striking. Psychologist, anthropologist, mathematician – there, too, everyone had a position of their own.
The Apollo Syndrome
Situation
The researchers formed teams from the participants with the best test scores. These teams performed poorly again and again. They got lost in debate, picked apart one another’s proposals and failed to reach decisions. The pattern was named the “Apollo Syndrome,” after the first team of its kind.
Connection to the team principle
A team made up entirely of analysts has filled the same position several times over and left others empty. No one pulls things together, no one implements, no one sees the job through. The sum of talent is not what decides. What decides is whether the necessary positions are filled.
When Apollo Teams Did Win
Situation
Apollo teams succeeded only when they included less dominant members and a leader who steered the discussion toward results without joining the competition himself.
Connection to the team principle
The leader’s position is clearly defined here: he steers, he doesn’t compete. That is a position in its own right, not an honorary title for the cleverest person in the room. If you lead a team of strong minds, your most important question is not whether your idea is the best, but whether a decision gets made in the end.
Eight Roles and Their Limits
Situation
From these observations Belbin derived eight team roles, among them Chairman, Shaper, Plant, Monitor Evaluator and Completer Finisher. In 1981 he published his book “Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail.” Later, two roles were renamed and a ninth was added: the Specialist. This role had not shown up in the business games because they required no expert knowledge. Researchers have examined the model critically. In 1993 Adrian Furnham and colleagues published a negative psychometric assessment of Belbin’s Self-Perception Inventory. In 2007 Aitor Aritzeta, Stephen Swailes and Barbara Senior reviewed a total of 43 studies. They found adequate convergent validity but weak discriminant validity: several roles are closely related to one another.
Connection to the team principle
The ninth role shows that positions depend on the task. What a business game does not demand does not become visible in it. And the criticism shows the limit: Belbin’s roles are a practical model, not a validated measurement instrument. You can use them to start a conversation about positions. You should not pin anyone to a role because a questionnaire says so. A finding by Troy V. Mumford, Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Frederick P. Morgeson and Michael A. Campion (2008) stands on firmer ground: people who scored higher on a test of team-role knowledge performed better in their roles on average – a moderate relationship, not an automatic one.
Key takeaways
Key Lessons
- Don’t build a team on the sum of its talent. First ask which positions the task requires.
- Check your team for duplicate positions. Where do you have three critics and no implementer?
- Be clear about your own position as leader: steering or competing. Doing both at once rarely ends well.
- Use role frameworks to open conversations, not to pass judgment on people.
- With every new task, consider whether it adds a position you haven’t needed before.
Summary
In the Henley business games, the teams with the brightest minds did not win. They failed repeatedly because everyone occupied the same position. They succeeded only with a leader who steered instead of joining the argument. Belbin’s team role model is scientifically contested, but the basic observation remains useful: a team wins when the necessary positions are filled and everyone is in their own.