Everyone has a position where they contribute most – the team wins when everyone is in theirs.
People are not interchangeable. The same person can be strong in one position and lackluster in another. “Position” here means the role on the team – task, function, post – not rank. The principle calls for a comparison: Where does this person contribute more, here or there?
The team principle in detail
Four steps through the principle: understand, check, connect, apply. Open any topic to read more.
The explanationBehind this is the question of fit.
- Behind this is the question of fit.
- When the demands of a role match a person’s abilities and understanding, the work comes more easily and turns out better.
- When they don’t, it costs twice: the role is filled poorly, and the person’s strength goes unused.
- The cost is highest in the roles that carry most of the team’s work.
Read closelyWhat the principle says – and what it doesn’t
Putting people in the wrong roles is costly. If you assign people to roles based on fit rather than habit or seniority, you raise the performance of the whole.
- It does not say
- That there is exactly one ideal position for everyone. That has not been shown. Fit is linked to performance; a fixed match between person and position does not follow from that.
- Strictly speaking
- Not all positions are equally important. Strengths in core roles have a much greater effect than in peripheral roles – that is where staffing decisions matter first.
- Applies to
- Teams with distinct roles. Where everyone does the same, interchangeable work, the principle carries little weight.
The signs3 signs that the principle is at work · 3 that it is missing
- Everyone can describe their own role and those of the others.
- Tasks end up with whoever does them best.
- The core roles are filled by the strongest people.
- Tasks are handed out by availability or seniority.
- Good people visibly struggle in roles that don’t suit them.
- Two people jostle for the same position while another stays empty.
The research6 sources: 2 primary studies, 2 meta-analyses, 1 review, 1 critique · 1993–2009 · with research limitations
- low
- moderate
- high
Moderate – fit and the staffing of core roles are demonstrably linked to performance; the idea of one best position for everyone is not supported by research.
- 1993Adrian Furnham, Howard Steele & David Pendleton
Independent psychometric evaluation of Belbin’s Self-Perception Inventory with a critical result; Belbin replied that it is a consulting tool, not a psychometric instrument.
- 2007Aitor Aritzeta, Stephen Swailes & Barbara Senior
43 studies on Belbin’s team roles: adequate convergent validity but weak discriminant validity – several roles correlate highly with one another.
- 2008Troy V. Mumford et al.
A test of knowledge about ten team roles predicts role performance (r = .34 among students, r = .30 in the workplace), even beyond intelligence and the Big Five.
- 2009Stephen E. Humphrey, Frederick P. Morgeson & Michael J. Mannor
778 Major League Baseball teams over 29 years: experience and skill have a greater effect on team performance when they lie with the people in the core roles.
That there is exactly one best position for everyone has not been shown; research reveals correlations, not a fixed match. The best-known practical model, Meredith Belbin’s team-role model, has only limited support as a measuring instrument because the roles are hard to tell apart.
Read more: what the research shows
Research discusses this as fit (person–environment fit): how well a person matches their job, their group and their organization. A meta-analysis by Amy L. Kristof-Brown, Ryan D. Zimmerman and Erin C. Johnson shows that fit is consistently linked to satisfaction, performance and retention. Studying baseball teams, Stephen E. Humphrey, Frederick P. Morgeson and Michael J. Mannor found that experience and skill have a greater effect on team performance when they lie with the people in the core roles. Troy V. Mumford and colleagues showed that knowledge of team roles predicts how well someone performs their role. In a meta-analysis, Suzanne T. Bell showed that a team’s composition in terms of personality, values and ability is linked to its performance.
The originJohn C. Maxwell · “The Law of the Niche”
- 2001OriginJohn C. Maxwell
The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork
- The Law of the NicheEvery player has a place where they add the most value to the team
- todayExpanded
Research adds here that core roles count for more than peripheral roles and that the one ideal position has not been shown to exist.
The related team principles05 Diversity · 06 Weakest Link · 09 Bench
The principle complements “Diversity” (it supplies the people for different positions) and “Weakest Link” (in core roles, a poor fit becomes the weakest link).
In tension with it is “Bench”: whoever is meant to step in must also be able to fill other people’s positions.
The action steps5 steps: Describe the roles before you talk about people
- Describe the roles before you talk about people: What positions does the task need?
- Identify the core roles – the positions on which most of the team’s work depends – and fill them first, with your strongest people.
- Compare: In which position has this person contributed the most so far? Ask them and ask their colleagues.
- Make sure everyone understands the roles on the team, including those of the others. People who understand roles fill them better.
- Treat team-role models and personality-type tests as conversation aids, not as measurements. Don’t let anyone be pinned to a type.
The questions for your team3 questions for your team conversation: Which two or three roles have the biggest impact on our results – and are the right people in them?
- Which two or three roles have the biggest impact on our results – and are the right people in them?
- Which of us is currently working in a position that doesn’t suit them?
- Which strength on our team are we barely using so far?
Take time for one question at your next team meeting. Talk about it openly and note down what you take away from it.
The picture to rememberThe dots sit on the wrong squares of a grid and tremble. They swap places, and each one clicks into place and lights up.
- The dots sit on the wrong squares of a grid and tremble.
- They swap places, and each one clicks into place and lights up.
What the Team Principle of Position looks like in practice
Six Years in Search of the Lineup
John Lennon founds the Quarrymen in 1956; Paul McCartney joins in 1957, George Harrison in 1958. Only in 1962 is every position filled – Ringo Starr on drums, Brian Epstein as manager, George Martin as producer – and in October their first single, “Love Me Do,” comes out.
Why the Teams of the Brightest Lost
Starting in 1969, Meredith Belbin spent nine years in Henley-on-Thames having managers compete against one another in business simulation games. Teams made up of the participants with the highest test scores repeatedly performed poorly: they got lost in debate and failed to reach decisions – the “Apollo Syndrome.”
Too Much Knowledge for One Mind
After a tornado in 1883 in Rochester, Minnesota, the physician William Worrall Mayo and Franciscan sisters under Mother Alfred Moes work together; in 1889 Saint Mary’s Hospital opens with 27 beds. Mayo’s sons, William J. and Charles H. Mayo, take on more physicians as partners and build a clinic in which specialists treat a patient together.
