The team roles in MPA are inspired by Belbin´s work on team roles, and each team roles is a specific combination and prioritization of the MPA properties and definitions.
Team Roles add perspectives to the picture of the candidate on how the candidate will supplement the team. The tool can also help to clarify important behaviour missing in the team. The team tool is therefore a valuable tool for Recruiting managers who wants to clarify the team behaviour needed and fit in new candidates in a well-established team.
Being a member of one or more teams is becoming increasingly common, virtually in all spheres. Tasks and projects become even more complex and therefore demands different people to address different issues, and that is why “no one is perfect, but a team can be”. There is a greater need therefore for effective tools that enable the company to analyse existing and future teams. In subsequent work with the team the number of resource demanding, and destructive conflicts will consequently diminish. This is achieved by improving cooperation within the team, helped along by each member’s awareness of the others’ strengths.
In teamwork being suitably qualified is not enough to succeed. Team members must possess the behavioural patterns requisite for effective cooperation. MPA team tools have been developed specifically with the intention of accommodating this prerequisite.
Team Roles provide access to eight different roles. Each team role is a prototype of a definitive function, or role, within the group. A function that independent studies suggest promotes expediency in resource exploitation.
A description of typically anticipated behaviour accompanies each Team role, along with how the particular Team-role will behave in the group.
The team roles can be printed for the individual as a report or for the entire team from the analysis window.
Belbin's team roles
“No one is perfect, but a team can be!” - Meredith Belbin
Master´s team role definitions have been inspired by Belbin´s, specifically his method of establishing characteristic personal properties for the individual role.
It is these characteristic properties evaluated by the test person themselves using MPA that are matched with 8 system profiles.
Belbin's understanding and definition of team roles was used to draw up the 8 system profiles contained by the team tool. The MPA team roles are based on the person profile and thus on those properties contained in MPA.
- This means that the influence of the individual basic properties on the fulfilment of a specific role has been analysed and prioritised. For example, some of the properties will be marked with a narrow interval in the system profile, whilst other are broader. The narrow intervals indicate that in order for the team role to be carried out optimally a person with a very specific property is required, whilst the broader intervals reflect the fact that it is possible to be in a larger area and still take on the team role. The degree of importance of the individual properties is indicated by the prioritisations made.
Belbin's hypothesis was that characteristic personal properties and abilities are crucial to the work and success of the team. He defines a team role as the behavioural pattern that characterises one person compared to another as a link in bringing about progress and pushing the team forward.
The team roles indicate how a person will react in a team: the typical behaviour they will display in solving a task or in interaction with others and how these characteristics will contribute to the team.
For Belbin the value of a team tool lies in the opportunity to raise awareness through self-insight both for the individual team member and the team as a whole, what resources are available and which of them may be exploited to increase efficiency and staying power relative to external demands.
More on derived MPA scores
MPA Team Roles and MPA supplementary properties are supporting tools, which can offer nuances to the MPA Person Profile. Both are a result of pre-defined patterns of behaviour composed of specific combinations and prioritization of the MPA properties and definitions. Based on the respondent´s Person Profile a match/comparison to the Team Roles and/or to the Supplementary Properties is calculated. The match is defined a derived score (from the eight MPA Basic Properties) since the respondent has exclusively answered the questions on the MPA questionnaire.
The eight Team Roles and Criteria
Toiler, Coordinator, Initiator, Ideas Person, Resource Investigator, Critic, Team Worker and Accomplisher.
The Team Roles describe different behavioural characteristics within a group. Each Team Role is composed of specific Criteria based on the eight basic MPA properties. Some of the properties will be marked with a narrow Criteria interval, whilst other are broader. The degree of importance of the individual properties in relation to a specific Team Role is indicated by level of prioritization.
Knowledge of the roles adds certain subtle details to a person profile (how a respondent typically will interact and engage in team related work), and as such add valuable nuances in the selection process.
Supplementary Properties
The 28 Supplementary Properties are combinations of a number of Basic Properties which distinctive definitions. They are empirically based on collected experiences from thousands of MPA feedbacks. Each individual Supplementary Property “score” follows the same scoring box distribution as the MPA profile.
They act as a source of inspiration explaining how various Basic Property combinations are expressed in relation to Master´s definition.
Definitions and scale combinations are described in the MPA training materials.