Where do I fit in?

I took the Belbin Team Roles assessment the other week. For those who are not familiar with the assessment Belbin suggests that, by understanding your team role within a particular team, you can develop your strengths and manage your weaknesses as a team member, and so improve how you contribute to the team.

Team leaders and team development practitioners often use the Belbin model to help create more balanced teams. Teams can become unbalanced if all team members have similar styles of behavior or team roles.

If team members have similar weakness, the team as a whole may tend to have that weakness. If team members have similar team-work strengths, they may tend to compete (rather than co-operate) for the team tasks and responsibilities that best suit their natural styles. So you can use the model with your team to help ensure that necessary team roles are covered, and that potential behavioral tensions or weaknesses among the team member are addressed.

So I went through the assessment and I came out as a Plant! So to give you an idea of my what my 'default' behaviour is I have described it below...

The Plant is the creative innovator who comes up with new ideas and approaches. The plant is a specialist idea maker characterised by high IQ and introversion while also being dominant and original. The plant tends to take radical approaches to team functioning and problems. Plants are more concerned with major issues than with details.


I am not sure what I am going to do with this information at the moment. My boss used a great analogy about really enjoying reading horoscopes but taking it with a pinch of salt and using it as a talking point rather than a something to rule your life by.

"Do you want a collection of brilliant minds or a brilliant collection of minds?"

Further Reading:
Official Belbin Website

Quote of the Day

This quote resonates with me at the moment...

"Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better."

King Whitney Jr

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

Pablo Picasso

A teacher is holding court at the front of her class of students. She gives the children arts materials and paper and asks them to draw whatever they like. After 20 minutes of walking around and looking at pictures of cars and flowers she comes to a girl at the back of the room. The teacher asks the girl what she is drawing; she replies with enthusiasm "I am drawing a picture of God..." "Well that is interesting, but how can you draw God when no one knows what God looks like?" replied the teacher. The girl looked up with a determined glance and said "Well, everyone will know now because I have drawn Him!"

This story has been told to me many times through various guises but its message still rings with poignancy; young people's education is becoming less and less creative.

I was recently in discussion with some emerging leaders from across the UK and we were discussing just this. Our experience of the education system is too fragmented and is focused too much on literacy and maths; creativity has a bad name.

My personal experience of working in schools is that teachers are over worked, not encouraged to think outside of the box and are made to focus on exam results. There is far too much going on for teachers and and students to lift their heads from the education trough to even start to think about learning. I also have seen some amazing creative work that has young people engaging in education that stimulates and gets to the core of what great education is all about.

Sir Ken Robinson sums this thinking up very articulately at a TED conference in 2006. I would highly advise watching the video:

Ken Robinson - Do Schools Kill Creativity?

This post is the first of many about my belief that the formal education structure within the UK needs to change, where creativity is encouraged and embedded within young peoples learning.
Read More:

• TED Website
• Sir Ken Robinson's Website
• Inspired by Education
• Arts Education Partnership
• Thriving

100 excellent online tools to feed your creativity...

I can't say that I have compiled this list but it has some great tools... Check it out...

100 Creative Tools...

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Quote of the day...

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."

Eddie Rickenbacker
World War I Hero

Its all (loose) change...

“Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.” Robert C. Gallagher

In my experience, leaders of change often make the mistake of assuming that it’s all up to them to “make it happen.” – I know I did. So, they get out of the truck and start pushing; long days and long nights in the office; speaking from the soap box; being in many places at the same time; micromanaging…hypertension, here I come!

What I think we should be doing, as leaders of change, is applying the appropriate kind of leverage: formal power, peer pressure, well designed incentives, grassroots movement, influencing techniques and so on. You’ll turn the truck around if you know which controls to use.

I have been in organisations where people take some very loose orders from ‘upstairs’, jump on their horses and gallop into the fog. At some point, no one is sure where they are. Some dismantle and walk, eventually stopping altogether, some still ride into the fog for a while, but eventually, everyone is lost, confused, frustrated. The leaders thank everyone for their valiant effort and declare success.

The bottom line is the need to measure progress, adjust the means and, if needed, have the courage to change direction. Only then will we make it through adversity, uncertainty and the changing ‘foggy’ landscape.

So how do I feel about being a better Change Leader? Well, it is all very easy for me to finger point at the people who I think have dealt with change badly (notice I didn’t say lead). However, I am sure that I have been one of those leaders who charge their troops into the fog without a map. I need to accept that if change is inevitable I should make sure me and my troops know where we want to be going especially if we are not sure how we are going to get there.

I have just got Civil Partnered and more than ever I am feeling change – and, to be honest, loving it. I have not been given a map but me and my partner know exactly where we are going and looking forward to the journey.

"People don't resist change. They resist being changed!" Peter Senge