Belbin’s Team Roles in the Oil and Gas Industry
The role of teams is essential in team management, and hence is the focus of discussion herein with the use of Belbin’s eight generic roles, for the oil and gas industry. This report opts for Belbin’s theory since it uses the natural tendencies of individuals and offers the manager a method for identifying those intrinsic team roles in each (Samuel, Joseph, & Lee, 2004). Therefore, the placement of members in roles they naturally favor is necessary since the role of individuals is essential in the success of the team. Apart from its applicability in organizing members into teams, this theory is necessary for the oil and gas industry for its ability to handle the difficulty of teams (Abdul, Hamzah, & Mohd, 2011). These difficulties arise from the presence of highly specialized individuals from different fields, who make it difficult to make decisions in teamwork (Margaret, Paul, & Rhona, 2008). The application of Belbin’s role model will take the following form:
- Chair: The manager must identify the Chair or an individual with the ability to explore the potentials of all members, and has a strong sense of objectivity. This individual will take up the position of the team leader. I would make this individual the team leader from their ability to make use of knowledge and expertise of members, creating a feeling of usefulness to each member. Moreover, since they are objective they can direct the members at solving problems easily making them suitable to lead teams of engineers, specialists, explorers, chemical and geological scientific teams.
- Company Worker: The characteristics of this individual include the ability to organize, are hard working, have practical common sense, and have self-discipline (Samuel, Joseph, & Lee, 2004). This individual practical common sense and organization makes them essential in team building for exploration teams and drilling teams.
- Plant: This individual posses the characteristics of imagination, intellectual, genus, and brings in new ideas. During the planning or projects like exploration, problem solving, and expertise sharing, this individual can offer new innovative ideas that assist the group to think outside the box. They are necessary in the exploration department to bring new ideas.
- Shaper: This individual is that oil and gas expert who possesses traits like the ability to challenge inertia, self-deception, and infectiveness. This individual is necessary especially in a highly innovative and expertise teams, to encourage, motivate, and stimulate continuous reasoning and innovation in problem solving.
- Monitor Evaluator: This individual has the natural ability to analyze and make judgments. Therefore, they are suitable for work along with the team leader, manager, and supervisors especially in projects the need continuous monitoring and control like exploration teams, drilling and mining teams, and oil and gas processing.
- Resource Investigator: this individual is naturally sociable and has strong interpersonal skills, causing them to contact individuals with ease, using the advantages of connections with people (Kakabadse & Sheard, 2004). This individual is best within the communication desk or as the human resource management section, for they have the ease of getting to people. This is particularly essential in considering that experts, engineers, and specialists in the oil and gas industry are geographically dispersed and posses the intellectual pride making it difficult to share knowledge.
- Team worker: The team worker is also suitable for the human resource management for they possess the ability to promote harmony in a team, and create a positive spirit in the team.
References
Abdul, A. A., Hamzah, A. R., & Mohd, S. A. (2011). Identification of the major project management issues in oil and gas industry in Malaysia. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(11), 182-196.
Kakabadse, A.P., & Sheard, A.G. (2004). A process perspective on leadership and team development. The Journal of Management Development, 23(1), 7-11,13-41,43-79,81-106.
Margaret, C., Paul, O., & Rhona, H.F. (2008). Safety at the Sharp End: Training Non-Technical Skills. Burlington, U.S.A.: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Samuel, H.N.L., Joseph, W.K.C., & Lee, B.W. (2004). Benchmarking the role-modification process for successful knowledge transfer. Benchmarking, 11(6), 601-609.
