It’s about pushing our boundaries

Belbin is intended as a learning opportunity that illuminates the way you behave – and how this might be different to the behaviours of those around you.

It's all too easy to focus on your own strengths, but it's equally important to understand others'. Plus, Team Role behaviours aren’t a "fingerprint" – they can and do change. Whilst we may have a number of preferred roles, we also have manageable roles. These are behaviours we can cultivate by pushing ourselves to try something new.

Belbin gives you the confidence to understand your strengths. This is a starting-point – a platform from which to explore different ways of doing things (and get things wrong), not a "get out of jail free" card to cherry-pick certain kinds of work.

It’s about admitting that tendency to stick with what we know – and risking it anyway

We need to recognise when our thoughts and actions are perpetuating a fixed mindset and react accordingly.

Rather than thinking: I’m not good at networking, we might frame this in Team Role language: My social roles are low and I tend to get nervous speaking to new people.

If we can recognise that Resource Investigators possess this skill in abundance, we can see it as a learned behaviour, rather than an intrinsic personality trait that some are born with. Not only that, but we know who to ask for help.

It’s about working together

Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, found that having children focus on the process that leads to learning (i.e. hard work, problem-solving, making mistakes and encountering failure), could foster a growth mindset.

But it isn’t just about effort – banging one’s head against a brick wall isn’t praiseworthy either.

Dweck noted: "Effort is a means to an end – and that end is learning and improving. Sheer effort isn’t enough to grow."

One option is to try different strategies and seek help from others. In the context of work, that doesn't mean that others will necessarily end up doing the work for you, but their new perspective may just unlock something you needed to get things moving from question to answer.