John Athanasiou, Chief People Officer, Hearst UK, very kindly joined us in June to celebrate Belbin Day, on what would have been Dr Meredith Belbin's 100th birthday.
We invited people to share not just how they had used Belbin, but the impact it has had on their organisations.
I've been using Belbin for about twelve years. I'm not entirely sure, but it feels like I've spent at least half my career working with it. I use other tools as well, and I love different approaches for different purposes.
But I've used Belbin particularly for cultural change and team effectiveness more than anything else.
I can probably tell that story through three different parts of my career. One is HarperCollins, where I was HR Director. Two is where I am currently, at Hearst. And three is through my work with SMEs and startups as a fractional HR Director and coach.
At a high level, what I love about Belbin is that it's really easy to use. It's very positive. It's not about skills or giving people labels. It's about preferences and, more importantly, it's about effectiveness and impact.
I would add one big caution, though. The impact only comes if teams really buy into it and want to do something with it beyond the session itself.
What I've learned over the years is that you've got to build in follow-up. If you're doing a team event, do a check-in a couple of weeks later. Then do sixty, ninety and one hundred and twenty-day reviews.
You can't do it forever, but if you don't do that, you'll never build momentum and you're not really going to change anything. If you want impact, you've got to put those things in afterwards, because one day isn't enough.
I was HR Director at HarperCollins for quite a long time. It's a global publishing business and, in the UK, we had around 1,500 people. By the end of my time there, about 60% of the company had been through Belbin.
It was a successful business, but also quite siloed.
One of the biggest shifts we saw was those silos starting to break down in what was a matrix organisation.
From a culture perspective, what you're really trying to drive is relationships and collaboration.
And, by the way, I genuinely believe relationships are something people underestimate. They're often described as a soft skill, but they're probably one of the most important skills you can have, particularly in the world of AI, because AI isn't going to replace relationships.
One example that really stood out was when we brought together different businesses through acquisition. The question was always: how do you bring people together when you've got two different cultures, without changing things that are already working well?
I was lucky enough to work with one of the Managing Directors in our Children's Division. We had an established business and we'd acquired another children's publishing company.
Over the course of about six months, she said to me, "John, I really want to look at how we supercharge our culture."
She looked after both imprints and we had people working across both businesses. Again, that's the matrix piece, where people are working across teams.
She was brilliant at building trust and collaboration, but wanted to create a common language across those two teams.
When you've got two businesses operating in the same market, they're naturally competing with each other. So how do you get them working together while still maintaining some of that competitive energy? Ultimately, they're one company at the end of the day.
So we started at the top. We ran a Belbin Team Day and followed it up with further sessions.
What happened next wasn't actually planned. The leaders who went through the programme started saying, "I want to do this with my team."
What followed was effectively a year-long programme across multiple teams. By the end of it, what really came out was what I think was the biggest impact.
It took away that "them and us" culture.
Instead of two teams being overly competitive with one another, they started competing where it mattered and collaborating where it made sense.
For me, that was the biggest impact.
We became stronger together than apart, and that's where we saw a real shift.
At Hearst, we're in a business that's going through monumental change.
Traditionally, it's a magazine business, but we have sixteen brands, and they're quite siloed brands.
We're highly matrixed as an organisation because we don't have the luxury of teams working vertically. We have to work horizontally.
One area where we've used Belbin is with teams that had quite low engagement scores.
When I joined, engagement was around 40%, which isn't great.
We use Culture Amp and, in ten months, we've moved into the early fifties, which is pretty good.
Where we had teams in the lower thirties, and some even in the twenties, we've introduced interventions that are almost like a reset day.
People come together as a team and then work on strategy together.
I'm working with MDs and Editors-in-Chief to create these reset days and really help teams work better together. You bring together people who work across different teams and functions.
What we've seen, and it's not just linked to this because I think it's a multitude of things, but Belbin has been part of that initial reset.
We've seen teams move from around 20% engagement to 65% in ten months.
The benefit shows in the revenue and profit those brands are now generating. In one brand there was a 30% uplift in revenue in a single year, which is amazing.
Importantly, trust in the business and trust in leadership have improved too.
I haven't got a ton of statistics to throw at you, but I do have a story that shows we're on a journey of improving engagement and culture.
I love what Belbin can do. It's a great language, and a positive language, for people. It makes sense and it's very practical.
The last thing I would say is that the self-awareness you get from using Belbin is phenomenal.
The reports are easy to digest and easy to understand.
But the real benefit is when individuals gain self-awareness, teams gain awareness of one another, and everyone can see the collective picture.
I love the Team Role Circle.
When you put it all together, it creates an incredibly powerful tool for creating change.
What we do look at are people's profile scores, the strengths they bring and where there might be gaps within a team.
For me, the impact has been huge.
Belbin has helped create stronger relationships, better collaboration, higher engagement and greater self-awareness.
It's a positive, practical language that people understand and can use straight away.
And when teams genuinely buy into it and continue the work after the initial session, it can create real and lasting change.
So, for me, it's had a huge impact.
Listen to John, and others, describe the impact that Belbin has had on their teams and organisations.
If you would like to find out how Belbin could help your teams, please get in touch using the form blow.