The merits of a team should never be assessed without first considering its purpose. A team is not a group of people who occupy the same...

We recently worked with an international membership organisation and asked for feedback on their experience of working with us to build...

Research into effective leadership overwhelmingly tells leaders to ‘look within’, and for good reason. It’s not about introspection for...

I hate you so much right now... As a manager, there's nothing quite like the moment when someone starts their monthly check in with "I...

“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed!” – Peter Senge Businesses need to adapt in order to survive. Addressing the need...

Can Team Roles change? Belbin measures behaviour, rather than personality. Whilst the two are interlinked (personality is one of many...

In the past our concepts and experience of leadership have revolved round the solo leader. The leader, familiar to us, is the one with...

One question we are asked on a regular basis: “I’ve done Belbin with the team – what do I do now?” Of course, this is a question without...

We’re inclined to think of negotiations as big, one-off events. We frame them in antagonistic terms. We set up a false opposition between...

This case study from our colleague, Anders N. Reichborn, in Norway introduces an innovative and informative way to illustrate how Team...

Recipe for Success When you find the recipe for success with an individual or group, it’s tempting to try and reproduce those...

Pressure. Some people thrive on it; others buckle. But how can we predict someone’s reaction? And if we have an idea of what this...

In 1965, Dr Bruce Tuckman was doing ground-breaking work on group dynamics in Ohio. A couple of years later, Dr Meredith Belbin began his...

Professor J. Richard Hackman, late Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University, wrote an article...

‘Distrust, politics, infighting and gossip’: why companies are paying the price for avoiding feedback. We might think we’re dodging a bullet by using self-reporting personality tests. But avoiding candid feedback can spell disaster for teams, according to research. Whilst 95% of us may think we’re self-aware, only 10-15% of us actually are. Those are the findings of Tasha Eurich’s multi-year study. In her piece for Harvard Business Review, Audrey Epstein claims that candi

“When all think alike, then no one is thinking.”* Groupthink occurs when a group’s pursuit of cohesion and conformity limits creativity...

Project teams are a perfect storm of difficulties, and can present myriad problems to managers. How do you break the ice and establish...

Anxiety at work is traditionally viewed as a negative, but new research shows that a moderate amount of stress—of the right kind and...

For decades, the Peter Principle has been a well-known adage. According to this principle, managers “rise to their level of...

“We should take care not to make the intellect our God; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.” – Albert Einstein...