BELBIN WEEK REFLECTIONS: Our Serendipitous Journey with Belbin

As we celebrate Meredith Belbin and his groundbreaking work this week, we're reflecting on our own unexpected introduction to the Belbin Model—and the profound impact it's had on our journey.

Our first brush with Belbin came after spotting it in the Australian Army Leadership Manual. Not long after, we were invited to help run an outdoor team-building session for a corporate client—an early “moonlighting” gig for our early Sabre project. It was there we met Dr David Marriott, who, along with John Burns, helped bring Belbin to Australia in the 1980s.

Back in 1988/89, David was enthusiastically championing the Belbin Model as a powerful tool for team development. He and his son Paul ran us through the earliest versions of the SPI and OBS reports. We were just young Army brats at the time—late teens, junior officers—still learning the ropes, but we immediately saw the potential of how to build teams as a business one day, and of using a powerful tool like Belbin.

That chance meeting sparked not only a deep appreciation for the Belbin framework, but also an enduring friendship with our now sadly missed mentor in Belbin and mate, David Marriott.

Over time, we transitioned from sporadic casual team-building gigs to deciding to build a serious business—and Belbin became central to that evolution. From early paper reports and dongles to CDs and now the brilliant Interplace 8 platform, the Model has been a constant.

Many tools came and went in our work with clients, but none matched Belbin’s effectiveness. It remains the Gold Standard for understanding and improving team dynamics. Eventually, we made the pilgrimage to the UK to meet Meredith, Nigel, and the wider team—strengthening a partnership we now proudly maintain as Belbin’s Australian Distributor amongst an amazing global Belbin family.

Meredith’s work, first introduced to us by David, has had a profound and lasting impact—on us, our clients, and the thousands of teams we've worked with.

The photos we’ve shared here include our late dear friend David, and a few treasured “artefacts” from those early Belbin days—still proudly on our office shelves.

Here’s to Meredith Belbin. And to the giants whose shoulders we stand on.