Team Diversity

(return to Co-creative Learning Teams or see some keywords)

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The Whole Course

1. Systems Thinking
2. Self-regulation
3. Self-coordination
4. Living systems
5. Team consciousness
6. Team synergy
7. Team sizes
8. Team diversity
9. Lucky Teams
10. Team Tools

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8. Team Diversity

1. It is hard to imagine a living system without specialist parts.
2. Creatures that use sexual recombination have at least 2 genders.
3. E.g. Ant colonies have 5 specialist types:
   • the queen who lays eggs
   • male drones that mate
   • sterile female workers that maintain the nest and forage
   • winged alates (reproductives) that fly off to start new colonies
4. E.g. Bee hives have 3 types:
   • the queen bee (the reproductive female)
   • worker bees (infertile females)
   • drone bees (male bees present in spring and summer)
5. Law of Requisite Variety (Ashby 1956) is famous in systems theory:
   • i.e. below a minimum diversity level a system becomes non-viable.
6. But team size limits will also affect viability.

Belbin's system

1. Meredith Belbin's research (2022) has some (limited) relevance to our work.
2. He analysed data from successful companies and drew conclusions.
3. He concluded that there were 3 basic team types:
   • Action-oriented
   • People-oriented
   • Thought-oriented
4. These team types break down into 9 work roles:

Belbin's Team Roles

1. These are the names he gave to the team types he found:
   • Co-ordinator
   • Team worker
   • Plant ('creative')
   • Monitor-evaluator
   • Implementer
   • Completer-finisher
   • Shaper
   • Resource-investigator
   • Specialist

Additional notes

1. Each team member should be fully aware of these roles/terms.
2. Coordinator's and team manager's personal qualities should match.
3. The team should contain at least one strong plant (i.e. 'creative').
4. Each team should have a reasonable diversity of mental abilities.

How many roles?

1. Belbin's work is not unique and may not work for co-creative teams.
2. Other researchers have adopted different names and/or numbers
3. A diversity of team members may increase creative opportunity.
4. However, too many can also create complications and confusion.
5. In our view four or five is a sweet spot for small teams.
   • 
6. In the figure above - each player links directly to each of the other 3.
7. This gives the system a potentially maximum level of team conscious.
8. So what is the optimum team number?
9. If:
   • A team of 2 players means 1 less relation than members (i.e. 1)
   • A team of 3 players means the same number of relations and members (i.e. 3)
   • A team of 4 players means 3 more relations than members (i.e. 6)
   • A team of 5 players also means 5 more relations than members (i.e. 10)

Our example

1. So we invented some living systems using these criteria:
   • it must have as few team roles as possible.
   • each role must deliver at least one essential resource.
   • it must be able to survive within its environment.
2. In this version, 4 virtual roles produce 6 interdependent relations.
3. Together, they simulate a 'living' autopoietic system.

Four 'essential' team roles

• Pusher-doer: the person actively responsible for the team's output
• Envisioner: the one who thinks about future team actions
• Languager: someone who creatively repairs misunderstandings
• New knower: the novice whose ignorance brings fresh insights

Further reading

1. Backwell, J. & Wood, J., (2012a) Network Consciousness
2. Backwell, J. & Wood, J., (2012b), Network Consciousness and Paradigm Change
3. Belbin, M., Team Roles at Work (3 ed.), Routledge, 2022, ISBN 978-1003-1631-52 with Victoria Brown
4. Creative Quartets
5. Reinventing Invention
6. Learner-creator Duos

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