Observe behaviour when you can't read thoughts

Sometimes, we just assume the worst about people when they behave in a way they are not supposed to but our interpretations are only half-cooked because we cannot see what is going in their minds.

Imagine yourself stuck in a traffic. Someone moving too slow might be struggling with a engine issue but you who is getting late for a meeting would be pissed off because you are not getting a way. Another person might move around the traffic like crazy trying to reach office fast so his job is not lost but you are bothered because he is making the traffic worst and accident prone.

Everyone has a reason to behave the way they do but we cannot understand because we cannot peek into their minds. We can never know what they are thinking. Are they engrossed with a problem that is causing them to lose concentration? Are they worried because they have lost a source of income? Are they in a hurry because their job is at stake? We do not know because we cannot see what is inside their minds.

What we can see though is their BEHAVIOUR. But will behaviour tell us anything about why they are where they are? Perhaps it can! Because you can not just

SEE the behaviour, but also

OBSERVE it, ANALYSE it, INTERPRET it, and PREDICT it.

This is what I learnt from recent interactions witht he Belbin team that helped us understand how human behaviour is connected with human thoughts and how we behave in different ways because of the different ways we think, different motivations that guide us, and different preferences we have.

Resource Investigator, as the test output called me, majorly, I can now understand why talking to people gives me so much energy. And how I am able to come up with some brilliant ideas, not when I am alone in peace, but when I am in the middle of a discussion and talking to a person even when the other person would have clue of what I am talking about or would not be contributing anything.

My friends often say, "

" and I would reply, "Well, you were my muse". Their presence itself and willingness to help me was enough to inspire my brain and get it to work.

Resource Investigator is one of the team roles identified in the Belbin Team Roles assessment that has some distinguishing characteristics that truly match me. Some of them make me feel proud as I realize they are strengths and can make sense of why I am so good at a few things. Others make me see where I am going wrong and identify the areas of my natural weaknesses, where I need to work.

My strengths include:

• My ability to gather resources, human or otherwise, to ensure that a problem at hand is solved. In other words, I can always find a way.
• My ability to come up with innovative solutions and novel ideas through conversations (I already mentioned)
• My capacity to be pretty resourceful outside an organization or team (Reason why I was able to achieve my targets as a sales person even when I do not like sales)

My areas of improvement include:

• I might be very excited to start a new project and would work with fully energy but I am person to get bored fast to as the project would move along, I will lose enthusiasm over time. No wonder why I enrolled in so many certification programs but could finish only a few (maybe 50%). But this weaknesses is compensated when I have someone to report to or in simpler words, someone to sit on my head like a clientor a mentor. This is why most courses I could not complete were self-paced. And those I completed were tutor-driven.
• Another weakness I found through the test was my lack of love for taking care of minute things like formats and corrections. Wonder why I spend less time editing and more time thinking. I often offload the task of formatting and citations to my team because I do not like it.

In case of a weaknesses, you have two choices, work on them to improve or just oursource the task. I would choose the former to work on things I might not be good at but I do find them interesting like cartooning (The image you see on the top is created by me on SketchWow!). I would choose to outsouce things that are least interesting and I am definitely not good at (I might like editing an article but not formatting so I learned editing skills but when I have to use formats like APA, MLA or Harvard, I would rely on in-built Word citations or software like Mendeley).

My individual Belbin report gave me many such insights and I was flabbergasted to find resemblence with my own understanding of my behaviour. At the same time, I was also surprised by my own understanding of self as a person which was different from what others thought about me. And this was mainly, my image of self is not what I truly am but it is more aspirational and I see myself as a person I want to be. The true me could only come out in the social mirror. Which is another amazing thing about Belbin that offers analysis not just on self-perception but also on social perception. It would involve 4-8 people who know you in work or personal setting and then, ask them about your behaviour. And before you could think that this could create a possibly of baised responses, the test is very intelligently made with constraints put in the right places to prevent baised opinions.

Moreover, the questions are not subjective that allow you framing but they are simply imprompt and you are allowed to only select from carefully chosen words. How can you lie? And if you do, the rules will catch you in the game and put you back on the track. Morever, a 360 degree assessment ensures that inputs are coming from people at different levels and with different working relationships with you. The overall result you get is thus pretty accurate. I found mine pretty accurate and not just mine but also of others who had joined me in the league of this self-discovery.

What was more exciting was the capability to understand and predict behaviour which was given to us through a rigorous training program and a not-so-easy examination. I feel proud to be a part of this as a Belbin Accredited professional and look forward to help organizations understand their employee behaviour so that they can hire the right people, place them in right roles, and assignment them right place in teams.

If you wish to know more about what we can do for you with Belbin Team Role Assessment, feel free to ping me on a chat.

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