User:Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53/Belbin

"Belbin himself asserts that the Team Roles are not equivalent to personality types."

 * How? This shows to me a fractured and incomplete understanding of the terms "personality" (as characterological, temperamental, behavioral and/or otherwise), "types" (as categorical -- categorizable), and the compound "personality types" (as categorizable descriptions of traits of [categories of] people -- which may or may not be dynamically interlaced with other types or partially available to those with another dominant type, thus giving the "strong tendencies toward multiple roles" which is mentioned) §.  I think Belbin, while obviously smart enough to discern and create a test to distinguish roles people (innately!!) tend toward is unfortunately not smart enough (in the right way) to recognize that what he is doing is typing people/traits.  (Hint:  Not all traits can manifest outside of groups or working relations - simply only measuring these traits does not remove the resultant categorical entities from the domain of "Personality Types" [though obviously limits their role within that domain].)


 * Not only that, but he also doesn't seem to realize that the Belbin categorical descriptions of motivations, roles, behaviours, and etc... do match the descriptions of such things in other categorical personality typologies (and also equal the absolute number of basic personality categories in the Enneagram typology).


 * I'm feeling my anger at the moment for personal reasons, else I would have couched this in more diplomatic language (especially since my anger isn't warranted at this statement of his). Still, it is preferable to me that idiocies such as this do not prevail, especially under those who seem to think they have a thing going and are trying to sell it to others.


 * If Belbin has not actually made a statement of this sort, and the words have been put in his "mouth", I apologize to him (and reaim them toward the appropriate person[s]). If he seeks to get by with the nitpick "equivalent", then he's right, but this is a profoundly stupid nitpick to make given that as far as I can tell no putative personality typology covers the entirety of traits attributes necessary for any one or more of it's types to be considered full "personality types".


 * Perhaps he was referring to a specific personality typology?


 * Perhaps he thinks it may eventually be a personality typology but doesn't yet think it accurate enough to be considered such?


 * Perhaps he thinks the Überordnung "tendencies toward mulltiple Roles" is actually more apropos the label "personality types", thus the Roles are mere granular entities below that?
 * I do not disagree with this, but still recognize that most other typologies also greatly suffer from this.


 * Are the "strong tendencies toward multiple roles" fully real, or perhaps somewhat an artifact of observer bias (the test and/or insufficient understanding in the human observer-evaluator)?

-- Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53 -- 24.16.160.93 17:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Minor addendum (in case anyone can't really understand what it was I stated in the previous section):

 * If people had an innate talent for magic, would not "Magician" be a Role people see as generally needed or helpful? Thus I posit that Belbin has identified roles that primarily exist not because they are "needed", but because they are what's currently greatly extent (and extant) in human capability, thus what we have grown accustomed to using.  And these can obviously also be discriminated - 'typed' - or he wouldn't have been able to discriminate 9 different basic types of Roles.  And at least some people (or clusters of people) generally prefer to utilize one of these types over the others, thus the specific traits of the types can be readily discriminated.

Simplification: The Construction of Cultures and Societies
People (replicating molecular reactions and above) wish to be useful to (and use) their surroundings (a matter of fitness and survival). This includes other humans. People will find the most easy, efficient, or "proper" way to do this. They will do this by utilizing those parts of themselves they find (behaviorally) most easy to access or relevant and use again over time (innate leading to learned conditioning). We will form roles. These roles will be perceived by the people who have them and by other people who interact with them as a large portion of "personalities". Some parts of these personalities will be idiosyncracies, and thus not classifiable. Others will be more general (including general kinds of idiosyncracies) and will thus be typable. The more general pieces of these Roles (/personalities) will be described and classified (typed). Fin.

Footnote: References of Potential Interest
(It should be stated that while I do not necessarily agree with the entirety of said links, their content is potentially relevant to this issue.)


 * Falsification of Type - as per "strong tendencies toward multiple roles", and what these tendencies may in part indicate.
 * Kingdomality - Vocational Personality types - "Although the specific vocation influenced the name, it was no accident that certain personality types and styles gravitated to certain occupations." (The quote is obviously a profound oversimplification, but in line with what is mentioned above.)
 * Introduction into Socionics (draft): Part 2 - "Although we can describe specific brain zones responsible for certain processes, such as Wernicke zone, Broca zone, etc., these zones also interact with each other and influence each other, especially when they are bordering." - This being another explanation of how it is possible to naturally have strong tendencies toward multiple roles.
 * Misidentifications of Enneagram Personality Types - Fifth point - "Also, people who are extremely high-functioning can be more difficult to identify because they are less identified with the patterns of their type and can freely express a much wider range of coping styles." - A developmentally/spiritually nicer description of how it is someone can have strong tendencies toward multiple trait-classes that are used to describe the roles.
 * Lie Scales and the Elderly - " A drop in validity when controls for artifacts are applied is however a not unexpected outcome. In the present case it may mean simply that people who fake good tend to get away with it to some extent. They even fool friends who are asked to rate them. <...> Clearly more data are needed before we can decide which explanation carries most weight." - On whether tendencies toward multiple roles are completely accurate or only partly true (whether determined by tests or observed by others).

Wikipedia policy - What I wrote above
If it's factually untrue, does even the published opinion of the primary researcher (Belbin, in this case) belong in an encyclopedia uncountered (argued against - I can almost remember the relevant word for this idea, but can't quite)? Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53 24.16.160.93 07:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

360-degree feedback
The test includes 360-degree feedback from observers as well as the individual's own assessment of their behaviour, and contrasts how they see their behaviour versus how their colleagues do. I'm curious whether the observer's own Belbin roles are factored into this analysis (ala "inter-type relations"). If anyone has access to this knowledge I'd greatly appreciate having it entered into the main page. --Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53 02:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)