A balanced team-generating model for teams with less than nine persons

According to Belbin, each person can be characterized by nine role types. He provided a clear insight into the internal group relationships and the clarification of the roles needed for a team to work efficiently. The resulting teams are called balanced teams. This paper elaborates on a team balancing model. One of the difficulties in designing a balanced team is caused by the question of how to choose the nine necessary team roles when a team consists of less than nine persons. In that situation, one of the possible primary roles in a team must be replaced by a secondary role or even a tertiary role. A mathematical model is introduced that gives one the opportunity to assign the most suitable roles as primary and secondary roles to a team consisting of less than nine persons to generate a balanced team in terms of Belbin. A practical application is given.