Understanding medical practice team roles

Do you believe that the roles your employees play on your medical practice team are identical to their job titles or job descriptions? Do you believe that team roles are determined by personality type? This article suggests that a more effective way to build and manage your medical practice team is to define team roles through employee behaviors. It provides 10 rules of behavioral team roles that can help practice managers to select and build high-performing teams, build more productive team relationships, improve the employee recruitment process, build greater team trust and understanding; and increase their own effectiveness. This article describes in detail Belbin's highly regarded and widely used team role theory and summarizes four additional behavioral team role theories and systems. It offers lessons learned when applying team role theory to practice. Finally, this article offers an easy-to-implement method for assessing current team roles. It provides a simple four-question checklist that will help practice managers balance an imbalanced medical practice team.