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Charles Margerison & Dick McCann: Team Management

Charles Margerison and Dick McCann developed one of the leading tools to help managers with team performance.

When you want your team to perform well, there are two approaches you can take:

  1. Manage them well
  2. Select them for a good balance

There are tools available for each, though there are fewer to help with selecting a balanced team. Of those there are, without a doubt, Meredith Belbin‘s Team Roles is the best known by far.

But it is not the only game in town. You might choose it for its simplicity. But for sophistication, let’s look at the work of Charles Margerison and Dick McCann.

Charles Margerison and Dick McCann
Charles Margerison and Dick McCann

Charles Margerison

Charles Margerison grew up in the 1940s in the UK. He studied economics at the University of London School of Economics, securing a BSc. He remained to research a PhD in educational psychology. In 1967, he moved to Bradford University, and in 1971 was awarded his second PhD, in social science.

Some time after this, he moved to Australia, and joined the staff of University of Queensland. He was Professor of Management from 1982 to 1989.

From 1982, he worked with Dick McCann to research team management. And, in 1985, they co-founded Team Management Systems. He remains a part of the business, as well as being a director and President of Amazing People Worldwide.

Charles Margerison has written many books, including one with Dick McCann.

Dick McCann

Dick McCann also grew up in the 1940s, but in Australia. From 1961-5, he studied for a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering, at the University of Queensland. He followed this with a PhD. In 1969, he moved to England, to work for BP Chemicals. There, he worked as a research engineer, and also trained as a certified accountant.

In 1974, he returned to Australia, to become a research fellow at the University of Sydney. In 1982, he started his collaboration with Charles Margerison.

In 1985, Dick McCann became the Managing Director of Team Management Systems in Australia. At the same time, his co-founder focused on European and US expansion.

Dick McCann stepped down from his director role in 2015, but remains involved in research. He is author of four books. They include Team Management: Practical New Approaches, which he co-wrote with Margerison.

Margerison and McCann’s Contribution

Margerison and McCann have developed a fair number of interconnecting models. There is too much to attempt to describe them here. They include work on:

  • Workplace values
  • Influencing skills
  • Opportunities and Obstacles

We’ll focus on their most widely used model, the Margerison-McCann Team Management Wheel. But before we can get to it, we must first understand the work that underpins it: the Margerison-McCann Types of Work Wheel.

Types of Work

Margerison and McCann interviewed with over 300 managers. They wanted to find what made a difference between good and poor performance.

When they assessed the team members’ activities, their data fell into eight work functions. They describe them as:

Advising
Gathering and reporting information

Innovating
Creating and experimenting with ideas

Promoting
Exploring and presenting opportunities

Developing
Assessing and testing the applicability of new approaches

Organising
Establishing and implementing ways of making things work

Producing
Concluding and delivering outputs

Inspecting
Controlling and auditing the working of systems

Maintaining
Upholding and safeguarding standards and processes

From their work, they suggest that different jobs have different critical functions. These need people with the right skills and competencies, to perform them well.

Margerison and McCann present these types of work in a trade-marked Types of Work Wheel, which we present here with a link back to the TMS website.

Margerison-McCann Types of Work Wheel
Margerison-McCann Types of Work Wheel http://www.tmsdi.com

Critical Work Functions

Let’s compare two examples that they offer. For each, they give three ‘critical work functions’. These make the difference between good and poor job performance.

Finance and Accounting
The critical work work functions are: Organizing, Producing and Inspecting.

Design/R&D jobs
The critical work functions are Advising, Innovating and Developing.

Team Management

From here, it isn’t hard to see how Margerison and McCann relate their work functions to individuals’ work preferences.

This creates their concept of ‘role preferences’. These are the roles in a team that people are most likely to enjoy. When people’s critical work functions match their work preferences, they are likely to:

  • be happier in their job
  • perform better

Team Role Preferences

The role preferences are:

Reporter-Adviser
Supportive. Enjoys collecting and sharing information. Knowledgeable and flexible.

Creator-Innovator
Imaginative, creative, and able to embrace complexity and uncertainty. Enjoys researching new ideas.

Explorer-Promoter
Enjoys exploring possibilities, looking for new opportunities, and then selling them to colleagues. Persuasive, fast thinking, and easily bored.

Assessor-Developer
Analytical and objective. Enjoys ideas, developing and testing new opportunities, and making them work.

Thruster-Organizer
Highly results-focused, Likes to set up systems, push forward and see results. Analytical, but quick to make decisions.

Concluder-Producer
Highly practical. Enjoys systematic planning and work processes. Takes pride in efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of outputs.

Controller-Inspector
Enjoys focusing on and controlling the detailed aspects of their work. Good at checking and enforcing standards, but less skilled with informal influencing.

Upholder-Maintainer
Likes to uphold standards and values. Can be conservative in the face of change, but has a strong sense of purpose.

How Margerison and McCan Identified their Role Preferences

Margerison and McCann worked with four measures related to how people approached work. They were strongly influenced in the choices by Carl Jung’s psychological types. So you’ll see a strong relationship to the work of Isabel Briggs-Myers and Katharine Briggs.

Margerison and McCann’s measures are:

  • How people prefer to relate with others
  • How people prefer to gather and use information
  • How people prefer to make decisions
  • How people prefer to organize themselves and others

These measures lead to RIDO scales (Relationships, Information, Decisions, Organization). And the scales showed a strong relationship to the Types of Work.

Like the Types of Work Wheel, they present their team role preferences as a Team Management Wheel. Again, we present this trademarked model with a link to the TMS website.

Margerison-McCann Team Management Wheel
Margerison-McCann Team Management Wheel – http://www.tmsdi.com

The Linker Role

At the centre of the wheel is the ‘Linker’ role. Every jobholder needs this role to be successful in their job. It involves integrating and co-ordinating other people’s work. This is both within the team, and with external players.

This role is particularly important for the team leader, as you’d expect.

Linking comprises thirteen skills:

  • six people skills
  • five task skills
  • for the team leader, two leadership skills

These, however, are the subject of a whole other model, the Linking Leader Model.

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