In leadership and team management, understanding team roles and how individuals engage in decision-making and project execution is crucial for success. The 5 Ps Delegate Model categorises individuals based on their level of involvement, attitude, and contribution within a team or organisational setting. These five roles — Pilot, Participant, Passenger, Protestor, and Prisoner — provide insights into team dynamics and help leaders optimise productivity and morale.

This model is particularly useful in team development, where engagement determines progression and success. By identifying where team members fall within this framework, leaders can implement targeted strategies to enhance participation, mitigate resistance, and foster a positive work environment.

1. Pilot: The Leader and Visionary

The Pilot is the most proactive and engaged individual in any setting. This person takes charge, provides direction, and assumes responsibility for outcomes. Pilots are natural leaders who influence and inspire others with their vision, motivation, and ability to execute tasks effectively. They are goal-oriented and seek solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

Characteristics of a Pilot:

• Takes initiative and makes strategic decisions
• Motivates and guides team members
• Assumes responsibility for success and failures
• Demonstrates a strong work ethic and commitment
• Proactively seeks improvements and efficiencies

Challenges of a Pilot

While pilots are instrumental in driving progress, they may sometimes struggle with delegation. They may feel the need to control every aspect of a project, which can lead to micromanagement. Additionally, if pilots do not consider team input, they may alienate participants and passengers, reducing overall engagement.

How to Support a Pilot:

• Encourage delegation to prevent burnout
• Provide constructive feedback to refine leadership skills
• Ensure pilots collaborate effectively with others

2. Participant: The Engaged Contributor

The Participant plays an active and positive role in a team but does not necessarily take on the leadership responsibilities of a pilot. Participants are engaged, responsible, and enthusiastic about contributing to the success of the project or organisation. They are valuable assets because they take initiative without necessarily seeking authority.

Characteristics of a Participant:

• Actively contributes ideas and solutions
• Supports the pilot in execution and decision-making
• Engages in discussions and collaborative efforts
• Demonstrates accountability and reliability
• Maintains a positive attitude toward change and challenges

Challenges of a Participant

Participants are crucial to any team, but they may sometimes lack the influence or confidence to challenge ineffective leadership. Additionally, if they do not receive recognition or encouragement, they may lose motivation and disengage over time.

How to Support a Participant:

• Provide opportunities for leadership development
• Recognize and reward contributions
• Encourage active participation in decision-making

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3. Passenger: The Passive Observer

The Passenger is present in a team but plays a passive role. Unlike participants, passengers do not actively contribute to discussions, decision-making, or problem-solving. They tend to go with the flow, neither hindering nor significantly advancing team efforts.

Characteristics of a Passenger:

• Attends meetings and follows instructions without active engagement
• Avoids conflict and remains neutral
• Reluctant to take on additional responsibilities
• May contribute minimally if directly asked but does not take initiative

Challenges of a Passenger

While passengers do not necessarily cause disruptions, their lack of engagement can lower team morale and productivity. If too many team members fall into this category, it can create an imbalance where the workload is disproportionately distributed among pilots and participants.

How to Support a Passenger:

• Encourage involvement by assigning specific tasks
• Provide motivation and incentives for active participation
• Create a safe thinking environment for sharing ideas without judgment

4. Protestor: The Resistant Opponent

The Protestor is actively disengaged and often resistant to change or leadership decisions. Protestors may express dissatisfaction openly or subtly, creating friction within a team. While their concerns may sometimes be valid, their approach can disrupt progress rather than contribute constructively.

Characteristics of a Protestor:

• Frequently questions or challenges leadership decisions
• Displays skepticism and negativity toward projects or goals
• May attempt to rally others against certain ideas or leaders
• Resists changes, even when necessary
• May complain without offering alternative solutions

Challenges of a Protestor

While protestors can provide necessary critical perspectives, their approach may lower morale and create divisions within a team. If their concerns go unaddressed, they may become more disruptive over time.

How to Support a Protestor

• Actively listen to concerns and address valid points
• Encourage solution-oriented discussions
• Clarify expectations and consequences of non-cooperation
• Foster a culture of constructive criticism rather than negativity

5. Prisoner: The Disengaged and Resentful

The Prisoner is someone who feels trapped in their role, often displaying resentment, disengagement, or apathy. Unlike protestors, who voice their dissatisfaction, prisoners tend to withdraw and display passive resistance. Their disengagement can stem from frustration, feeling undervalued, or a lack of alignment with team goals.

Characteristics of a Prisoner:

• Shows minimal interest or enthusiasm
• Feels stuck in a role without purpose or fulfillment
• May appear detached, unmotivated, or even resentful
• Often completes tasks without effort or care
• Unlikely to engage in discussions or offer input

Challenges of a Prisoner

Prisoners can significantly impact team dynamics by lowering morale and productivity. Their lack of engagement can be contagious, leading to a negative work environment if not addressed.

How to Support a Prisoner:

• Identify the root cause of disengagement
• Provide opportunities for skill development and growth
• Foster a more inclusive and supportive environment
• Offer mentorship or reassignment to more suitable roles

Applying the 5 Ps Delegate Model in Leadership

Understanding the 5 Ps model allows leaders to:

1. Identify team members’ engagement levels and attitudes.
2. Tailor leadership styles to support and motivate each category.
3. Balance delegation to ensure efficiency and prevent burnout.
4. Mitigate resistance and disengagement through proactive management.
5. Encourage active participation by fostering a collaborative culture.

The 5 Ps Team Roles

The 5 Ps Delegate Model provides a valuable framework for understanding team roles, delegate engagement, and improving leadership strategies. Recognising the roles of pilots, participants, passengers, protestors, and prisoners enables leaders to cultivate a productive, motivated, and cohesive team. Organisations can maximise efficiency, innovation, and success by fostering a culture that encourages active participation and addressing disengagement effectively.

Leaders who apply this model thoughtfully will not only enhance team dynamics but also create an environment where every individual feels valued and empowered to contribute to collective goals.

If you would like any support in your leadership or team development, do send me a message via the Contact Page.

Who is in your personal network? Who are the best people to help you achieve your goals? How can you identify the right people for the critical roles?

Who do you want on your bus?

You are about to start a grand venture. You are in the driving seat ready to go. So, who do you want on the bus with you? Organisations expert Jim Collins poses this question in the bestselling book Good to Great.

“If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.” – Jim Collins

I love this analogy as it is a picture we can all identify with. For instance, whether we are off on a family holiday, a team excursion or an expedition, we can empathise with checking off to see that we have the right people in the vehicle.

On expeditions, I have certainly had that experience, and whether on a military operation or explorative trip, each person is selected to fulfil certain roles, based on their particular skills and characteristics.

The same goes for whatever goal we want to achieve.

How do you think strategically about your personal network?

Building a team or network is contextual and there are various approaches to doing this. I have found the idea of the Personal Boardroom, developed by Amanda Scott and Zella King, helpful when thinking about professional networks. Equally, when building high-performing teams, I have employed Meredith Belbin’s 9 Team Roles model with great success.

But when thinking about the personal network needed to achieve specific goals I have landed on a model based on my own experience. It is these roles that we will look at next.

The Right Questions Team Tool: The 10 vital roles in your personal network

When starting out on an expedition or new business venture I always have a team list. This list specifies names and key roles. So, in the Right Questions Framework, the Team Tool is a list of the ten vital roles you need in your network. The 10 key roles are:

1. Networker
2. Creative
3. Follower
4. Expert
5. Encourager
6. Challenger
7. Fixer
8. Sponsor
9. Sage
10. Guide

So those are the ten key roles. Now, let’s look at a more detailed explanation of each role and questions to help you identify the right person.

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The Networker

A networker is someone who is a natural at building and maintaining networks of people. They have a long list of useful contacts and are good at connecting folk and helping to expand other people’s networks. They can help navigate social spheres and organisational hierarchies.

To find a networker, picture who you think of in response to these questions:

• Who can help me expand my personal network?
• Who can assist me in navigating who is who?
• Who can introduce me to the right people?

The Creative

A creative person brings inspiration. They are people who activate fresh thinking, new perspectives and the occasional crazy idea! Creatives generally work beyond the purely rational, helping to inspire lateral thought.

To find a creative, ask yourself:

• Who brings new ideas?
• Who acts as a muse or catalyst to inspire you?
• Who can bring new opportunities and ways of thinking?

The Follower

A follower is a critical team member as they help get things done. They provide support, primarily through helping productivity. They are also someone who is willing to learn and give the opportunity for you to lead, mentor and develop them. This is important as a network should always be two-way; a network is stronger if you are adding value to others as well as getting help yourself.

Remember:

“The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.” – Keith Ferrazzi

To choose the right follower ask:

• Who can follow your lead and help you?
• Who can you delegate tasks to?
• Who can you help mentor and develop?

The Expert

An expert is someone with in-depth knowledge and expertise. They are a leader in their sphere, someone others look to for ideas and solutions. They are likely to be trendsetters, thought leaders or disruptors in their sphere.

To find the right expert to help you, think of the goal you want to achieve and ask:

• Who is the subject matter expert?
• Who is a leader in your field of interest?
• Who has the best specialist knowledge to help you?

The Encourager

An encourager is a positive person who brings energy and vitality to a relationship. They cheer you on when you are doing well and help you keep your when times are tough. They tend to have an optimistic worldview and a can-do attitude.

To identify your encourager, think:

• Who can encourage you and bolster your nerves?
• Who can be your fan, cheer you on and give moral support?
• Who can help you remain idealistic, positive and optimistic?

The Challenger

A challenger holds you to account and provides feedback on your performance. They ask probing questions, critique your ideas and highlight risks. This might make them seem pessimistic, but a good challenger is a realist who helps shape ideas to make plans (and you) more robust.

• Who can challenge your ideas and bring a contrary view?
• Who can give you honest critique and feedback?
• Who is a realist (who might sometimes sound like a pessimist)?

The Fixer

A fixer is a practical problem solver. You don’t always understand (or want to know) how they get things done, but they always achieve a result! When you are facing challenges, particularly short-term and unforeseen issues, such people are invaluable.

To find a fixer, ask yourself:

• Who can you think of who is a great problem solver?
• Who can find resources and solutions when you are under pressure?
• Who can you delegate to who you trust completely to get a task done?

The Sponsor

A sponsor raises your profile and helps with resources. They can help you find key people, money or materials. They can move behind the scenes, unblocking issues and working on your behalf.

To identify a good sponsor, ask:

• Who can champion you and your cause?
• Who can support you by finding or releasing resources?
• Who can unlock doors for you that would otherwise remain shut?

The Sage

A sage is a wise person, often more mature, who has probably achieved something similar to the dream that you have in mind. Their experience makes them an ideal mentor, who can point out the potential paths and pitfalls on the route to your goal.

To find your sage, think:

• Who can bring you experience, advice and wisdom?
• Who would be your ideal role model or sensei?
• Who can act as your mentor?

The Guide

A guide is a coach who helps you to achieve your specific life goal. They help create a thinking environment, using questions to unpack your assumptions. They assist you in making plans, setting milestones, and then sticking to them.

Therefore, to find your guide answer the following:

• Who can help you keep on track?
• Who can keep you accountable?
• Who can be your coach to help you achieve your goal?

5 Steps for how to build your personal network

1. Using The Right Questions Team tool, use your imagination to think of who you would like in each role if you could pick anyone in the world (or even from the whole of history).
2. Thinking about who you chose in step 1, now think about the top two or three reasons why you specifically chose those people. Write these factors down.
3. Now think, who in your network is sitting in those places at the moment? Are they the right people for your mission or vision? Do you need to ask someone to get off the bus?
4. Next, think about who you want on your bus to achieve your primary goal. Who can you connect with from your ideal list? From your existing network (or connections of existing connections) who could fulfil the given role and tick off the same factors you identified?
5. Now make a plan for how to engage with these people. Remember, this should include not just how to make contact but how to develop and maintain that relationship.

First steps (and further thoughts) towards building your powerful personal network

Having gone through these steps you should have identified a list of potential people who can be your personal network to help you achieve your goal. As with all good plans, make sure you commit towards taking the first step. Put something in the diary to have that first call or meeting to foster the network.

And expect things to evolve. In reality, the team we end up with is rarely the team we initially think of or start out with. Some people won’t be able to help. Others will have to step away or be replaced. Equally, you are likely to come across new people who are presently not on your list.

All these roles are important, but the roles of sage (mentor) and guide (coach) deserve some extra investigation, and that is what we will do in the next section.

We know that building a team is not all about ‘trust falls’, away days and retreats. Therefore, how can managers build lasting bonds and the kind of trust that makes teamwork a breeze?

I started off my career as a Bomb Disposal Officer in the Army, working in situations where working well together as a team was potentially a life or death situation. Since then, as a consultant and leadership coach, I have worked within and alongside organisations in the commercial, governmental and voluntary sectors, equipping teams with the skills they need to be more effective in working together. The bulk of my work revolves around facilitating strategy, giving people the tools they need to make good decisions, and through this building teams that are resilient to change and uncertainty.

There is not always the luxury of having time out and fun activities to build a team. Fortunately, these things are not actually necessary. You can build a successful team in the harshest of environments if you understand certain fundamentals. Here are the things that I have found are most effective in turning a bunch of individuals into a high performing team.

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”

Steve Jobs

Be a leader who understands how teams develop

A well-functioning team is dependent upon good leadership. If a team is failing in some way, then the manager has to make the assumption that they have to shoulder the bulk of the blame and take responsibility for finding a solution.

One thing that can really help a leader build and manage a team is understanding the natural evolution that a group goes through on the way to becoming an effective team. One great model of this that I have found particularly helpful (and memorable) is the Tuckman Cycle. Bruce Tuckman did research that demonstrated that every team goes through stages of:

• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing and
• Ajourning

A manager can do things to speed the process through these steps to the performing stage. It is especially important to get through the painful ‘storming’ phase but you cannot completely short circuit the system to get straight to performance. There has to be some pain to get to the gain.

Another model, the Drexler-Sibbet model of Team Performance, is a helpful complement to the Tuckman model. The Drexler-Sibbet model poses a set of questions that a team needs to work through in order to progress through each level of performance. As a leader, this is invaluable in working out how to support the team best.

You can see how the two models combine in the picture below.

All teams experience a level of change and you can progress or regress through these models. Therefore a leader needs to assess which stage their team is at and how to answer the key questions. A good leader thinks of strategies to facilitate progress towards peak performance. These can be planned from the beginning.

Gather people to a common vision and set of values

One thing that can help people quickly form as a team and work through initial ‘storming’ challenges is to have a vision for people to gather to and for them to share a common set of values. People need to know where they are going and how they are going to get there. A clear mission gives people the definition of success they need to make progress, while shared values and principles provide the guidelines for behaviour and decision-making that will shape the journey. If these are established early on it will help attract the right team members and then engage people effectively so they can quickly get to the settled ‘norming’ phase.

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Invest time in individuals

Stephen Covey wisely said: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” This is vitally important for the leader and manager. It is very easy to plough into a team environment and start pushing people to do things in a particular way but investing in individuals first can save a lot of time, effort and heartache.

Listening to your team members and understanding the needs and desires of your employees (as well as their skills and experience) will contribute to the effective management and working of the team. Giving time to individuals builds up capital in the relational bank account; an investment you can then draw upon when challenges hit, but hopefully with less chance of going overdrawn.

Give people clear roles and responsibilities

Team members, as well as needing to know where they are going, also need to know their part in the plan. Their roles and responsibilities need to be clearly laid out in such a way that they should be stretched but be able to play to their strengths. One of the most successful tools for establishing the roles within a team is the Belbin Team Roles model.

Meredith Belbin did extensive research into how effective teams function and worked out that there are nine functions or roles that need to be fulfilled for a team to work properly. Some people may take on more than one role but all the following bases need to be covered:

• Plants are highly creative and good at solving problems
• Resource Investigators connect with the world outside the team, bringing in external views on opportunities and competition
• Monitor Evaluators provide a logical, impartial view and help to weigh up options
• Co-ordinators focus on the objective and delegating tasks to team members
• Implementers plan and implement a workable strategy
• Completer Finishers bring high standards, see errors and add polish to the final solution
• Team workers help the team gel and identify things that need doing to help the team
• Shapers challenge and provide momentum by driving the team forward
• Specialists provide in-depth knowledge within a key area

The approach is explained more fully in his book Team Roles at Work (2010).

Overcoming challenges together

When people know where they are going, how they are getting there and what their role is then work starts getting done efficiently. At this point, the team can grow together as they face and overcome challenges together. Successfully tackling a work problem can bring more progress than a plethora of away-days. Helping someone through a problem is far more productive than catching someone in a ‘trust fall’ exercise. The important thing for the manager to remember at this point is that they need to be playing their part in the team, bringing leadership, keeping up good communication, supporting individuals and helping the team to make decisions.

Celebrating success

Finally, when something is done well it should be celebrated. This does not mean popping the champagne (although there are times for that), it could be as simple as praising a team member for a job well done. This should be done in a team or public setting so that people can share in the success and be encouraged to press forward in what they are doing. Then, at the end of a project, throw a party.

Congratulations, you have a fully functioning team!