When AI Blurs the Lines: Why Understanding Team Roles Matters More Than Ever - AI and Teamwork Insights

AI and Teamwork: AI can do great things, but if we are not careful and lose the human element too soon, functional boundaries can become problematically blurred.

As artificial intelligence transforms workplaces, the clarity of functional roles within large organisations may be starting to blur.

Departments once defined by clear boundaries, marketing, operations, IT, HR, are now empowered with new AI fuelled capabilities that transcend the traditional skill sets that until recently may have been more delineated by function. People may now be crossing into the professional realms of others with mixed results and mixed feelings from those with deep expertise in that realm.

AI allows individuals and teams to analyse data, generate insights, code, automate processes, and even create content in ways that previously required specialised expertise.  This can enable teams and departments to do types of work that previously may have required another department to undertake. 

If human behavioural Team Role Skills are not well-deployed in tandem with the new abilities, individuals and teams could cut across one-another with some potential cultural and relationship side-effects. We could inadvetantly deploy what may look to be an ideal solution with AI input, yet in the absence of the right human cross-checking, risks could be overlooked. What we feel is a great piece of work may not be fit for purpose in the eyes of those with deeper human experience in that realm.

While this gradual levelling of some playing fields of capability is exciting, it also creates new challenges: who does what, and how do we work together without cutting across one another? When everyone can suddenly “do a little bit of everything,” collaboration and communication need to evolve too. Human collaboration and communication remains crucial to avoid internal protocols, be they written or unwritten, being breached or leading to adversarial relationships and cultures.

Without a conscious framework for understanding human strengths and behavioural contributions, AI can inadvertently amplify confusion, duplication, and friction.  If we are not careful we can also forget that humans can still do things that AI cannot, and that we still need to tap human experience to make sure that AI output is fit for purpose - no matter how right the output may look to a layperson. 

To over-use AI or to under-use AI can problematic.  With good teamwork and communication AI can enhance human strengths and we can minimise cutting across one-another in adversarial ways.

This is where evidence-based tools like the Belbin Team Roles Model have never been more relevant.

Belbin helps people and organisations identify the unique behavioural strengths that people bring to a team, whether they are creative originators of ideas (Plants), analytical evaluators of plans and ideas (Monitor Evaluators), great project managers (Co-Ordinators), natural networkers between fucntions (Resource Investigators), meticulous and detail oriented cross-checkers (Completer Finishers), efficient organisers (Implementers), actual subject matter experts (Specialists), drivers of mission and urgency (Shapers) or diplomatic bridge builders between others (Teamworkers).

These Team Roles transcend job titles or technical capabilities and focus instead on how people actually behave and contribute when working together. When understood, these roles can enhance the use of tools like AI and avert problematic clashes and cross-overs by deploying their behavioural strengths at the right times.

In an age when AI can automate tasks but not relationships, the ability to understand and harness these behavioural dynamics becomes a critical success factor. For example, a team member empowered by AI tools might produce some brilliant work, but without an awareness of how their behavioural style interacts with others, their output could unintentionally clash with colleagues’ efforts, inappropriately cross some functional boundaries or undermine shared goals or perhaps even be ignored.

Belbin provides the language and structure to navigate these blurred boundaries. By identifying behavioural strengths and allowable weaknesses across teams, organisations can make more deliberate choices about who leads, who supports, and how new AI-driven workflows can enhance rather than disrupt human collaboration.  The human element and Team Roles continue to be vital factors in helping to collaborate within and between teams.

As AI continues to evolve, it will not replace the need for teamwork, it will just redefine it. The future of effective organisations lies not just in what AI can do, but in how people use their human insight, empathy, and behavioural awareness to make the best use of this powerful technology and cover off all the things it cannot do.

Tools like Belbin ensure that amid the noise of rapid change, teams stay balanced, cohesive, and purposefully aligned so that AI and teamwork can go hand in hand.