BIo
Mats Soomre
Official Belbin Distributor
Belbin Accredited Team Coach
Belbin Team Roles Accredited Professional
Co-founder
I work with teams and leaders through behaviour, not theory. Trust, communication, hidden strengths, the gears that make a team actually function. Twenty-eight years. Over twenty thousand people. More than a The work always starts in the same place — rethinking strengths and reframing weaknesses, so that behaviour becomes visible as contribution and potential rather than as a problem to fix.
How I Work
My sessions are interactive and direct, built around real situations teams are living with right now. I ask questions — hard and direct, soft and supporting. I expect people to think with me, not listen to me. Clients describe the experience as challenging and energising. Some find me too direct. Some find me too positive. Both are features, not bugs.
The foundation is Belbin Team Roles — the behavioural framework I have taught and used for more than twenty years, and the one Estonia has adopted at the world's highest rate per capita. On top of Belbin data, I write Team and Leadership Dynamics Reports by Soomre. Narrative behavioural portraits of individuals, pairs, and teams. Written from your data. Read by me.
Same data. Different interpretation.
"Mats puts the real issues under a magnifying glass and helps teams name what others avoid. That is when change starts."
— Janek Saareoks, Managing Director, Schenker Baltics
Hundreds of teams. Four languages.
What I Believe
I do not fix people. They do not need to be fixed. I help them see what they already carry and turn it into strength inside a team.
I do not believe in fixing weaknesses. I believe in developing strengths and covering the rest through team composition. I do not believe in motivation programmes that ignore what actually demotivates people. I believe trust is a decision, not a feeling — and that the best teams are built on honest conversation, not comfortable agreement.
"I don't coach teams. I am a team coach."
The distinction makes difference.
Background
Systems engineer by training — Tallinn University of Technology, cum laude, 1991. A decade in technology followed: senior software developer, project manager, sales and marketing lead, CEO of a computer factory. Shareholder or founding partner in nearly every company I have been part of.
In 1998 I left the CEO role for a total career change — from technology leadership to leadership training. The decision that changed everything.
"If you're going to do something at all, you might as well go all in."
I co-founded IMG Business Services Group, which ran from 1996 to 2016. I founded Belbin Estonia in 2005. That was the family decision. I asked Margit what she thought of the methodology. She looked me in the eye and said: "This is good. Do it tomorrow." Estonia now leads the world in Belbin profiles per capita.
Lecturer at Estonian Entrepreneurship University of Applied Sciences (EUAS) since 2016. Visiting lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology and University of Tartu. Member of the Association for Coaching (UK). Currently pursuing Accredited Team Coach certification.
Mentor of Solaride since 2021 — the Estonian student solar car team that finished third at the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge in Australia in 2023, then second in 2025, four minutes behind the winner. They are now building their next car.
"One of the senior leaders on my management team — someone with years of critical experience — said afterwards it was probably one of the best and most useful leadership trainings he had ever attended. Mats himself, with his passion and experience, is in a class of his own. Not once did it get boring. No one lost focus for even a moment."
— Raul Vahtra, Head of Anti-Financial Crime Division, Swedbank Estonia
Beyond Work
Photographer since the 1970s. #MomentsBySoomre captures what I see when I am not coaching — nature, golf, golfers in action, light, silence.
Golfer until injury stopped play. One hole in one. Long-time blood donor. Languages: Estonian, English, Finnish, Russian.
Two grown-up sons. As I told Dr Meredith Belbin on his ninetieth birthday: "Meredith, you saved our marriage." The book really did.
"You don't have to be good at everything — just be really good at being you."
— Dr Meredith Belbin
Want to know how this works for your team?