About Us
Smartt Strategies is a team and leadership development firm focused on helping people work better together. Through facilitated, Belbin® Team Roles–based experiences, we support teams and organizations in developing stronger collaboration, clearer leadership, and more effective working relationships.
Our work centers on the belief that team effectiveness and leadership development are deeply connected—and that meaningful change happens when people understand how their behavior impacts the team as a whole.
Smartt Strategies exists to help individuals become better team members and leaders by strengthening how teams function in real work environments. We believe that leadership is not limited to formal titles but emerges through contribution, collaboration, and shared responsibility.
By using the Belbin Team Roles framework as a foundation, we help teams build a shared language for understanding strengths, differences, and leadership behaviors—creating conditions for trust, accountability, and sustained performance.
Our Purpose
We approach team and leadership development as an interactive, reflective process rather than a one-time training event. Our facilitation is grounded in evidence-based frameworks, practical application, and respect for the experience participants bring to the room.
Smartt Strategies believes:
Teams perform best when individual strengths are understood and valued
Leadership develops through engagement, reflection, and experience
Behavioral insight is most powerful when applied to real team challenges
Sustainable improvement comes from shared understanding, not directives
This philosophy guides every engagement we design and facilitate.
Our Philosophy
Our Belbin Team Roles Expertise
Smartt Strategies is a Belbin® Preferred Partner, bringing deep expertise in applying the Belbin Team Roles framework to team and leadership development. Belbin offers a research-based way to understand how behavior shapes team effectiveness, decision-making, and leadership dynamics.
We use Belbin not as a standalone assessment, but as a practical tool integrated into facilitated experiences. This allows participants to better understand their contributions, appreciate different working styles, and strengthen how leadership is shared across the team.
Our Team
DeeDee Smartt Lynch
DeeDee Smartt Lynch is the President of Smartt Strategies and one of the leading Belbin® Team Roles experts in the United States. With more than 15 years of experience applying the Belbin framework in team and leadership development contexts, DeeDee specializes in facilitating experiences that help individuals and teams understand how behavior shapes collaboration, leadership, and performance.
DeeDee’s work is grounded in the belief that maximizing individual strengths is fundamentally a team issue. Through Belbin Team Roles–based facilitation, she supports participants and intact teams in developing greater self-awareness, stronger working relationships, and more effective leadership practices. Her facilitation helps teams move beyond surface-level discussions to engage meaningfully with how they work together in real time.
A recognized innovator in Belbin application, DeeDee has developed a wide range of facilitation tools, exercises, and resources designed to support experiential learning and meaningful dialogue. She co-designed the Count on Me Team Role card deck and other facilitation resources that are used to help teams explore roles, contributions, and leadership dynamics in an engaging and practical way. Her work spans small teams through large, complex organizations.
DeeDee has worked extensively with private-sector, military, nonprofit, and government organizations. She holds multiple certifications in leadership and team development, including authorization as a Wiley partner for The Five Behaviors® of a Cohesive Team. She is also a co-author of the Belbin chapter in The Handbook of Communication Training: A Framework for Assessing and Developing Competence (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2019).
A Texas native and graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, DeeDee brings a diverse professional background in economic development, marketing, event management, and state government—experience that informs her practical, participant-centered approach to facilitating leadership and team development.
President & Chief Resource Investigator
Mike Lynch
Mike Lynch serves as Chief Operations Officer and Chief Shaper for Smartt Strategies, bringing more than four decades of experience leading complex teams in high-stakes, technical environments. His work focuses on helping teams and leaders understand how balanced contributions, clear roles, and effective collaboration drive performance—particularly when the work is complex and interdependent.
Mike spent 40 years in the nuclear industry as a senior project manager and design engineer, holding leadership roles up to Vice President for a $2.4 billion project. Early in his career at BNFL, Mike was introduced to the Belbin® Team Roles framework and credits its application as a critical factor in the success of his project teams. Understanding how different contributions come together—and how leadership emerges through behavior—became central to his approach to managing people and projects.
Throughout his career, Mike led projects across the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the United States. This global experience informs his facilitation work with Smartt Strategies, where he helps participants explore leadership, teamwork, and decision-making in real-world contexts. His facilitation emphasizes practical insight, behavioral awareness, and shared responsibility within teams.
Mike is the author of Smartt Strategies’ Project Manager’s Guidebook and a co-author of the Belbin chapter in The Handbook of Communication Training: A Framework for Assessing and Developing Competence (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2019). He holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics from Liverpool Polytechnic and a Master of Science in Engineering Project Management from Lancaster University.
Chief Operations Officer & Chief Shaper
Cody M. Clemens, Ph.D., is a Senior Consultant with Smartt Strategies, where he supports teams and organizations in strengthening leadership, team culture, and well-being through facilitated, Belbin® Team Roles–based experiences. His work focuses on helping participants better understand how behavior shapes collaboration, leadership, and team effectiveness.
Cody became a certified Belbin trainer in 2014 and has since applied the framework across leadership development and team facilitation contexts. He is a co-author of the Belbin chapter in The Handbook of Communication Training: A Framework for Assessing and Developing Competence (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2019), contributing to the scholarly and practical advancement of Belbin application.
Cody is a faculty member in the College of Business at Ohio University (Athens, OH), where he teaches business communication, leadership, and training and development. Previously, he served as a McCoy Assistant Professor of Health Communication at Marietta College, earning both the John G. and Jeanne B. McCoy Endowed Professorship of Teaching Excellence (2024) and the Edward G. Harness Outstanding Educator Award (2023). His experience as an educator informs a facilitation style centered on engagement, reflection, and applied learning.
Before entering higher education, Cody worked for Target Corporation as an Executive Team Leader of Logistics in Pittsburgh, helping manage a team of 158 employees in a $42 million retail operation. He is also a small-business owner in Southeast Ohio, where he owns and operates Clemens Feed & Supply, a distributor of Kalmbach Feeds, and Clemens Performance Horses, which specializes in raising quality American Quarter Horses. This hands-on business ownership experience grounds his approach to leadership, accountability, and team performance.
Cody holds a Ph.D. in Media and Communication from Bowling Green State University, an MBA from Youngstown State University, an MA in Corporate Communication from Duquesne University, and a BA in Organizational Communication/Public Relations from Marietta College. He is also a SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) through the Society for Human Resource Management.
Senior Consultant & Chief SpecialistCody M. Clemens, Ph.D.
Our Relationship with Smart Teams
Smartt Strategies focuses on delivering facilitated Belbin Team Roles and leadership development experiences for intact teams and participants. Smart Teams complements this work by supporting organizations, consultants, and practitioners who want to build internal capability and train others to deliver Belbin over time.
Together, Smartt Strategies and Smart Teams support team and leadership development at different stages—ensuring clarity of purpose and avoiding overlap.