Team: a group organised to work together, this is how the dictionary defines "team". Simple isn't it? But both in business and in other areas such as sports, "team" and "teamwork" takes on a whole new meaning and is an area considered to be crucial to success.

Many famous people have given their opinion about teams and teamwork - below at the bottom of the page I have provided you with a link where you can see many quotes about teamwork – For this article, however, I have selected two for you:

Michael Jordon: "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."

Henry Ford: "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."

If teamwork is so important for success, we need to build teams. But what does team building mean? It can mean building relationships, entertainment programmes, learning people skills, leadership skills, leadership development, accelerating change, merging cultures, kicking off new project teams, incorporating different methods or cultures, etc.

Now this sounds like it is nearly impossible to create a good successful team, so here are 5 key factors to create good teams:

Real Team. - Just by naming a team does not mean that this team is a team, remember the dictionary definition; a group organised to work together.

Compelling direction for its work. - Setting good direction for a team means being strict and insistent about desired results, but being equally insistent about not specifying how the team should go about achieving those results, this is the team’s role.

Structure that facilitates its development. - Like any organisation - a team is a small organisation - a good structure that facilitates the workflow and decision making is crucial to achieve positive results.

Supportive organisational context. - There's no use in setting up a team if the organisation doesn't provide the support and means needed for the team to work.

Expert teamwork coaching. - Now an expert in the area is always going to provide valuable know-how that will increase the chances of success, but obviously we must be sure that the results we intend the team to achieve makes contracting a coach worthwhile.

As we have mentioned before teamwork helps achieve good results, but teams don't always work. There are obviously many reasons for this but here are three common ones:

Ambiguous team membership. - Well designed teams learn quickly how to work well together and they get better and better over time. But not if team membership is ambiguous, their roles are not defined or there is much chopping and changing.

Clear and challenging mission. - Failing to provide a clear, challenging, and consequential direction for the team, providing them with only a small part of the mission due to fear of negative results, normally will end up with an unsuccessful team.

Large homogeneous teams. - Composing teams that are too large and too homogeneous in membership is also very common. Large teams decrease the efficiency of the team and although we all prefer to work with people who are similar to ourselves this decreases the creativity of the group.

So, do you work in a team? I hope the few points I have highlighted here will help you think and maybe help you to further indulge in this subject and improve your team's results.

Team - equipo
teamwork - trabajo en equipo
takes on a whole new meaning - toma un sentido completamente nuevo
quotes - citas
Talent - talento
Coming together - juntarnos
Keeping together - mantenernos
Working together - trabajar juntos
entertainment - entretenimiento
people skills - habilidades para el trato con personas
leadership skills - habilidades para el liderazgo
merging cultures - mezclando culturas
kicking off new project teams - lanzando nuevos equipos de proyecto
key factors - factores claves
naming - estableciendo, nombrando
compelling - convincente
strict - estricto
role - papel, rol
workflow - flujo de trabajo
decision making - toma de decisión
means -medios
valuable - valuable
know-how - saber hacer, conocimientos
coach - entrenador, formador/consultor
worthwhile - merece la pena
team membership - pertenencia al equipo
chopping and changing - cambios constantes
challenging - desafiante
end up - acaba
highlighted - resaltado
further indulge - seguir profundizando