The best work comes from teams. We know that. It comes from combining skills, thought processes, and even personalities — from letting our ideas be improved upon, and even changed.
But how do you build a team?
An article published in Forbes, What Everyone Should Know About Teamwork, argues that teams are built in five transformational stages: the Working group, the Pseudo-team, the Potential team, the Real team, and the Extraordinary team. As team members begin to trust each other, they can open up to each other — but more importantly, they can identify common objectives.
A team isn’t a team unless they have a shared goal. For a team to function, teammates have to speak the same language; they have to feel bonded by a shared desire. They need the freedom to function as an independent entity.
The goal of this process is to help people learn together, to translate their victories and failures into actionable goals and steps, and most importantly – to create a trust culture so unified, that they work better together than apart. That team members understand each other instinctively. That their relationship is more than an office project; it’s genuine intimacy.
