What is a team and why is it so important to work as a team? To know how to improve a team’s performance, we should be able to define it first and know how it is helpful. Here is one of the most cited definitions:

“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable.”

(Katzenbach and Smith, 1993)

To satisfy the definition, a team must have a well-defined goal and work toward achieving that goal. Team building is used to increase the chances of achieving our objectives as a team. Hence, team building can be defined as follows:

“Team building or team development is the process of enhancing the effectiveness of a team to achieve maximum results.”

The phrase ‘team building’ can be misleading as some may think that team building is literally the process of putting together several people usually chosen by a would-be team leader. This is no more than setting up a team. The process of team building is much more involved. It is more about creating an optimal team that can deliver more than the sum of its parts. This can only be achieved by following a systematic process which is explored in this course.