Most teams aren't teams at all but merely collections of individual relationships with the boss. Each individual vying with the others for power, prestige and position.

~Douglas McGregor

Leaders should not think of themselves as managers or supervisors, but as "team leaders." Thinking of yourself as a manager or supervisor places you in a position of traditional authority based solely on respect for the position, which places you in a position of power.

By understanding the personal work preferences and motivations of your team members, you as an individual and not your position, can earn their real respect and trust. All the tools discussed so far in this guide, such as counseling and planning, provide the basic structure for developing a team. But to go from a group to a team requires a few extra steps.

A team is a group of people coming together to collaborate. This collaboration is to reach a shared goal or task for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. A group of people is not a team. A team is a group of people with a high degree of interdependence geared towards the achievement of a goal or completion of a task...it is not just a group for administrative convenience. A group, by definition, is a number of individuals having some unifying relationship.

The team members are also deeply committed to each other's personal growth and success. That commitment usually transcends the team. A team outperforms a group and outperforms all reasonable expectations given to its individual members. That is, a team has a synergistic effect...one plus one equals a lot more than two.

Team members not only cooperate in all aspects of their tasks and goals, they share in what are traditionally thought of as management functions, such as planning, organizing, setting performance goals, assessing the team's performance, developing their own strategies to manage change, and securing their own resources.

A team has three major benefits for the organization:

It maximizes the organization's human resources. Each member of the team is coached, helped, and led by all the other members of the team. A success or failure is felt by all members, not just the individual. Failures are not blamed on individual members; this gives them the courage to take chances. Successes are felt by every team member, this helps them to set and achieve bigger and better successes.

There are superior outputs against all odds. This is due to the synergistic effect of a team - a team will outperform a group of individuals.

There is continuous improvement. No one knows the job, tasks, and goals better than the team. To get real change, you need their knowledge, skills, and abilities. When they pull together as a team they will not be afraid to show what they can do. Personal motives will be pushed to the side to allow the team motive to succeed.

For more on teams, select here.