Getting people to cooperate and work as a team is no small feat as you probably know. A host of factors are constantly working against managers in this pursuit factors such as individual self-interest, mistaken beliefs people hold about how to get power and be successful, and the remains of the old corporate culture which for years has pitted one person against the other.

We hear a lot about "teams" in the workplace today. In their mad search to find ways to better compete in today's global marketplace, the leaders of organizations have finally come to the realization that people can accomplish far more for the organization when they collaborate and work as a team than they can when they function as a collection of individuals working primarily alone.

Too much of what we call "teams" in the workplace today, however, is simply groups of people whom we have given the label, team. Creating a true team environment requires that managers and employees change almost everything about how they worked in the past.

So how do we create a "real" team? First, we need to define the characteristics of a team. To do that, let's use Olympic Hockey Team to define a real team at work. Here are the characteristics:

Committed to a common purpose. On a hockey team, everyone is committed to winning. If it's to be a winning team, the interest of the team has to come before the interest of any one individual member. The common purpose is what unites the team members. You may recall that no one member of the Winning Hockey Team tried to be a star it was all for the team.

Work together to achieve clearly defined performance goals. A hockey team has a goal of winning it also has performance goals for practice and during the game that support the overall goal. The goals provide the team members with a focus that helps them mobilize and direct their energies. The performance goals also let them know how well they are doing.

Have a common approach for how they work together. In addition to the rules of the game, a winning hockey team has a clearly defined strategy and some guidelines for how they will work together to get the job done. On a real team there is an interdependence among the members that doesn't exist in a group they work very closely together toward the common goal.

Individuals are mutually accountable for a collective work product. On a hockey team everyone has a job, but team members are just as concerned about the accomplishment of the end goal as they are concerned with their own individual jobs. When a hockey team wins, everyone wins. When the team loses, everyone loses. Unless the individual members and the team as a whole are held accountable for the end product, it's unlikely they will come together as a real team. If they aren't held mutually accountable, it's too easy for the individuals to revert back to their own self-interest.

You've probably heard the saying: "There is no 'I' in team." The idea behind that statement is that people need to be unselfish and work together for the good of the team. Since human beings are basically selfish creatures, it is important for leaders to show the individuals how working for the good of the team is in their best interest.

When people excel as a team, they get far more benefits than they do when they excel individually. Who doesn't like to revel in the glory of their own individual accomplishments? But when people win as a team, they get something even more. They feel a powerful sense of connectedness, a sense of community with their fellow team members something that is hard to attain in the high-tech, fast-paced, competitive world in which we live. There is a sense of joy and excitement that is multiplied by the number of people on the team.

In order to get the best work from the people we manage, we must find a way to bring them together in the true spirit of "team." One of the reasons they can be so effective and productive is that they meet some very basic needs for people. When we meet the needs of our people, they will meet the needs of the job.