 Team efforts are usually a form of contract, but one that involves many people. In the sports team, the trust that brings them into coordination is the whole team either wins together or loses together. The positive value is everybody on the team winning. Modern work groups are also team efforts, where the workers agree to sell their time and effort to someone who pays them. The idea of value is in terms of the members of the work group achieving some valued productive result. The foreman, right along with the workers, will succeed or fail in meeting their requirement, and so they can trust each other to put in the performance effort that yields the result that they all value. Team building is a general value pursued by adult leaders, bringing the people together in coordination so that their efforts become more effective in gaining what the leader wants value. Nowhere is this clearer than in the military, where the lives of the members of the team will depend upon each member doing his or her part. That is the way to survive in the dangerous environment of battle, and the team is more effective than just trained soldiers acting as military units. For their own survival, the team will reject the one who does not coordinate as part of the team. My father wrote of his first college roommate, a young man going to college as a way to get out of the mob. He was big and he was tough. The football coach noted this and sent a few of his athletes to give him an invitation to try out for the team. When they tried to get an assistant, his roommate sent the two of them packing. He was not a prospective team member, no matter what physical skills and abilities he had. He had a different purpose and a different sense of value, except where team members are paid so that earning pay becomes the purpose. They have to share values if they are to function as a team. There is a natural educational team. It includes the parent as the one who holds purpose on behalf of a family. It includes a teacher as an educational professional with subject knowledge and knowledge of the teaching process. It includes a student as the one who learns. All three must play their part if they are to achieve the commonly valued purpose of aiding the student in becoming an effective adult. In the early grades, it is the parent who provides student motivation. This begins to shift when the student enters teenage years. The student becomes conscious of his or her own ability to make decisions and to begin to see his or her own personal values. Recognizing these is potential that comes available through education. The roles played by the team members must shift to accommodate the new decision potentials and activities of the student. This is why some teachers prefer teaching grade schools and others teaching more mature students. They have to develop the specific skills needed to address the differing roles that they play in the educational team. Teaming is a potent approach to being effective, but it is a process rather than a purpose of value in itself. It must start with some team purpose that can coordinate the efforts of those who will take part. Before you invest your time and effort in arranging some team, you want to assure that what you have accomplished will be of value to those who are to take part in the team. You will want to assure that you have some way to enlist those potential team members. You must provide sufficient understanding of the valued result so that they are willing to commit their time and attention to it, switching from other things they might be doing. And you want to be able to get feedback from them to give to other potential members, letting them know that others also recognize that value and are willing to take part. And finally, for the purpose of practice, the smaller the number of people who are being teamed, the easier it is to do the communication. I would recommend trying to create and join smaller teams as a way to learn, observing what works for people who are successful in initiating and invigorating teams. Being part of a team is always good practice.