First question we're going to address is what are teams anyway? You're probably used to thinking of them in connection with sports like soccer teams or cricket teams, rugby teams, basketball teams. In this course, team is going to have a much broader meaning. We will think of a team as any group of people that performs some collective task on which they have to work together, that is, they have to cooperate. Now teams come in many different sizes. Soccer team, maybe in your country you know it as a football team, puts 11 players on the field at any given time. But the actual team is much larger. Manchester United for example, the famous soccer team, has four different individuals who can play goalie in case one gets injured. The full team or squad is around 40 people. We'll be talking later about the ways in which individuals also form part of the team, not just the players and coaches, but as we'll see even the fans. The common task of the team is to obviously score more goals than the other teams with whom they compete. But a team can be as small as two people. So a husband and wife can form a team. They may not be competing with other teams, but they do have to perform some common tasks, such as raising their children or managing a household. Even something as simple as taking out the garbage involves cooperation. Will that be the responsibility of the husband or the wife? Or will they alternate on different days? These are matters of cooperation that need to be worked out if the team is going to be a success. We can think of business enterprises or corporations as teams. These can be very small like a mom and pop pizza parlor. Or very large say the Toyota motor cooperation which has about 350,000 employees. The common task of the former, the mom and pop pizza parlor is to make and sell pizzas hopefully for a profit. And Toyota, of course, makes and sells automobiles. We can even think of entire nations like the United States of America or the People's Republic of China as teams. In so far as they share some collective tasks such as, for example, ensuring the common security and well-being of their citizens. An important aspect of teams is cooperation. In order to get things done, people have to cooperate in what they do. On the soccer team, of course the goalie stays near the goal. You're all familiar with this. And tries to prevent the opponents from shooting the ball into the goal. Forward works with the other forwards to move the ball in the direction of the opponent's goal. And ultimately hopefully to score goals against them. In the mom and pop pizza parlor, maybe one of the couple devotes their time to making the pizzas while the other gets the supplies, takes the orders and tends the cash register. In a large business enterprise,there are numerous tasks that require coordination. It's the job of management, and ultimately of the Chief Executive Officer or the CEO of a company, to make sure that coordination takes place. But every individual in the company has to do their part to make the company a success. Sometimes cooperation involves doing the same kind of activity but at the same time. For example, two individuals trying to push a stalled car, do the same kind of action pushing the vehicle. But they do it in a cooperative way by pushing in the same direction and at the same time so as to be able to actually move the vehicle. You can imagine what would happen, of course, if they were pushing in opposite directions. The car wouldn't go very far, very fast. It is such cooperation in the performance of the task that makes a group a team. The philosopher John Sorrell, referred to group cooperation as involving what he called, we intentions as opposed to I intentions. We as opposed to I. He gave the example of a group of picnickers versus a dance troupe. When it starts to rain each individual picnicker may spontaneously run for cover. That's an I intention. They just want to get out of the way of the rain. When a similar act is performed by a dance troupe in contrast, each individual behaves in accord with a preconceived routine. Which seems to involve in at least partially shared plan or what Sorrell was calling we intentions. When we talk about partially shared plans and preconceived routines. We're all ready talking about team culture and that's going to be the topic of our next video.
