What Makes a Team Work

In this lesson, Professor David Grant explains what actually makes a team work: a clear shared purpose, complementary roles, mutual dependence, and norms that support trust and coordination. You will learn how teams differ from groups, why structure matters as much as chemistry, and how to recognize whether a team is truly set up to perform.

This lesson focuses on the foundations of effective teamwork. Later lessons will go deeper into communication, trust-building, alignment, and performance practices. Here, the goal is to identify the essential ingredients that allow a team to function as a team in the first place.