The basis of any good team is esteem - esteem for the team and for the individual members of the team. The S:Team website helps to build esteem.

At the heart of S:Team is the S:Team Test, developed exclusively for this site and available to download and demo today.

S:Team comes in two flavours: The Personal Edition can be loaded onto individual Macs and PCs and launched anytime as a standalone application. The Web Edition works within a browser and can be located on your server either internally or on a password-protected web page, allowing users to access it from anywhere in the world.

Here's an example of how to use S:Team. A range of session plans will be made available for download soon to help developers, teachers and individuals use S:Team in a variety of situations.

This example is a rough outline of a two-session team-building exercise that requires participants to reflect on their previous experiences, and use models from outside their own situation.

The test forms the basis for discussion and debate.

1 Ask team members, in the days before a session, to think about the different ways in which they interact with others. Keeping a diary or jotting down thoughts might be a good idea.

2 Ask participants to name situations outside the workplace/school/college where good team work is essential. (Examples such as football teams, governments, armies etc are good, but try to get them to be more specific).

What is noticeable about these teams? (The answer you need to get them towards is that everyone has a different role to play, and there are rarely all-rounders. Teams balance strengths and weaknesses).

3 Form pairs and ask them to discuss their thoughts. Ask them to think of a time when they have worked well in a team, and one time when a team has not worked well (whether their 'fault' or somebody else's).

4 Discuss the examples they came up with and try to get others to suggest ways a situation could have been improved, or what made it work so well.

5 Demonstrate the S:Team test and ask participants to take it some time in the next few days. Explain that the descriptions they come up with are not attempts to pigeon-hole them. Ask them to think about, and write down, answers to the following questions:

Are the two roles that were suggested for you how you see yourself?

Do you think that others might see you in this way?
What aspects of the roles did you recognise/reject?
When you read the other descriptions, did you picture anyone you know (personally, through work, from the past, from the 'real world', a TV or film character)
What were the strengths of the roles you were given? What could that sort of person bring to the team?
What were the weaknesses? Are they something that need to be worked on and got rid of, or just things that you and the rest of your team need to be aware of and balance out?
How might those weaknesses be balanced?

6 Reconvene a few days later and put participants into pairs, ideally with someone 'different'. Ask them to describe to each other the roles they were given, and then to focus on the first few of those questions .

7 As a group, discuss some of the points above, focussing on two or three of the roles. Ask the group to think about the idea of 'balance'. If a team is unbalanced, is it the fault of an individual if their 'weaknesses' cause a problem, or is it the team's responsibility to compensate?

8 And so on - forming a team, managing each other, reviewing, being honest etc...