Differences Between Groups and Teams
Differences Between Groups and Teams
Groups and teams are both important structures in the workplace that facilitate collaboration and cooperation among employees. While these terms are often used interchangeably, there are some differences between the two.
A group is a collection of individuals who come together for a specific purpose, but they may not necessarily share common goals or work together towards a common objective. Groups can be formal or informal and can exist within or outside an organization.
On the other hand, a team is a group of individuals who share a common goal or objective and work together to achieve it. Unlike groups, teams are formed with a specific purpose in mind and require a coordinated effort to succeed. Team members often have different roles and responsibilities, but they work together towards a common goal, relying on each other’s strengths to achieve success.
Both groups and teams can be beneficial to organizations, depending on their purpose and structure. Groups can provide opportunities for networking, brainstorming, and sharing information, while teams can increase productivity, creativity, and innovation through collaboration and a shared sense of purpose.
Types of Groups: Formal and Informal
What is a group? A group is a collection of individuals who interact with each other such that one person’s actions have an impact on the others. In organizations, most work is done within groups. How groups function has important implications for organizational productivity. Groups where people get along, feel the desire to contribute to the team, and are capable of coordinating their efforts may have high-performance levels, whereas teams characterized by extreme levels of conflict or hostility may demoralize members of the workforce.
In organizations, you may encounter different types of groups. Informal work groups are made up of two or more individuals who are associated with one another in ways not prescribed by the formal organization. For example, a few people in the company who get together to play tennis on the weekend would be considered an informal group. A formal work group is made up of managers, subordinates, or both with close associations among group members that influence the behavior of individuals in the group[1].
Teams
Why do we say group instead of team? A collection of people is not a team, though they may learn to function in that way. A team is a cohesive coalition of people working together to achieve mutual goals. Being on a team does not equate to total suppression of personal agendas, but it does require a commitment to the vision and involves each individual working toward accomplishing the team’s objective. Teams differ from other types of groups in that members are focused on a joint goal or product, such as a presentation, discussing a topic, writing a report, creating a new design or prototype, or winning a team Olympic medal. Moreover, teams also tend to be defined by their relatively smaller size. For example, according to one definition, “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable”[1].
The purpose of assembling a team is to accomplish larger, more complex goals than what would be possible for an individual working alone or even the simple sum of several individuals working independently. Teamwork is also needed in cases in which multiple skills are tapped or where buy-in is required from several individuals. Teams can, but do not always, provide improved performance. Working together to further a team agenda seems to increase cooperation between what are often competing factions. The aim and purpose of a team are to perform, get results, and achieve victory in the workplace. The best managers are those who can gather together a group of individuals and mold them into an effective team.
The key properties of a true team include collaborative action in which, along with a common goal, teams have collaborative tasks. Conversely, in a group, individuals are responsible only for their own area. They also share the rewards of strong team performance with their compensation based on shared outcomes. Compensation of individuals must be based primarily on a shared outcome, not individual performance. Members are also willing to sacrifice for the common good, in which individuals give up scarce resources for the common good instead of competing for those resources. For example, in soccer and basketball teams, the individuals actively help each other, forgo their own chance to score by passing the ball and win or lose collectively as a team.
It is important to keep in mind that teams are not a cure-all for organizations. To determine whether a team is needed, organizations should consider whether a variety of knowledge, skills, and abilities are needed, whether ideas and feedback are needed from different groups within the organization, how interdependent the tasks are, if wide cooperation is needed to get things done, and whether the organization would benefit from shared goals. If the answer to these questions is yes, then a team or teams might make sense.
There are many types of teams in organizations, and each type can be distinguished by three characteristics: team permanence, skill diversity, and authority dispersion[2]. Team permanence refers to how long that type of team usually exists. For example, departments such as accounting and marketing are long-lasting structures in the organization and therefore have high permanence. A team has high skill diversity when its members possess different skills and knowledge, and individuals are rarely interchangeable. Finally, authority dispersion refers to the degree that decision-making is distributed through the team (high dispersion) or is vested in one or a few members (low dispersion). Explore below how each characteristic appears in different types of teams:
| Team Permanence, Skill Diversity, and Authority Dispersion | ||
|---|---|---|
| Team Type | Description | Team Characteristics |
| Departmental teams | Teams that consist of employees who have similar or complementary skills and are located in the same unit of a functional structure; usually have minimal task interdependence because each person works with clients or with employees in other departments. | Team permanence: High – departments continue indefinitely.
Skill diversity: Low to medium – departments are often organized around common skills (e.g., accounting staff located in the accounting department). Authority dispersion: Low – departmental power is usually concentrated in the departmental manager. |
| Self-directed teams | Teams whose members are organized around work processes that complete an entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks and have substantial autonomy over the execution of those tasks (i.e., they usually control inputs, flow, and outputs with little or no supervision). | Team permanence: High – teams are usually assigned indefinitely to a specific cluster of production or service activities.
Skill diversity: Medium to high – members typically perform different tasks requiring some diverse skill sets, but cross-training can somewhat reduce skill diversity. Authority dispersion: High – team members share power, usually with limited hierarchical authority. |
| Task force/ project teams | Cross-functional teams whose members are usually drawn from several disciplines to solve a specific problem, realize an opportunity, or design a product or service. | Team permanence: Low – teams typically disband on completion of a specific project.
Skill diversity: Medium to high – members are typically drawn from several functional specializations associated with the complexity of the problem or opportunity. Authority dispersion: Medium – teams often have someone with formal authority (project lead), but members also have moderate power due to their expertise and functional representation. |
