Group or Team?

Within organizations there are groups and teams. Both are made up of individuals and they can fulfill many of the same functions but they are different. A group might be a division of the company, a store or branch or even a working group assigned to a task. A group is not a team but it could become one. A team is a group that is working toward a common purpose in a cohesive way. Teams are typically smaller, made up of individuals who are working toward a common goal and who are setting aside some of their personal priorities to achieve the larger goal of the team. 

In order to have a team, rather than a group, it requires leadership. The group becomes a team when they are pulled together and pointed toward a goal by a common vision of what success looks like. The best way to inspire this within small organizations is for an individual to come forward and rally everyone to the common goal. A team also achieves success as a group, not as individuals. 

Katzenbach and Smith lay this out succinctly in their 1993 book, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the high -performance organization “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.”  

Teams come together to solve larger, more complex problems than any one individual could. The purpose of a team within the business context is to perform, get results and achieve in the workplace. As there are inevitably competing individual priorities within the team, it becomes necessary for members of the team to sacrifice some of their own goals to achieve the team’s success. A simple example of this can be conveyed in sports; basketball players are working toward their team’s win and so they must work together, pass the ball, run picks, play defense. If everyone on the team simply had the goal of scoring points rather than the team scoring points, they devolve into a group of people playing a game. Someone might score a bunch of points because they are good at basketball but without the other 4 players supporting them and each playing their individual and important role, they are very unlikely to win the game. By each being willing to contribute based on their position and skills, they become a part of something larger, a team. 

Over the next few weeks I will continue to explore the concept of a team and how to manage them. There are also times where teams are not necessarily the best solution and explore the dynamics of teams and groups. Much of this will be based on concepts I studied at NCSU and I will reference several texts including Organizational Behavior by Bauer and Erdogan.