Groups & Teams Overview
The content included in this chapter is adapted from two Open University chapters: Working in Groups and Teams and Groups and Teamwork
What is a team?
The term ‘work group’ (or ‘group’) is often used interchangeably with the word ‘team,’ although a team may be thought of as a particularly cohesive and purposeful type of work group. We can distinguish work groups or teams from more casual groupings of people by using the following set of criteria (Adair, 1983). A collection of people can be defined as a work group or team if it shows most, if not all, of the following characteristics:
- A definable membership: a collection of three or more people identifiable by name or type;
- A group consciousness or identity: the members think of themselves as a group;
- A sense of shared purpose: the members share some common task or goals or interests;
- Interdependence: the members need the help of one another to accomplish the purpose for which they joined the group;
- Interaction: the members communicate with one another, influence one another, and react to one another;
- Sustainability: the team members periodically review the team’s effectiveness;
- An ability to act together.
Usually, tasks and goals set by teams cannot be achieved by individuals working alone due to time or resource constraints, as few individuals possess all the relevant competencies and expertise.
Teamwork is usually connected with project work. Teamwork is particularly useful when you have to address risky, uncertain, or unfamiliar problems where there is a lot of choice and discretion surrounding the decision to be made. In the area of voluntary and unpaid work, where pay is not an incentive, teamwork can help to motivate support and commitment because it can offer opportunities to interact socially and learn from others. Furthermore, people are more willing to support and defend the work they helped create (Stanton, 1992).
What is a group?
Our tendency to form groups is a pervasive aspect of organizational life. In addition to formal groups, committees, and teams, there are informal groups, such as cliques and factions.
Formal groups are used to organize and distribute work, pool information, devise plans, coordinate activities, increase commitment, negotiate, resolve conflicts, and conduct inquests. Group work allows the pooling of people’s individual skills and knowledge, and helps compensate for individual deficiencies. Estimates suggest most managers spend 50 percent of their working day in one sort of group or another, and for top management of large organizations, this can rise to 80 percent. Thus, formal groups are clearly an integral part of the functioning of an organization.
No less important are informal groups. These are usually structured more around the social needs of people than around the performance of tasks. Informal groups usually serve to satisfy the needs of affiliation and act as a forum for exploring self-concept as a means of gainin