Although many authors use the terms “team” and “group” interchangeably, hence drawing no distinction between the two, it is suggested in this paper that teams differ from groups in varied ways. In essence, teams consist of small groups of people who not only share responsibility for outcomes for their organizations, but are committed to achieving common objectives and producing high quality results.
In contrast, groups may lack a clear and common purpose, not mentioning that members belonging to a particular group may lack an understanding of their interdependence on one another.
Unlike in groups, teams have the capacity to increase organizational productivity and efficiency, improve communication skills, facilitate diversity of skills, improve problem-solving and decision making, as well as ensure efficient use of resources. For example, most technology firms are known to depend on their service teams to sell their products/services, maintain operational efficiency, and keep their customers satisfied.
Team members must demonstrate a meaningful common purpose by collectively understanding and committing themselves to the set purpose. Focusing on a meaningful common purpose ensures maximum commitment from members, especially in the context of shared values and goals. For example, a sales team must demonstrate a meaningful common purpose in the domain of sales to achieve efficiency and effectiveness.
This characteristic links best with a matrix team structure as it allows members to not only share information more readily across the task boundaries, but also to facilitate specialization that can enhance depth of knowledge.
The second behavioural characteristic is that an effective team must demonstrate clear performance goals and objectives through members accepting the end goal and the means to get there.
This characteristic is effective for team effectiveness as it binds members to the goals set by the team. A critical benefit of this characteristic is that organizations may end up using fewer resources to achieve productivity and competitiveness as team members are focussed on meeting their performance goals and objectives.
This characteristic links to the matrix and network team structures as both require that performance goals be clearly delineated for team members to understand.
The third characteristic is the diversity of skill and personality, which implies that effective teams must attempt to bring different individuals together so that they provide diverse skills and perspectives with the view to spurring creativity and innovation. For example, research has shown that teams consisting of cross-cultural members are more creative and innovative than those that go for homogeneity of members.
As already mentioned, the benefits of this characteristic include enhancing creativity and innovation, hence organizational productivity and competitiveness.
Another characteristic is strong communication and collaboration for purposes of effective interaction among members, solving potential challenges, and approaching shared goals. This characteristic brings varied benefits, including enhancing accountability, maximising the amount of time that teams will be together, as well as supporting the motivations of team members.
The last characteristic is a strong sense of trust and commitment among team members, which bring team effectiveness by building rapport and improving productivity. These two characteristics link to both the matrix and network team structures.
The stages of team development can be described using Tuckman’s Team Development Model, which consists of four phases namely forming, storming, norming, and performing.
While the forming phase consists of establishing base-level expectations, identifying similarities, agreeing on common objectives, making contact and bonding, as well as developing trust and member interdependence, the storming phase consists of identifying power and control issues, obtaining skills in communication, identifying resources, expressing differences of ideas/feelings/opinions, reacting to leadership, as well as members’ independence or counter-dependence.
In our own work team, for example, we had to undertake a session in establishing effective communication avenues and strategies to be used by members.
Moving on, the norming phase entails members agreeing about roles and processes for solving problems, with decisions being made through negotiation and consensus-building. Lastly, the performing phase in the Tuckman’s model entails achieving effective and satisfying results, finding solutions to challenges using suitable controls, members working collaboratively, members caring about each other, establishing a unique identity, and members becoming interdependent.
The responsibilities assigned to individual members in team settings may vary, but typically include (1) understanding the purpose and objectives of the team, (2) ensuring a correct balance between team and non-team functions, (3) maintaining set timescales and working within cost constraints, (4) reporting progress to the leader against plan, (5) generating the deliverables to agreed specifications, (6) reviewing key project deliverables, (7) identifying issues and risks associated with the set goals, (8) working together as a team, (9) contributing towards successful communication, and (10) contributing towards positive motivation.
The main benefits of these responsibilities to all stakeholders include ensuring efficiency and productivity, guaranteeing that the team remains cohesive in its operations, as well as spurring creativity and innovativeness.
The main advantages include increased efficiency and productivity due to focussed attempt to pursue common goals, capacity to focus different minds on the same challenge, diversity of skills due to cross-cultural considerations in the team forming process, increased creativity and innovation due to inclusion of cross-cultural members, better business outcomes as the team can bring more resources, mutual support, increased employee satisfaction, faster job delivery, and a sense of accomplishment when members of a team collaborate and work together to achieve specific objectives.
In essence, working in a team is more effective than working in a group not only because groups often lack a clear and common purpose, but members of a group also often lack an understanding of their interdependence on one another. For example, my workplace team is able to achieve greater efficiency and productivity than my church group as the latter lacks a clear and common purpose.
The first disadvantage is unequal participation, which essentially entails some members sitting back and letting others do most of the work. Additionally, a team may have members who prefer to work on their own, hence finding it difficult to fit into the work culture and become team players.
The third disadvantage revolves around the fact that teamwork may also constrain creative thinking in that employees with immense talent may be so focussed on working for the overall good of the team at the expense of providing creative and innovative ideas that may catapult the organization forward.
Another disadvantage is that some teams actually take longer to generate the needed outcomes, in large part due to the many processes and resources involved. Lastly, a team may fail to achieve the desired result due to inherent conflicts brought about by varied reasons, such as contrasting personal styles, peer pressure, as well as blurred judgement.