Groups and teams

The idea that working as a genuine team is something more than being part of a group or collection of people is a starting point in most approaches to management education. However, a team is essentially a particular type of group and, since an HR professional will inevitably work in both groups and teams, it is important to understand the dynamics of both and be able to work effectively in them. The ability to make sense of what is happening in groups and teams is made more critical by the adoption of matrix structures in many organisations to promote cross functional working across different disciplines and expertise. This means that temporary groups are brought together to achieve a particular project and disbanded; they may or may not become teams in the time their members are working together.

In practice, groups may be labelled as teams when they are no such thing. ‘Team’ is not a neutral word. As Parsloe (1981) observed, it is ‘soaked in positive values’. Teams are expected to be collaborative, egalitarian, cooperative and committed. Our images of teams are so positive that the word 'team' is often used to describe any arrangement in which staff are nominally grouped together, irrespective of whether they actually work together as a team. In fact, groups that do not work collaboratively may be called teams perhaps to hide this fact, or in the hope that greater collaboration will result. This means that you need to be careful when you see or hear the word 'team'. Just because something is called a team it does not mean that it actually works like one.

In a team, there is joint sharing of accountability for performance, and joint endeavour to achieve this, while a working group is characterised by a greater emphasis on individual responsibility and one to one negotiations on issues that overlap between the responsibilities of individuals, overseen by a leader (Casey, 1985; Katzenbach and Smith, 1993). Real teamwork involves higher levels of trust, sharing and responsibility and this means a considerable investment of time and commitment. Casey (1985) argues that this investment in teamwork is only needed when there are complex issues to be dealt with which the team members need to deal with in an interdependent way; for this reason it is important to be clear about the distinction between groups and teams and when each is needed.

Katzenbach and Smith (1993) point to the important role teams play in delivering high performance for organisations. They, like many writers, offer a way of distinguishing between groups and teams, as set out in Table 2. This list is distinctive because of its focus on the role of the leader and on the approach to measuring performance.

In Activity 4 you will spend some time thinking about groups and teams to which you belong.