Difference Between Groups and Teams.

According to Bertcher (1994) a group is when two or more individuals interact over time to achieve a common goal. Further, they interact in such a way that each must be dependent on the other to some degree as they try to achieve their goal.

According to Adair there are certain characteristics groups share for example a common purpose, interdependence, interaction and an ability to act in a unitary manner. In this instance our shared purpose was a presentation, the very fact it was a group presentation made us interdependent and in order to present effectively we would have to interact to coordinate.

In our Management and organisational Behaviour (MOB) tutorial, we were told to get into groups of 5 and then left to our own devices. Our group comprised of 3 females and 2 males, we formed our group simply by those who were sitting around us. I had only previously spoken to one of the females and so at first we exchanged names and what courses we were on. We then began discussing our presentation topic options, of which there were 5. One of the females immediately had a preference for one of the topics and after questioning her as to why she preferred that one over the others she commented that there was a lot of information available. One of the males however began showing an interest in an alternative topic so we looked through the material in Mullins which we had available at the time and then had a group discussion as to which one to choose. We talked about the ease of finding information, the interest of the topic and how we would be able to split the work amongst ourselves and came to the consensus that we would do the presentation on the difference between nomothetic and idiographic approaches to personality and its relevance to the organisation.

This initial meet was clearly our group going through the first of the four stages of team development: the forming stage. Everyone was being overtly polite and agreeable and no one was taking the lead. I did not...