Groups vs Teams

Groups and Teams

letitia miller

MGT/307

january 17,2012

Tonya Boddie

Groups and Teams

If you walk into a room that is full of people would you think this is a group or a team? These two terms are considered the same but they both are very different.

Groups

A group is made of two or more individuals that help each with one common goal and through social interaction. A group can be people who share one or more of a countless number of factors. For example, in the workplace, a group could be all those individuals who work on third shift. It could be those who are on a certain level of an organization. It could be one person from each department. In a non-business setting, a group could be the women who attend a certain gym. Or, it could be the women who attend the church and who have agreed to bake cookies for a fund raiser. In every group there are specific characteristics:

Some sort of interaction between the members

People in the group whether formally or informally making their own “rules” and “roles”.

Members relying on each other to attain the common goal or to solve the problem at hand.

Team

A team is usually selected, not purely by common characteristics or identifiers, but by the skills and knowledge that each individual team member can contribute to the solution of the problem. While a team can also be considered to be a group of people working to achieve a common goal, teams usually have a “leader” and people who contribute particularly in their own way.

In the workplace, teams have been used and adopted as commonplace for many years. Teams are thought to be a completely necessary part of today’s business establishments. But, these are not the “teams” of the past. As times, technology and social demands change; successful teams change and evolve to meet the modern situations and demands. In all cases, the most successful teams formed in the business environment start out with a group of individuals with the trains and interests...