From the Ask Tom mailbag:
Question:
What’s the difference between a group and a team?
Response:
It may seem nitpicking, but, this difference is extremely important to every manager. Wilfred Bion defines a group (other than a group of people standing around) as a collection of people who have, as a common bond, a sense of shared fate. What happens to one, happens to all.
A team may be a group (or not) whose common bond is goal directed behavior. It is this singular focus on achieving a goal that distinguishes a team from a group.
Individual team members may not be subject to shared fate, indeed, what happens may significantly impact the life of one team member, with smaller effects on other team members. They remain a team, not from shared fate, but on their pursuit of a goal. -TF
I hate to nitpick on your nitpicking, but I feel that your definitions of ‘group’ and ‘team’ in the sense of how a manager looks at those around him/her is not as correct as it should be or maybe a little to simplistic.
Using Bion’s “sense of shared fate” group definition doesn’t always apply in the business world and to say that a team may not be a group should never be applied when a manager is considering the dynamics of what is happening around them.
Here is what I mean. At every company I have worked at over the past two decades, companies break out their different work centers into ‘groups.’ The software development group, the QA group, the production group, the sales group, etc… However, when it comes to individual projects that are being performed at a these companies, select individuals from each of these ‘groups’ are placed on the project ‘team.’
Given that, to suggest that these ‘groups’ have shared fates within the group doesn’t fit. The members of the ‘groups’ move from project to project, or remain on one project for the entirety of their membership within a group. Individuals may also change groups from either personal growth, resource allocation, or for the betterment of the company group. Individuals may even belong to multiple groups informally or formally. Many times these groups will have managers. Managers of these groups need to be aware of the group resources for business reasons such as what are the group dynamics? What are the individual goals of group members? What are the upcoming resource allocation commitments?
The definition of the collective individuals from groups forming a team for the “pursuit of a goal†is apropos. Look at sports teams, each of the teams is put together with the best available resources for the sole purpose of scoring goals (because of the competitive factor one could add scoring more goals than the opposing team, but that is not for this discussion). In the business world, project teams are put together from the best available resources for the sole purpose of achieving the company goal. The team is still a group of individuals that each brings something to the team that is needed for success. Managers of teams need to be aware of each team member and what their strengths to the team are and how they can help the team move forward to achieve the goal.
From a business perspective, groups are formed as resource support and support resource perspective that helps teams succeed. Teams however, form from a group resource pool to achieve a goal that has been determined as needed for company and, thusly, group success. If you look in a thesaurus for ‘team’ you will find ‘group,’ however if you look ‘group’ you will not find ‘team.’