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Groups And Teams

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines a team as “a number of persons associated together in work or activity” (Merriam-Webster Online, 2007). A group however, is a partnership of two or more people who are “first, mutually dependent on one another to achieve common goals and second, interact regularly with one another to pursue those goals over a sustained period of time” (Schermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 2005).
Many people believe that a team is the same thing as a group. The main difference between them is while team members work together to achieve a common goal or purpose, they also hold themselves collectively accountable for the results of their work. In a group, the work unit is lead by a manager or department head who is accountable for the group’s performance accomplishments and results, but all members of the group contribute to the workload. A group may develop into a team when it commits to its members in the same way it commits to the common goal.
Many businesses incorporate teams into their structure to promote productivity in the workplace and in an effort to increase the quality of their output. Other benefits of using teams in the work setting include improved communication and processes, increased creativity and employee morale as well as higher quality (DeJanasz, Dowd, & Schneider, 2001). Because employees working together in teams combine their individual knowledge and skills, the team can achieve greater success and create more improved processes than one person working on an issue alone.
As teams develop, they will go through several stages while they work toward common goals. Bruce W. Tuckman, an educational psychologist, proposed the five-stage theory of Group Development in 1977. The five stages are called Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning. While each stage will vary depending upon the members of the team as individuals and the task set to achieve, each stage can be easily identified.
Forming
In the...