Few words in the corporate world are abused and misused more than “team.” All the people who report to the same manager? They must be a team – even though their work doesn’t require them to collaborate. All the people working on a product? They must be a team – even though they all have different objectives and incentives. Most “teams” are collections of people that someone has drawn a somewhat arbitrary line around and said, “You’re a team.” Calling something a team doesn’t make it one. Teams have three essential qualities that set them apart from other collections of people.
Teams and groups are not interchangeable
Ordinarily, I don’t get too worked up about the words that people use, even if I would use different ones. In this case, however, I think it makes sense to distinguish between what J. Richard Hackman, Ruth Wegeman, and other researchers have termed “real teams” and “co-acting groups.” (For simplicity, I’ll refer to these as “teams” and “groups.”) These are two structurally different ways of organizing people to achieve results. They have distinct advantages and costs and are useful in different situations. Failing to distinguish between them means you may end up with a group when you need a team – or vice versa. There are, of course, shades of gray between these two ways of working collectively. While the division is not binary, I find three qualities most helpful in identifying when you have a real team.
Both have a shared identity
The first quality of a team is a shared sense of identity. Team members can point to the larger whole that they are part of. Group members often do this as well, so it does not serve to distinguish between groups and teams. However, the sense of being part of the collective is generally stronger among teams – particularly those working well. The boundary around a team is less arbitrary and more well-defined than one around a group. Each team member can tell you who is and isn’t on the team, and they agree on those names – which often isn’t true of groups.
Teams have structural interdependence
A second quality I look for in a team – which does distinguish it from a group – is a high degree of structural interdependence. The modern definition of the word “team” meaning “persons associated in some joint action” dates from the 16th Century; an older sense of the word was “a set of draft animals yoked together.” While they are not dependent on each other in quite the same way as a team of oxen are, team members rely on each other to complete shared tasks, and none of them can complete those tasks alone. In groups, members don’t need to rely on each other because their jobs are independent. Surgical teams and flight crews have high degrees of structural independence, while groups of tax preparers do not. This reliance on each other requires teamwork behaviors, like coordination and collaboration, for success. Interdependence lives on a spectrum. In the sports world, baseball and basketball teams both have a reasonable degree of interdependence, but the actual gameplay requires more teamwork behaviors from basketball players. If the “team sport” your people are playing looks more like a relay race than a hockey game, you’re probably dealing with a group.
Teams have shared objectives
The final quality that I look for – and one that also distinguishes between a team and a group – is the presence and importance of shared objectives. Structural interdependence determines whether or not the organization needs people to work together. Shared objectives determine whether or not those people have any incentive to do so. In a team, it doesn’t matter “whose side of the boat the hole is in.” When there is a problem, team members have good reason to work together to resolve it. On the other hand, group members might be working on pieces of an interdependent system, but if they are rewarded only for their individual contributions, they aren’t a team. One consequence of a group not having shared goals is that someone outside the group often needs to coordinate the group members’ work. Because their personal objectives are their primary concern, group members have little incentive to coordinate the flow of work through the group. This isn’t to say that people in teams don’t have individual goals. However, team members’ success – as gauged by their organizations and by themselves – comes primarily from achieving the team’s goals.
Teams and groups have different advantages and needs
Why does it matter if you have a co-acting group or a real team? Is this just me being pedantic about terms? The difference is not just semantic. Organizing people into teams and into groups are two different tools for getting results. As with all tools, use the right one in the right situation. If you have work that people can do independently and it doesn’t make sense for them to have shared objectives, organize them as a group. Break dependencies where you can, and plan on having to coordinate handoffs and other group-level activities. Don’t pretend like you have a team when it’s really a group – and don’t treat it like one. Teams are more complex and require more significant organizational investment, so use them only when you need them. And when you do have work that requires a team to deliver at the level you need, create the conditions necessary for teamwork to emerge – especially shared objectives. What other conditions do you need? Stay tuned.
