In: Operations Management
How would you respond to this post?
A group is defined as two or more people that are gathered together to for a common purpose (Warrick, 2016). Groups can then be broken into either formal groups or informal groups. Formal groups are created so that the individuals work together to achieve a specific outcome (Warrick, 2016). Formal groups are usually present with members of a department or a committee that oversees an operation (Warrick, 2016). While informal groups are individual’s that come together because of common interests (Warrick, 2016). Typically, people with shared sentiments like sports teams or people grouped together by location fall under informal groups (Warrick, 2016).
Teams on the other hand are two or more people that have interdependent role, complementary skills and a common purpose (Warrick, 2016). Teams usually have shared leadership responsibilities among members, evaluate success based on the team’s outcomes instead of the individual’s outcomes, and overall have a collective problem-solving style (Warrick, 2016). The interesting part is that all teams can be considered groups, but not all groups can be considered teams (Warrick, 2016). This is why managers and leaders would use different strategies to influence performance between groups and teams. Specially with teams, a leader will need to take steps to understand the type of team that they are leading. Whether the team is a self-managed team, a problem-solving team, a cross functional team or a virtual team (Warrick, 2016). All have different needs and will respond to different leadership styles. The leader will then want to assess the background factors such as the team’s goals, culture, team member characteristics and overall purpose (Warrick, 2016). Where as with a group, a manager most likely will have a more relaxed leadership style. Because groups are less formal and encompass a wide range of actives, leaders will most likely be less formal and cover a wide range of styles.
This assessment will respond to the given post:
everything said in the post is correct. Groups are the collision of two or more people with a specific interest.
Team is also a group of people who have a particular specific expertise and come together to achieve a common goal and their collaborate and co-ordinate with each other through their knowledge and professionalism and skills and make a plan for achieving the objective of purpose in future.
Groups are a bit different from the team.
Group members are individually accountable for the work done, whereas team members are not individually but collectively responsible for completing work as a whole.
Groups can get structured as formal as well as informal.
Formal groups should be somehow related to and similar to the team where the group members have a particular objective to achieve. The official group is goal-oriented with particular and specific communication lines and responsibilities and authority and accountability.
Next, informal groups are those unstructured an organized groups where there is no particular line of authority, and there is no accountability.
From the above explanation, it must be clear that groups and teams are different from each other, and so, the managers use various techniques and strategies to work with the groups and with the team differently.
Leadership style adopted by the managers for the team and group handling is also different from each other since the group is less formal and organized comparatively.