Distinctions Between Groups and Teams that Everyone Needs to Know

Coaches, consultants, and people business leaders help people everywhere to form and develop teams. This list provides insight gained from consulting and coaching top-performing teams in some of the world’s most admired organizations.

Those helping groups form into teams face challenging tasks. Most groups never turn into teams, and most groups should not be teams. Teamwork is about learning, a process fraught with anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. Those outcomes are among the reasons why organizational landscapes are littered with teambuilding failures.

When people are lucky enough to be members of teams, they report extraordinary achievements. Team membership and teamwork offer a peak or mountaintop career experience. Everyone benefits from a team experience. The success we gain from teamwork increases long-term career value.

These principles for team development will contribute to your approaches to developing teams and helping others to create long-term value.

Team Development Principles

1. Teams require members.
2. Membership comes at a cost. Membership is selective.
3. A team has at least six members and not more than 15.
4. An ideal team roster has between 8 and 12 members.
5. Normative behaviors and patterns are present before someone asks to have the team identify its operating principles.
6. Every group is not a team.
7. Most organizations are comprised of groups, not teams.
8. Most organizations are better served by groups than teams.
9. Team experiences are uncommon in organizations.
10. The best way to understand team dynamics is to introduce change.
11. There is too little team development
12. There is too much teambuilding.
13. T-Shirts can help, but they do not make the team.
14. Artifacts and ritual practices are common in teams.
15. Individuals are respected and valued for their inherent dignity and worth.
16. Pairs, trios, and other formations are needed and necessary.
17. There is a lot of conflict on teams.
18. Democracy and participation are messy processes.
19. Every team member is heard and understood.
20. People outside of the team are consequential and part of the team’s system or network.
21. Teams are the best at aligning and delivering on goals.
22. Teams have immune systems. Immune systems are natural, protective, and curative.
23. Breakthroughs and creative forces bust immunities, always at a consequence.
24. Members in prize-worthy teams know when to end, change, and to begin.
25. Membership changes. Goals changes. Cultures change.
26. Teamwork endures.
27. Purpose drives commitment drives purpose! Missions matter.
28. Teamwork reinforces strengths, reduces deficiencies, and creates accomplishment. Those forces create a loop that increases self-esteem and membership.
29. Self-esteem enables individuals to extend their influence.
30. Team members are leaders. The boss leads by example.
31. Few executive groups at the C-suite level operate as teams.
32. Every team has a rhythm. Listen to it.
33. Members of teams sacrifice to achieve.
34. Accountabilities are clear. Service is valued over self-interest.
35. Great teams achieve despite circumstances and resource constraints.
36. Teamwork creates camaraderie. Camaraderie builds an organization where people do their best work.
37. Everyone wants to be part of a winning team.
38. Members care about one another and are considerate of each other.

Many groups begin with the right ingredients to build a team. As every baker knows, raw ingredients undergo a transformative process to achieve a tasty outcome. The horizon to develop a team extends beyond a few meetings. In building teams, leaders address the critical questions of meaning, belonging, and purpose. Leaders create pathways the make teamwork an approach to achieving extraordinary outcomes.

Moving to Next Steps

As you consider the teams in which you have participated, what made them tick? What did members do? How did they do it? Your reflections could assist others challenged by the need to build teams, in part, because of the enormous value that they produce.

Your practice in coaching, consulting, and leading others to build teams will benefit from a developing perspective and significant questions that promote inquiry and learning. Helping others to develop teams or to be a member of an extraordinary team will produce lasting personal and organizational benefits.