We explain the differences between a group and a team, what their performance is like, how their elements and examples are related.
What is the difference between a group and a team?
A group is a set of things, beings or referents that share certain traits. or characteristics, own or contextual, permanent or transitory, and that for some reason we consider as a whole, in a global manner.
A group of professionals, for example, may include geographers, historians, doctors, engineers and/or architects, to name a few examples, given that the common trait that allows us to group them together is precisely that they have a professional title.
Instead, A team implies that this group of objects, beings or referents are interrelated in a productive way.That is, they have an internal organization that allows them to carry out some work, solve some enigma or fulfill some task. We can say, seen this way, that a team is a group with a purpose and an organization proposed to fulfill it.
This distinction between a disorganized group and a structured team can even be traced back to the very origin of both words. The first comes from old German kruppatranslatable as “dough” in the sense of “kneading” or “compressing”, that is, something that has volume but no given shape.
From there he went to Italian group (“lump”) and eventually into French groupeused to refer to a set of statues in the same garden or objects painted in the same painting. Eventually the term was used to also refer to people.
On the other hand, equipment comes from the Germanic skip“ship”, from where it became French equip and equipmentused in the maritime jargon of the Middle Ages to refer to the preparation of the ship before leaving port.
So from its beginnings it was linked with organized work and with specialized accessories, in such a way that those who make up a team act as if they were the crew of a ship, that is, distributing functions, entrusting tasks and not everyone doing the same. same.
A group and a team they differ for its composition, its structure and its operation. Thus, groups are agglomerations of people or objects without a specific structure or purpose, while teams are groups with a purpose and order. For that reason, group work (each person doing their own thing with others) is not the same as teamwork (everyone doing one thing in a coordinated manner).
We can summarize all this as follows:
| Cluster | Equipment |
|---|---|
| They are made up of several elements that share a common trait. | They are made up of several different elements, integrated in an order and with a purpose. |
| Its elements act autonomously. | Its elements act in an organized manner. |
| Group performance is understood as the sum of the individual performances of its members. | Team performance is measured as a whole: if one element fails, the entire team fails. |
| It lacks an established purpose. | It is oriented towards the fulfillment of a goal. |
| Examples of groups are:
● The crowd at a rock concert. ● Those who attend a political rally. ● Passersby in a square at a given time. ● All people in a country. |
Examples of equipment are:
● A national soccer team. ● Doctors and nurses in an operating room. ● The sailors of a ship. ● The pilots of an airplane. |
Continue with: Organization
References
- “Social group” in Wikipedia.
- “Team” on Wikipedia.
- “Group Etymology” in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- “Etymology of Team” in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- “Groups and teams, what is the difference?” in MBA & Executive Education in American Economics.
