We explain to you what are the differences between a group and a team, how is their performance, how their elements are related and examples.
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, globally.
A group of professionals, for example, can include geographers, historians, doctors, engineers and / or architects, to name a few examples, since the common feature that allows us to group them 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 wayThat is to say, 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 kruppa, translatable as “mass” in the sense of “kneading” or “compressing”, that is, something that has volume but no given shape.
From there he went to Italian group (“Bundle”) and eventually into French group, used to refer to a set of statues in the same garden or objects painted in the same painting. Eventually the term was used to refer to people as well.
Instead, team comes from the Germanic skip, “Boat”, from where it passed into French equip and equiper, used in the maritime jargon of the Middle Ages to refer to the preparation of the ship before leaving the port.
So that from the beginning it was linked to organized work and specialized accessories, so that those who make up a team act as if they were the crew of a ship, that is, distributing functions, taking on tasks and not all 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 endowed with a purpose and order. For this reason, group work (each one doing their thing together with the others) is not the same as teamwork (all doing one thing in a coordinated way).
We can summarize all this as follows:
| Group | Team |
|---|---|
| They are made up of several elements that share a common feature. | 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. |
| The performance of the group is understood as the sum of the individual performances of its members. | Team performance is measured collectively: if one item fails, the entire team fails. |
| It lacks a stated purpose. | It is oriented towards the fulfillment of a goal. |
| Group examples are: ● The crowd at a rock concert. ● Those who attend a political rally. ● Passers-by in a square at any given time. ● All the people of 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. |