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Groups and Teams

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Groups and Teams
Groups and Teams Paper
Groups. Teams. High-performance teams. What is a group? "A group is a collection of people who interact with one another regularly to attain common goals" (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2005). Over the years, groups have helped organizations achieve important tasks. They have also been resourceful of helping the members of organization to improve task performance and experience more satisfaction with their work. Groups are good for people, can improve creativity, can make better decisions, can increase commitments to action, help control organization members, and help offset a large organization size (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2005). Therefore, with all this positivity from a group, a group can form into a high-performance team through several stages and the actions of an effective manager.
Groups and Teams
What is a team? "A team is a small group of people with complementary skills who work actively together to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves collectively accountable" (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2005). Everyone knows that two heads are better than one. With synergy, goals can be effectively accomplished for a team. Synergy (2002) is "the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effect." Thus, teamwork (Scarnati, 2001, p. 5) is a synergetic process:
A team is a formal work group consisting of people who work together intensely to achieve a common group goal. The essence of teamwork is to create a product through collective effort that exceeds the quality of any individual endeavor or the collective efforts of several individuals. The word team is not synonymous with group. A group is a collection of people who may or may not be working collectively toward the same goal. A team is composed of three or more interdependent individuals who are consciously striving to work together to achieve a common objective, which in



References: Dejanasz, Dowd, Schnieder (2001). Teams in the Workplace. Interpersonal Skills in Organization. Retrieved January 18, 2007, from University of Phoenix, Learning Team Toolkit Web Site: http://aapd.phoenix.edu/ToolsForTeams/3-teambasics.asp Scarnati, James T. (2001). On Becoming a Team Player. Team Performance Management. 7(1/2), 5. Retrieved January 18, 2007, from Proquest Direct Database. Schermerhorn, J.R., Hunt, J.G., & Osborn, R.N. (2005). Organizational Behavior. 9th edition, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Synergy. The American Heritage Stedman 's Medical Dictionary (2002). Retrieved January 18, 2007 from xreferplus. http://www.xreferplus.com/entry/2798260

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