Team and Group: Overview and Concepts

         

          Modern organizations are facing multiple and growing challenges fulfilling their customer needs, achieving new potential markets and adding value to their products or services. In this context group work is fundamental to any organization. There are some variables that influence group work performance such as group size, communication, group cohesion, competencies of each individual, task structure, and available resources.  

            Some people that are highly productive have high standards for themselves and for others. To build a sustainable environment where optimum group performance will be achieved it is necessary to have trust between group members. Commitment to tasks is a characteristic   that differentiates high-performance groups from other groups. It is important to notice that high-performance groups are built with people that want to belong to that group and not by people that are assembled randomly for a task.

Empowerment is a process that offers to group members the opportunity to be accountable for a broader scope of achievements than previous Taylorist-Fordist model where roles were repetitive and predictable. Empowerment truly means giving people the authority to adopt changes at their tasks. However, it is not so simple to create a group that will evolve into a high performing team. People come from different cultures and have different forms of cognitively thinking about processes.