What’s the Difference Between a Group and a Team?

One of the most revealing questions we ask leadership teams is also one of the simplest. As part of our Team Catalyst, we interview each team member one-on-one about what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what would help the team be more effective. Then we ask:

“What’s the purpose of this team?”

Every once in a while, something remarkable happens. We hear similar answers from every person. Sometimes people even use the exact same words. When that happens, we know it isn’t an accident. This is a leadership team that has discussed why it exists and has a shared understanding of what it is there to accomplish.

More often, though, the answers are all over the board. One person says the purpose is to share information. Another says it’s to make strategic decisions. Someone else says it’s to execute the goals laid out by the board. Occasionally, even though everyone received our questions in advance, people are stumped by the question.

And once in a while, someone says, “I don’t actually think we’re a team.”

They may be right. But that doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong.

What’s the Difference Between a Group and a Team?

We tend to use the word team for almost any collection of people who work inside the same organization. There’s the marketing team, the finance team, the senior leadership team, the regional team, and so on. 

The trouble starts when “team” becomes more than a label and starts driving expectations. Leaders expect collaboration, shared accountability, and collective decision-making without stopping to consider whether the work’s structure actually supports those behaviors. When it doesn’t, what looks like a teamwork problem may actually be a mismatch between what leaders expect and how the work gets done.

Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith explored this distinction decades ago in The Wisdom of Teams. Their definition of a team emphasizes a common purpose, shared performance goals, complementary skills, and mutual accountability. One of the most useful ideas underlying their work is interdependence: the degree to which people actually need one another to accomplish the work.

That gives us a much more useful way to think about the difference between a group and a team. Rather than trying to put every collection of people neatly into one box or the other, I think of it as a spectrum.

On one end, you have people whose work is largely independent. They may share information and resources, report to the same leader, and genuinely enjoy one another, but they can accomplish most of their work without much coordination. For example, a group of financial advisors who each manage their own client portfolios may share best practices, but one advisor’s work rarely affects another’s.

On the other end, you have people whose work is highly interdependent. Decisions made by one person affect everyone else. They share responsibility for outcomes. If communication or trust breaks down, the work itself suffers. Think of a surgical team, where the surgeon, anesthesiologist, and nurses each have distinct roles, but success depends on seamless coordination.

And there’s a whole lot of territory in between.

The goal isn’t to move everyone to the “team” end of the spectrum. The goal is to understand where you are so you can lead accordingly.

The Leadership Playbook Changes Depending on the Work

Understanding where a group falls on the interdependence spectrum becomes especially useful when deciding what effective leadership should look like. Trust, communication, and accountability are important in almost any working relationship. The question isn’t whether a group or team needs to work on these practices, but what each one looks like based on how the work is structured and how much people depend on one another.

For example, two leaders may need a high degree of trust even if their day-to-day work rarely overlaps. A Director of Finance and a Director of HR, for instance, may make most decisions independently while trusting each other to keep commitments and share important information. But they may not need to collaborate on every decision. 

By contrast, a Sales Director and an Operations Director may need to coordinate daily because promises made to customers directly affect the team’s ability to deliver. That means they need ways to surface disagreements and adjust priorities together. The leadership challenge is recognizing those conditions instead of applying the same expectations to everyone.

Groups still need to function well. People need clarity about roles and expectations; they need to understand where their work intersects, and they need enough trust and communication to coordinate effectively. We work with plenty of groups on exactly these issues.

The playbook is simply different.

And that’s why knowing where you fall on the group-to-team spectrum matters. If leaders expect team behavior from a structure that doesn’t support or require it, everyone can end up frustrated.

When a Leadership “Team” Is Really Operating More Like a Group

Over the years, we’ve worked with many leadership teams that, once you look at how the work actually gets done, operate much more like groups. Again, that isn’t automatically a problem. The problem arises when no one recognizes it, and leaders keep pushing for “better teamwork” without addressing the underlying conditions.

Here are a few versions we see regularly:

1. Their real team is the team they lead.

• What it looks like: Everyone attends the leadership meeting, but their primary loyalty and attention lie with their own function. The head of sales is there to represent the sales team. The head of operations advocates for operations. When priorities compete, leaders protect their own people, budget, and goals.
• Why teamwork is difficult: There is a built-in tension around what Katzenbach and Smith call mutual accountability. If I ultimately believe my job is to win for my function, asking me to make a decision that benefits the organization but creates pain for my department is a much bigger ask than it appears.
• What leadership requires instead: Start by getting explicit about which team is the primary team and what collective responsibility comes with membership on the leadership team. If enterprise-level decisions really do require shared ownership, leaders need to know that. If they are primarily there to represent their functions and coordinate across them, acknowledge that too. Clarity is more useful than pretending.

2. The work doesn’t actually require much collaboration.

• What it looks like: People meet together and share information, but their actual work happens independently. One person’s success isn’t particularly dependent on what another person does.
• Why teamwork is difficult: Leaders may interpret independence as siloed behavior and respond by adding meetings, shared projects, or collaboration that doesn’t improve the work. People understandably start wondering why they need to be involved in decisions that have little to do with them.
• What leadership requires instead: Don’t manufacture interdependence. Create clear lanes, identify the points where coordination really matters, and make it easy for people to share information when their work does intersect. A well-run group can be exactly what the organization needs.

3. The structure creates winners and losers.

• What it looks like: People are told they’re collectively responsible for success, but their incentives, resources, or performance measures put them in competition with one another. One leader gets the headcount that another leader needs. One region wins at another’s expense. Individual goals matter more than collective results.
• Why teamwork is difficult: You can’t ask people to collaborate their way out of a system that rewards them for competing. No amount of trust-building changes the fact that the structure itself is sending a different message.
• What leadership requires instead: Look at the system before looking at the people. If shared outcomes really matter, incentives and measures need to reinforce them. If competition is intentional and useful, be honest about that and create clear rules for where coordination is still expected.

4. Everyone has the title, but nobody agrees on the purpose.

• What it looks like: This is the team from our opening story. Ask six leaders why the leadership team exists, and you get six different answers.
• Why teamwork is difficult: It’s hard to align around priorities or make decisions when there isn’t agreement about what you’re collectively trying to accomplish. People naturally fill that vacuum with their own assumptions.
• What leadership requires instead: Before jumping into communication skills or trust exercises, have the conversation that hasn’t happened yet: Why does this group of people need to exist together? The answer doesn’t need to sound inspiring. It needs to be useful enough to guide decisions about what belongs on the team’s agenda and what doesn’t.

5. They’re a team in title only.

• What it looks like: The organizational chart says “leadership team,” but members rarely need to work together. Meetings are mostly updates, decisions happen elsewhere, and there are few meaningful shared outcomes.
• Why teamwork is difficult: There may simply not be enough interdependence to support the kind of teamwork the leader is expecting.
• What leadership requires instead: Stop measuring success by how “team-like” people seem and ask what coordination the work actually requires. Maybe the answer is a monthly leadership group that exchanges information and makes a handful of cross-functional decisions. That’s not a failed team. It may be a perfectly effective group.

Know Where You Are and Where You Need to Be

The point here isn’t to consider if you are a group or a team and accept that as a fixed state. It’s to understand the conditions that exist today and decide whether those conditions are right for the work you need to do.

You may discover that you’re operating more like a group, and that’s exactly what you need. People have clear areas of responsibility, they coordinate where their work intersects, and there’s no business reason to create more interdependence than already exists. In that case, the work may be about strengthening how the group operates rather than turning it into something it doesn’t need to be.

But you may also realize that the work calls for something different. Perhaps the organization has grown, and decisions can no longer be made effectively within individual functions. Maybe the leadership team needs to make harder tradeoffs across the business, take greater ownership for enterprise-wide results, or solve problems that no single leader can solve alone. In those situations, moving toward the team end of the spectrum may be exactly what’s needed.

And that’s where the work gets more interesting.

You Can’t Communicate Your Way Into Becoming a Team

If a leadership group wants or needs to become more of a team, the answer isn’t simply to improve communication. Communication may absolutely need attention, as may trust, conflict, and accountability. But those are only part of the equation.

The leader also has to create the conditions for a team to exist.

That starts with getting clear about what this particular group of people is responsible for accomplishing together. Not what each leader is responsible for within their own function, and not the broad mission of the organization, but the work that belongs to this team and requires their collective attention.

From there, the structure has to support that purpose. What decisions need to be made together? What outcomes are they mutually accountable for? Where do individual priorities need to give way to shared priorities? What belongs on the leadership team’s agenda, and what should stay within individual functions? If the answers to those questions aren’t clear, asking people to “collaborate more” is unlikely to change much.

The same is true for the team’s development. Leaders need to be clear not only about what the team is trying to accomplish, but also about how the team needs to improve working together to accomplish it. Maybe they need to get better at making decisions when there are competing priorities. Maybe they need to surface disagreements earlier rather than taking them back to their individual departments. Maybe they need to hold one another accountable for enterprise results rather than looking to the CEO to do it for them.

Those are development goals for the team itself. And when they’re connected to the work the team is responsible for, improving communication, trust, conflict, and accountability becomes much more meaningful. You’re no longer trying to get people to demonstrate generic “teamwork.” You’re helping them build the specific capabilities they need to operate as the team the work requires.

Start With What the Work Requires

There’s a reason the question “What is the purpose of this leadership team?” can be surprisingly hard to answer. Most leaders spend far more time thinking about the teams they lead than the leadership team they belong to.

That’s worth paying attention to.

Because before you ask people to collaborate differently, have harder conversations, or take greater accountability for one another’s success, they need to understand what they are doing together that makes those behaviors necessary.

Without that clarity, teamwork can feel like another expectation. With it, people understand why working differently together actually matters.

Frequently Asked Questions About Groups, Teams, and Team Coaching

What is the difference between a group and a team?

The biggest difference between a group and a team is the level of interdependence in the work. In a group, people may share information, resources, and goals, but much of their work can still be accomplished independently. In a team, people depend on one another to achieve shared outcomes, which means decisions, priorities, and performance are more closely connected.

Rather than treating groups and teams as two completely separate categories, it can be more useful to view them as existing on a spectrum. What matters is understanding how much people actually need one another to succeed and then creating expectations and ways of working that fit those conditions.

Is a team better than a group?

No. A team is not inherently better or more effective than a group. Some work requires significant interdependence, while other work is most effective when individuals have clear ownership and coordinate only where necessary.

Problems arise when expectations don’t align with the work. A group may become frustrated by unnecessary collaboration, while a highly interdependent team can struggle when people operate too independently. Effective leaders understand what the work requires rather than assuming everyone should operate like a team.

How do you know if a leadership team is really a team?

Start by asking what the leadership team is collectively responsible for accomplishing. If members can clearly identify shared outcomes, make decisions that affect one another, and depend on each other to succeed, they’re likely operating toward the team end of the spectrum.

Another useful question is: What would happen if these leaders stopped working closely together? If very little were to change, they may operate more like a group. If decisions, priorities, or results would quickly suffer, the work is likely highly interdependent.

Can a group become a team?

Yes, but becoming a team requires more than asking people to collaborate or communicate better. Leaders need to create the conditions that support greater interdependence. That includes clarifying what the team is responsible for accomplishing together, which decisions require collective ownership, which outcomes are shared, and how individual priorities relate to the whole.

The team also must identify how it needs to develop. That might mean getting better at navigating competing priorities, surfacing disagreement, making decisions together, or holding one another accountable. The goal isn’t simply to demonstrate more teamwork; it’s to build the capabilities the team needs for the work it is responsible for.

What is team coaching?

Team coaching is an ongoing development process focused on how a team works together while doing its actual work. Rather than treating communication, trust, conflict, or accountability as isolated skills, team coaching helps a team examine how those dynamics affect the outcomes they are collectively responsible for achieving.

At Darcy Luoma Coaching & Consulting, we begin team coaching engagements by interviewing team members individually to understand how they experience the team, where they see strengths and challenges, and what may be getting in the way. That gives us a clearer picture of the conditions that exist today before deciding what the team needs to work on.

How is team coaching different from team building?

Different team experiences contribute to different outcomes. Team building is often an activity or event designed to strengthen relationships or connections. Team coaching is a longer-term process focused on changing how people work together.

For example, a team may already trust and like one another, but struggle to make decisions when priorities compete. Another may communicate frequently but avoid the disagreements necessary to make good strategic decisions. Team coaching works with those real dynamics as they happen, helping the team develop new ways of working and practice them over time.

When does a leadership team need team coaching?

A leadership team may benefit from team coaching when the work requires members to operate collectively, but their current ways of working make that difficult. That can show up as competing functional priorities, an unclear shared purpose, decisions that repeatedly get revisited, unaddressed conflict, overreliance on the team leader, or a lack of shared accountability.

It can also be useful before a significant problem arises. As organizations grow or change, leadership roles often become more interdependent. Team coaching can help leaders intentionally define how they need to work together rather than waiting for old ways of working to stop working.

What does a team coach help a leadership team do?

A team coach helps a leadership team get clearer about both what it needs to accomplish together and how it needs to work together to do it. That can include clarifying the team’s purpose, identifying shared development goals, improving decision-making, resolving conflicts, strengthening accountability, and changing patterns that are getting in the way of results.

The goal isn’t to make every leadership team look or behave the same way. It’s to help the team build the ways of working that fit its particular responsibilities, relationships, and level of interdependence.

Looking for more information about team development? Be sure to check out our Leader’s Guide to Building Stronger Teams.