The journey from individuals to teams

Abstract
In this essay I am going to discuss the very beginning of a team. I start by describing individuals, and how they become first a group-with Margarita Martínez and Maribel Salvador’s model- and then a team. Later on I use Pozner’s model to illustrate what a network relation is, as an excuse to explain how teams should work in order to be called so. To finish, I am going to consider the fact of being a team as internally related to efficiency and how it can be achieved.

Introduction
The aim of this essay is to discuss the differences between groups and teams. In order to do this I’m going to make a progressive analysis, starting by explaining how an individual becomes a group-with Margarita Martínez and Maribel Salvador’s theory-,followed by how a group becomes a team. Furthermore, I’m going to consider this last statement as a key factor for efficiency.
Individuals are the key factor of a team dynamic, considering their capacity as human beings and all their communicative possibilities including professional and personal environment. The perception we have from other people influence, determine and deform the relationships we are going to have with our family, our neighbours, and even our work team (wether as leaders or integrants). Our demeanor is determined by rules, guides and expectations that, sometimes, allow us to foresee how an individual is going to behave given a specific situation. No one must condition the perception, appraisal or treatment from one person regarding other. Each individual must build their own opinion and establish a peculiar relationship with a third person: certain affirmations can deteriorate a team work environment to the point of breaking harmony and communication.When we start communicating by prejudging others, we classify people according to the stereotype we created in our mind. In order to get to know a person profoundly, we need to understand him or her in diverse surroundings as human beings do not behave alike in different areas.Therefore, we should also make an effort to adapt our capacities to the ambiences we develop on, resulting genuine and credible and able to counteract our prejudices. This is the way an individual starts becoming part of a group, integrating himself in society.

Groups do not become teams simply because that is the nave given by the population. Maturity in this process is essential. The fact of “working together” does not mean “working as a team," which includes respect and mutual confidence, satisfaction and rewarding. Why is cooperation then, so important? First, cooperation and team work are the principal characteristics of a brain worker, appreciated by the corporate world. Second, cooperation develops abilities and attitudes necessaries for democratic society. Team work brings attitudes and abilities into play in real life situation and helps develop interpersonal and cognitive dexterities necessary for an argumentation of our own ideas and to resolve conflicts by using negotiation. Third, competitive cooperations are only developed when working with others.1

We are going to distinguish between teams and other forms of working groups in order to understand how teams deliver extra performance. While a working group’s performance relates to what its member do as individuals, a team’s performance includes “collective work products” as well. It is defined by Katzenbach as “what two or more members must work on together, such as interviews, surveys, or experiments. It reflects the joint, real contribution of team members”.2 “The best working groups come together to share information, perspectives, and insights” establishes the author. It is important to highlight that all of these characteristics reinforce individual performance standards, always focusing on individual work. Group workers only take responsibility of their own results rather than other’s. On the other hand, teams produce work products through all the contribution of their members, making performance levels greater than the sum of all the individual bests of team members. The essence of a team is common commitment, and without it groups perform as individuals. This kind of commitment demand a purpose in which team members believe in, as credible team purposes have an element related to being in the cutting edge. Furthermore, those purposes are shaped by teams, which helps framing the company’s performance expectation; and when purposes and goals build on one another and are combined with team commitment, they enhance performance. Why are specific goals critical? They help define a set of work products that differ with individual job objectives-which, along with collective effort, adds more value to results-; they clear
1 Pozo, J. I. (2009). Psicología del aprendizaje universitario. Ediciones Morata.
2 Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The discipline of teams. Harvard Business Press.

communication and conflict within the team; they make teams maintain their focus on getting results; and finally they illustrate how specific objectives have a leveling effect contributing to team behaviour.
According to Pilar Pozner3 is precise to consider that “teams are integrated by individuals with their own characteristics”. Relating this statement with the concept of individuals discussed above, we can expect different points of view from the team members. A team work does not reach its best performance just because it is integrated by outstanding team members, but because the hole ensemble individualities achieve a network interaction able to develop a collective dynamic excelling the sum of its parts. Thus, encouraging collaborative work values the initiative: the networks of teams include flows of people with the capacity of solving problems and situations ahead the organization issue. When collaborative work starts, it produces a powerful network of relations and interactions only if confidence, communication and respect appear. The aim of this is to overtake isolation and dependency in order to stimulate an independent autonomy. We can observe the scheme

Scheme: A Network Figure.
3 Trabajo en equipo: Diez módulos destinados a los responsables de los procesos de transformación educativa. Pozner, Pilar.

“A Network Figure” chosen by Pozner to represent the flow of information between team members.
To summarize, while all teams are groups of individuals, not all groups are teams. Team members work together toward a common goal and share responsibility for the team’s success. A group is comprised of two or more individuals that share common interests or characteristics, and its members identify with each other due to similar traits. The difference between a group and a team is that members of a team "share a common goal they are pursuing collaboratively. Moreover, they can only succeed or fail as a whole, and the members of that team share the benefits and costs of success or failure. In contrast, the members of a (psychological) group may share a number of common features....but each has his or her own individual goals”4
“Team members are interdependent since they bring to bear a set of resources to produce a common outcome. Individuals in a group can be entirely disconnected from one another and not rely on fellow members at all.’’5
 Technology denotes the means by which system inputs are transformed or converted to outputs, and interactions between work team members are influenced by this structure which includes goals. Furthermore, this has a decisive impact on team processes essential to team effectiveness.
From an organizational perspective, team effectiveness is the core focus of theory and research on teams. We must not forget that team effectiveness assumes mature teams that have completed a formative developmental process. This is because the process of
4 Organizational Behaviour, Buchanan and Hyczynski, 2007, p.379.
5 Differences Between Groups and Teams, Boundless.

becoming a team takes maturity and hard work. A real team is motivated for a common compromise between its members, combining their skills. This leads to success; we are facing a criteria where effectiveness is going to be reached only if the group members work as a team, that is to share a common goal they are pursuing collaboratively, succeeding or failing as a hole, not just as individuals but as a team. Even in the best of companies, a so-called top team seldom functions as a real team. Real teams must follow a well-defined discipline to achieve their performance potential. And performance is the key issue--not the fostering of "team values" such as empowerment, sensitivity, or involvement. In recent years, the focus on performance was lost in many companies. Even today, CEOs and senior executives often see few gains in performance from their attempts to become more teamlike. Nevertheless, a team effort at the top can be essential to capturing the highest performance results possible--when the conditions are right. Good leadership requires differentiating between team and nonteam opportunities, and then acting accordingly.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I strongly believe each stage-wether individuals, groups, or teams-are important to enhance work production. We cannot skip this stages, as we need to go through the first two to learn how to work as a team and give our very best to succeed. Being and individual and learning how to cope with others and relate to them is crucial to star thinking as a group of people. But even though teams are a group of individuals as well, a group will have a more isolated performance, also more individual. Having discussed the differences between a group and a team, we can argue that teams perform in a higher level than groups. And this is because the values a team has: teams work resulting more than the sum of their parts, as individuals provide different opinions that are later combined with each other in order to reach a determined goal specified at the very beginning. The team members respect each other, communicate and innovate together. I believe that is the inflection point, doing things together, and start thinking not only as individuals, but as a team.

Bibliography
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