What Is a Team?
A team is any group of people organized to work together interdependently and cooperatively to meet the needs of their customers by accomplishing a purpose and goals. Teams are created for both long term and short term interaction. A product development team, an executive leadership team, and a departmental team are long lasting planning and operational groups. Short term teams might include a team to develop an employee onboarding process, a team to plan the annual company party, or a team to respond to a specific customer problem or complaint.
Three common types of teams include functional or departmental, cross-functional, and self-managing.
- Functional or departmental teams: Groups of people from the same work area or department who meet on a regular basis to analyze customer needs, solve problems, provide members with support, promote continuous improvement, and share information.
- Cross-functional teams: Groups of people who are pulled together from across departments or job functions to deal with a specific product, issue, customer, problem, or to improve a particular process.
- Self-managing teams: Groups of people who gradually assume responsibility for self-direction in all aspects of work.