Teams versus groups

Scholars differentiate between teams and groups. Teams are relatively small (typically fewer than 10 people), have clear boundaries, and members share responsibility for collective outcomes; taskwork refers to the technical activities that must be performed, whereas teamwork concerns the processes that enable collaboration, such as communication, coordination and mutual support. In contrast, larger groups may share a purpose but are too numerous for close relational ties; group members often function independently and may not coordinate their activities. Understanding this distinction is crucial because the advantages and disadvantages discussed here apply primarily to true teams rather than loosely organised groups.

The IPO framework and collective intelligence

Researchers often conceptualise teamwork using the input–process–output (IPO) framework. Inputs include team composition, resources and goals; processes encompass communication, coordination and conflict management; outputs refer to performance, innovation and satisfaction.

This suggests that, on average, teams outperform individuals when processes are effective. Research on collective intelligence supports this view: teams with high collective intelligence (a group's ability to collaborate across tasks) outperform groups of highly talented individuals. However, this advantage depends on tasks being suited to group work—creative or additive tasks benefit from multiple perspectives, whereas simple or highly conjunctive tasks may be completed more efficiently by individuals.

Task suitability and process losses

Teamwork benefits additive and compensatory tasks but may hinder disjunctive and conjunctive tasks if coordination costs outweigh benefits. Process losses—such as coordination problems, social loafing and conflict—can erode the advantages of teamwork. Consequently, the benefits of teamwork are not automatic; they depend on careful design and management.

Team size and composition

Research shows that team performance depends on the right size. Teams larger than ten members tend to experience coordination difficulties, social loafing and conformity pressures. Belbin's experiments suggest that six is an ideal number for complex problem solving because it balances diversity of skills with efficient communication. However, the optimal size may vary by task—creative projects may benefit from slightly larger teams, whereas highly technical tasks may require smaller groups. Composition matters too: teams should include complementary skills, diverse perspectives and sufficient cognitive diversity to avoid groupthink and harness creativity.

Diversity and inclusion

Diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams in innovation, decision-making and financial performance, provided they are inclusive. Statistics from the Pollack Peacebuilding's compilation show that inclusive companies make better decisions 87% of the time and decisions made by diverse teams produce 60% better results. Companies with diverse management are 19% more innovative and have higher revenues. However, diversity can also increase conflict and misunderstanding if not managed well. Inclusive practices—such as ensuring psychological safety, promoting open dialogue and valuing minority opinions—are necessary to reap the benefits.

Psychological safety and team climate

As highlighted earlier, psychological safety is a key driver of team success. Teams with high psychological safety experience higher engagement, lower turnover and better performance. Leaders can foster psychological safety by modeling openness, encouraging questions, celebrating mistakes as learning opportunities and ensuring fair treatment. Creating a positive team culture is the most important driver of psychological safety. Without psychological safety, employees may withhold feedback or innovative ideas, leading to groupthink and reduced performance.

Leadership and team training

Effective leadership is essential for guiding teams. The Niagara Institute's statistics note that only 26% of leaders actively foster psychological safety. Leadership behaviors such as empathetic listening, situational awareness and cultural sensitivity are crucial. Training interventions—including simulations, workshops and role-plays—significantly improve teamwork skills. Leaders should be trained to manage conflict constructively, distribute workload equitably, and encourage diverse perspectives.

Remote and hybrid contexts

The rise of remote work changes team dynamics. Benefits include flexibility, access to global talent and reduced commuting stress. However, remote teams may face challenges in communication, cohesion and psychological safety. Research from Stanford indicates that hybrid work can maintain productivity and enhance retention. To succeed, remote teams require digital infrastructure (video conferencing, collaborative software), clear communication norms and periodic face-to-face interactions to strengthen social bonds. Leaders should be vigilant about digital groupthink, where consensus occurs without thorough discussion, and should encourage asynchronous brainstorming and written feedback to capture diverse viewpoints.

1. Design teams thoughtfully

• Match team size to task complexity. For complex projects requiring high interaction, limit teams to 5–7 members. For simpler or additive tasks, larger teams may be acceptable. Break large groups into sub-teams to maintain agility. This prevents social loafing and ensures everyone participates.
• Ensure complementary skills and diversity. Assemble teams with varied expertise, functional backgrounds and demographics. Diverse teams provide cognitive variety and improve innovation but require inclusive leadership to manage conflict.
• Define clear goals, roles and responsibilities. At the project's outset, articulate collective objectives and individual contributions. Clarify decision rights and timelines to minimise confusion and duplication. When roles are ambiguous, individuals may disengage or compete for dominance, slowing progress.

2. Foster psychological safety and open communication

• Model vulnerability and empathy. Leaders should admit mistakes, solicit feedback and respond constructively to criticism. Amy Edmondson notes that when people feel safe, they speak up without fear of embarrassment or retribution. Recognise and reward candour to encourage others to share.
• Cultivate a positive team culture. Research shows that culture is the most important driver of psychological safety. Build rituals that reinforce shared values, celebrate successes and normalise constructive debate. Encourage inclusive meeting practices—rotate facilitators, allow anonymous input via digital tools and invite quiet members to contribute.
• Encourage constructive conflict. Appoint a "devil's advocate" or rotate critique roles during deliberations. Use structured decision-making techniques (e.g., nominal group technique, Delphi method) to reduce conformity pressures. Provide conflict management training to help members navigate disagreements without damaging relationships.

3. Manage performance and accountability

• Set measurable goals and track progress. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect both group outcomes and individual contributions. Regularly review progress in meetings and adjust tasks as necessary. Transparent metrics discourage social loafing and align efforts.
• Assign ownership for deliverables. While collective responsibility is important, individual accountability ensures that tasks are completed. Employ tools like RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) charts to make expectations explicit.
• Provide feedback and recognition. Recognise both individual and team achievements. Peer recognition (e.g., shout-outs in meetings) enhances motivation and reinforces desired behaviours. Constructive feedback helps underperforming members improve, preventing group efficacy from deteriorating due to incompetent members.

4. Invest in training and continuous learning

• Team training interventions. Meta-analytic evidence shows that team performance improves significantly when teams undergo structured training programs, especially those involving hands-on simulations. Training should cover communication, leadership, conflict resolution and cross-cultural competence.
• Leadership development. Equip leaders with skills in facilitation, empathetic communication, situational awareness and diversity management. Research indicates that employees rate psychological safety higher when leaders receive targeted training. Organisations should also train leaders to manage hybrid teams and leverage digital tools effectively.
• Encourage reflexivity and continuous improvement. After major projects, conduct team debriefs to reflect on what worked and what didn't. Encourage teams to adjust processes and experiment with new collaboration techniques. Team reflexivity enhances learning and adaptability.

5. Adapt to remote and hybrid environments

• Leverage technology wisely. Provide user-friendly tools for video conferencing, messaging, document sharing and project management. Train employees to use these tools effectively to avoid miscommunication and digital overload.
• Establish communication norms. Define which channels to use for different purposes (e.g., email for formal documentation, chat for quick questions, video for complex discussions). Set expectations for response times and meeting etiquette. Encourage asynchronous collaboration to accommodate different time zones.
• Maintain social connection. Schedule periodic in-person meetings or virtual social events to strengthen relationships. Use breakout rooms and small group activities during online meetings to allow deeper interaction. Social bonds reduce isolation and build trust.
• Monitor well-being and work–life balance. Remote work can blur boundaries between personal and professional life. Encourage team members to set limits, take breaks and communicate workload concerns. Survey employees regularly to assess psychological safety and adjust practices accordingly.

Optimal team size and composition

The design of the team itself influences whether collaboration yields benefits or drawbacks. Runn's report notes that groups of three to five individuals perform better than duos and individuals when solving complex problems. Groups of two performed at the same level as solo participants, suggesting they were too small to leverage collective information. However, team size can become a disadvantage if it grows too large: a study on the efficiency of building a Lego figure found that four-person teams took 44% longer to complete the task than two-person teams.

These findings echo Belbin's earlier research on the Ringelmann effect, in which individuals exert less effort in larger groups due to diffusion of responsibility. The lesson for business leaders and HR professionals is to match team size to task complexity and ensure that individual contributions remain visible. The optimal team size for most creative or problem-solving tasks appears to be between three and six members.

Composition matters as much as size. Research from the American Psychological Association summarised by Runn found that groups with diverse skill sets collaborate more effectively than homogeneous groups, particularly when faced with complex problems. Yet diversity is a double-edged sword: without inclusive practices, diverse teams may experience process losses such as conflict and miscommunication (see section below). HR professionals should therefore focus on curating diversity alongside training and support to reap its benefits.

Managers' role and the importance of communication

Team success is not left to chance—leadership and communication are critical enablers. Runn's report highlights that 84% of U.S. employees are "matrixed," working across multiple teams or reporting to different managers. In this environment, managers play a pivotal role in orchestrating collaboration. Gallup's research shows that manager performance accounts for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. Organisations where managers invest time in collaborative activities—time which has increased by over 50% in the last two decades—tend to have higher engagement and better project outcomes. Yet there is still room for improvement: nearly 39% of employees believe their organisation doesn't collaborate enough, and 90% of workers think decision-makers should seek out employee opinions before making final decisions, although many report that leaders fail to do so.

Conversely, 80% of workers feel stressed due to poor communication from employers, with many spending around 40 minutes a day trying to decode unclear requests. These statistics emphasise that miscommunication not only undermines productivity but also contributes to workplace stress—a clear disadvantage of teamwork when communication channels are poorly managed. Managers must therefore invest in communication training, establish clear protocols and model transparency to prevent misunderstandings.

Gender differences further illustrate the complexities of team interaction. The Runn report notes that men are 36% more likely to offer informational support, while women are 66% more likely to assist others, which requires additional time and energy. In an experiment by NYU psychologist Madeline Heilman, participants rated a man who worked overtime to support colleagues 14% higher than a woman who did the same and penalised the woman 12% more when neither helped. These findings illustrate how gender biases can skew peer evaluations and exacerbate the disadvantages of teamwork for under-recognised groups. HR professionals must be aware of these biases when designing performance assessments and recognition programs.

Today's organisations increasingly rely on multicultural and geographically dispersed teams. A seminal meta-analysis of 108 studies (10,632 teams) found that cultural diversity does not directly determine performance; instead, its effects are mediated by team processes and moderated by context. The theoretical framework underpinning this analysis proposes that cultural diversity drives both process gains and process losses. Diversity increases divergent processes, such as creativity and innovation, while simultaneously raising barriers to convergent processes—cohesion and consensus—leading to conflict and reduced integration. The same framework notes that convergent processes like conformity and compliance can hinder performance by making teams closed to dissent and vulnerable to groupthink.

The meta-analytic results support this double-edged view: diverse teams are more creative, but they experience increased task conflict and lower social integration. Surprisingly, the analysis found that cultural diversity was unrelated to communication effectiveness and was positively associated with team member satisfaction. Neither surface-level (race, ethnicity) nor deep-level (values, cognition) diversity predicted these outcomes, indicating that contextual moderators—such as task complexity, team tenure and geographical configuration—play a bigger role than previously assumed.

For instance, virtual teams reported less conflict and more social integration than co-located teams, perhaps because dispersed members are more attentive to cultural differences and avoid confrontations. Working across time zones also increases coordination costs but allows teams to tap into diverse networks and institutional resources.

Language differences add another layer of complexity. Research in multicultural teams shows that language barriers influence trust and power dynamics, and that using verbal media (e.g., telephone) rather than written media (e-mail) can trigger social categorisation and reduce trust. High-context cultures (where meaning is conveyed implicitly) may adopt indirect communication styles, whereas low-context cultures (where meaning is explicit) prefer directness. When teams are aware of these differences and adapt their communication, they reduce misunderstandings and build cohesion.

Cross-cultural dynamics also intersect with gender and inclusion. As the Runn report notes, women often provide more relational support and may receive less recognition. Inclusive leadership—leaders who model respect, invite input and facilitate equitable participation—can harness diversity's creative potential while minimising process losses. Training in cultural intelligence, inclusive decision-making and conflict management helps team members appreciate divergent perspectives without slipping into stereotyping or cultural silos. HR professionals should design onboarding and professional development programs that prepare employees for multicultural teamwork.

In an uncertain world, the ability of teams to bounce back from adversity is a critical determinant of organisational survival. A theoretical model of team resilience frames it as a second-order emergent state—a capacity that arises from the interaction of team members and their context. Research defines resilience as the process of coping with stressors, adversity, change or opportunity in ways that strengthen protective factors. Importantly, resilience is not just an individual trait; it is buildable at the team level. Teams face numerous stressors, including poor interaction quality, inadequate communication channels, lack of back-up behaviour and negative organisational culture. When these stressors accumulate, performance suffers. However, resilient teams harness their collective resources to rebound without performance decrements, adapt to new challenges and even grow stronger through adversity.

The resilience literature emphasises that job demands and resources interact to shape resilience: excessive demands hamper positive emotions and reduce resilience, while moderate challenges coupled with sufficient resources foster a sense of accomplishment and strengthen team cohesion. Resilience also unfolds as a dynamic process—teams cycle through disruption and reintegration, adjusting their strategies and relationships along the way. Historical case studies, such as Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition (where the crew survived a two-year ordeal after their ship was crushed), illustrate how clear leadership, mutual trust and shared purpose enable teams to endure extreme adversity. For business leaders, building team resilience involves establishing psychological safety, promoting flexible roles, encouraging learning from failure and ensuring access to supportive resources. HR professionals can incorporate resilience training, stress management programs and structured debriefs into leadership development to enhance this critical capacity.

To improve teamwork, organisations must measure it. People analytics—using data to understand and manage the workforce—offers tools for evaluating collaboration patterns, engagement and communication. The statistics above demonstrate why measurement is essential. If 86% of respondents attribute workplace failures to poor collaboration and 97% say misalignment affects outcomes, then identifying communication bottlenecks and misaligned incentives becomes a strategic priority.

The Runn report shows that 84% of employees work on multiple teams—a structure that can dilute accountability and heighten coordination challenges. Analytics can reveal overlapping workloads and help managers allocate resources more effectively. Regular surveys also uncover employees' perceptions: if 39% believe collaboration is insufficient, leaders can probe whether this stems from siloed processes, unclear decision rights or trust deficits.

Performance indicators must be interpreted with sensitivity to bias. As noted above, gender biases can influence peer evaluations. People analytics can detect patterns—such as whether women's contributions are systematically underrated—and inform corrective actions (e.g., blind peer reviews, structured performance criteria). Similarly, cross-cultural differences in communication styles may affect who is perceived as assertive or collaborative. HR professionals should combine quantitative metrics with qualitative insights, such as 360-degree feedback and team debriefs, to capture the full picture of team functioning.

Effective measurement also requires transparent communication about how data are collected and used. Employees must trust that analytics aim to support them rather than surveil them. When data reveal gaps, managers should work with teams to co-create improvement plans rather than imposing top-down solutions. Recognition and rewards can be tied to collaborative behaviours, aligning incentives with the organisation's teamwork culture.

These statistics highlight the business cost of poor communication: wasted time, frustration and eroded trust. People analytics can track the clarity of tasks and instructions (e.g., number of follow-up questions required), but leaders must also address the cultural drivers of unclear communication—such as hierarchical barriers, jargon and information overload.

Several frameworks identify characteristics of high-performing teams. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that teamwork, teamwork training and group goal setting are key contributors to high performance, yet a McKinsey study discovered that only 20% of executives believed their team was high performing. Researchers Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson distilled team effectiveness into five dynamics: (1) talented and committed team members; (2) trusting, supportive relationships; (3) collaborative problem solving; (4) good leadership; and (5) a culture of organisational development. These dynamics align with the evidence presented throughout this article: teams need the right people, positive relationships, clear processes, skilled leaders and supportive systems. People analytics can monitor each dynamic—for example, tracking turnover to assess retention (dynamic 1), conducting network analyses to gauge relationship strength (dynamic 2), measuring problem-solving effectiveness (dynamic 3), evaluating leader behaviours (dynamic 4) and surveying perceptions of organisational support (dynamic 5).

Technology plays a vital role in supporting measurement and collaboration. As remote and hybrid working continue, 44% more employees use online collaboration tools today than in 2019, and 48% of businesses expected to increase their budget for collaboration software in 2021. These investments are paying off: online collaboration tools facilitate asynchronous communication, digital resource management and real-time feedback, helping to address the disadvantages of teamwork such as miscommunication and coordination delays. HR leaders should not only adopt these tools but also train employees to use them effectively and ethically. Integrating collaboration platforms with people analytics can provide granular insights into communication patterns and workload distribution, enabling proactive interventions to improve teamwork.

Looking ahead, several trends will shape the future of teamwork. First, global virtual teams are becoming the norm. Research suggests that working virtually affects team dynamics similarly to cultural diversity: it provides opportunities for divergence but raises barriers to convergence. Virtual teams have less access to non-verbal cues, which can hinder trust and cohesion. At the same time, they can tap into diverse networks, operate across time zones and maintain productivity around the clock. As remote work persists, HR professionals will need to refine communication norms, invest in digital collaboration tools and design training that addresses the unique challenges of virtual interaction.

Second, cross-border collaboration and multiculturalism will intensify. The meta-analysis discussed earlier underscores that cultural diversity's effects depend heavily on context and process. In a post-Covid-19 environment, as organisations increasingly digitalise and globalise, team members must develop cultural intelligence—the ability to understand and adapt to different cultural norms. Leaders should foster inclusive cultures that celebrate differences while uniting people around shared goals. This includes offering language support, recognising intercultural communication styles and ensuring that remote team members have equal access to information and decision-making.

Third, advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will augment teamwork. AI-powered tools can assist with scheduling, knowledge management, idea generation and even conflict resolution, freeing humans to focus on strategic and creative tasks. However, reliance on algorithms introduces new ethical considerations: biases embedded in AI models may reinforce stereotypes, and excessive automation can erode skills and interpersonal connections. HR professionals must balance efficiency gains with ethical oversight and opportunities for human development. Importantly, AI should be used to augment, not replace, human judgment and collaboration.

Fourth, network-of-teams structures are replacing rigid hierarchies. Many organisations now operate through fluid, cross-functional teams that assemble for specific projects and disband when objectives are met. This model increases agility but also demands robust mechanisms for knowledge transfer and relationship building. Research on fluid teams highlights challenges such as shifting membership, evolving identities and reliance on technology. HR practices must support onboarding and offboarding processes, maintain institutional memory and ensure continuity of culture across temporary units.

Finally, well-being and sustainability will remain central. Teamwork has the potential to reduce burnout through shared workload, but high interdependence can also raise job demands and stress. As organisations navigate economic uncertainty, climate change and geopolitical instability, leaders must prioritise team resilience and well-being. This includes providing mental health resources, encouraging flexible work arrangements and recognising signs of overload. Sustainable teamwork is not about pushing people harder but about creating conditions in which they can thrive collectively.

In summary, the future of teamwork will be defined by hybrid collaboration, cultural diversity, technology integration, fluid structures and a focus on well-being. Business leaders and HR professionals should prepare by investing in digital literacy, inclusive leadership, ethical AI, resilience training and people analytics. By staying ahead of these trends, organisations can harness the advantages of teamwork while mitigating its disadvantages in an ever-changing landscape.