Often groups of people work together to accomplish a task, but they are not necessarily functioning as a team. Groups of people working together who have not developed into a team typically have the following characteristics:

• A leader who is appointed by an administrator or other outside source
• An over-specific and limited task or mission with only short-term assignments
• Particular members who regularly exit and re-enter the group
• Members who bring their own information which they may not contribute
• Members who have little or no concern about the group as a whole
• Delegated tasks which are carried out very independently
• Meetings that are only used to report on those individually performed tasks
• Decision-making by several poorly-specified means which may or may not include consensus.

While the amount of time that group members spend on their task is not necessarily critical; and while group members do not have to be full time in order to perform as a team; effective teams typically do have the following characteristics:

• They share responsibility and rotate leadership
• Their members stay while tasks come and go
• They develop over time, going through a series of predictable stages
• Their members are concerned about the whole team and its functioning
• They use meeting times to discuss, decide and do real work.
• Consensus is valued and well utilized.