The Types of Workplace Teams
The kind of team that you set up among your business's employees depends on that employee team's assigned goal. A workplace team means a group of employees who are working together on either a temporary or a permanent basis to achieve a common objective.
Here are the three most common types of work teams:
Project team: A project team is pretty much what it sounds like — a group of people brought together to accomplish a particular project. (Sometimes project teams are referred to as steering committees or task forces.) Typically, when the project ends, the team ends.
Not every task demands that you put together a team. For a project team to succeed, you need to make sure that the task is appropriate for a group of people to work on together.
Cross-functional team: A cross-functional team is made up of employees from different departments or areas of the business.
Self-directed work team: Like a project team, a self-directed work team is just what it sounds like — a team that determines how it will get a job done and has the authority, and often the budget, to carry out decisions.
The phrase self-directed work team — or self-managed team — doesn’t mean that the team doesn’t need a leader or manager. It just means that the team is responsible and accountable for its decisions, as opposed to proposing action that will be approved or denied by someone outside the team.