Strengths and Weaknesses of Cohesive and Non-Cohesive Teams

This report delves into the contrasting dynamics of cohesive and non-cohesive teams, analyzing their respective strengths and weaknesses within organizational contexts. It begins by defining team cohesion as the forces that keep team members together, highlighting the characteristics of a cohesive team such as shared goals, positive relationships, and effective communication. The report then explores the benefits of cohesive teams, including increased productivity and synergy, while also acknowledging potential drawbacks such as conformity and conflict. Conversely, the report examines non-cohesive teams, emphasizing individual autonomy and direct accountability, and their potential for focused work and individual credit, while also considering the challenges of limited collaboration and support. The report concludes by recognizing that both team structures have unique advantages and disadvantages, and it is undeniable that they can impact business productivity in their own way.

Running head: COHESIVE AND NON-COHESIVE TEAM
Cohesive and Non-Cohesive Team
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1COHESIVE AND NON-COHESIVE TEAM
All the organisations are likely to perform well when their employees work
effectively as one team. A good teamwork automatically builds up synergy where the
collaborative impact of the team is always higher when compared to the total of individual
efforts. This paper is going to elaborate on discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of
cohesive and non-cohesive teams. It will shed light on their application to the high
performance organisations as well.
The tem cohesion is refers to the sum of forces that acts on the team members in order
to stay in a specific group. A cohesive is a team or a group in which a group of individual
connects to work on achieving their similar interests (John, Mani and Seligmann 2013). It is a
team that has a very well-defined group norms and roles, a well-defined goals, an identity of
a positive team, a good and favourable relationship among the team members, positive
energy and good communication. All the team members in a cohesive team have shared
responsibility, mutual respect, trust, unity and a willingness to cooperate among themselves.
They take pride in synergy and membership. In turn this will result in increase in
organisational productivity. The strength of cohesive teams lies in their unity and oneness.
The more powerful is a team in terms of cohesiveness, the more will it encourage peaked
performance among its team members (Daspit et al. 2013). Here, the team members also
learn about the strengths and weaknesses of each other. However, there are few significant
weaknesses as well. Maintaining a team is not that easy task. In many teams, there could be a
tendency for the members to sit back and see their team mates’ work. Also, there are some
workers who finds it comfortable to work individually and therefore, they do not work
efficiently when working within a team. This makes it very difficult to operate its project
successfully. Also, the possibility of rising conflict become high when working in a cohesive
team as because of the fact that in a team there is diversity in ideas and thinking as there are
many individual involved. Also, there is a possibility of team conformity when the team

2COHESIVE AND NON-COHESIVE TEAM
members adopts same behaviours, generally in an attempt to reduce or to fit in the
disagreements in between the team members (Macy and Flache 2013). This behaviours tend
to become team nom and may result in causing low productivity.
On the other hand, in a non-cohesive team, the team members works only to work for
their individual desired goals and objectives. The main strength of such team is that in a non-
cohesive team, one can work individually as per his or her own wishes. They are not
answerable to anyone and they takes the full credit of every project done (S. DeOrtentiis et al.
2013). There is no one to take a share of their efforts and thus, this helps them in staying
motivated as they are always well aware of the fact that if they will work effectively, they
would be getting the full credit of it and if they don’t then they alone will be facing the
resultant consequences. Hence, they keep on working in an efficient and more productive
way. Also, when one does his job alone, he stay much more focused on his objective in
comparison to the ones who works as a team or group. However, the weaknesses of it
include, it takes a long time for them to complete the work and unlike in a cohesive team,
there are none to assist them with their project. Also, there is none to motivate them as well.
This has a high chance of influencing the productivity of a business.
Hence, it can be concluded both cohesive and non-cohesive team has their own
strengths and weaknesses and it is undeniable that both could contribute in increasing or
decreasing the productivity of the business in their own way.

3COHESIVE AND NON-COHESIVE TEAM
References:
Daspit, J., Justice Tillman, C., Boyd, N.G. and Mckee, V., 2013. Cross-functional team
effectiveness: An examination of internal team environment, shared leadership, and cohesion
influences. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 19(1/2), pp.34-56.
John, A., Mani, A. and Seligmann, D.D., Avaya Inc, 2013. Cohesive team selection based on
a social network model. U.S. Patent 8,510,230.
Macy, M.W. and Flache, A., 2013. The weakness of strong ties: Collective action failure in a
highly cohesive group. In Evolution of Social Networks (pp. 27-52). Routledge.
S. DeOrtentiis, P., K. Summers, J., P. Ammeter, A., Douglas, C. and R. Ferris, G., 2013.
Cohesion and satisfaction as mediators of the team trust–team effectiveness relationship: An
interdependence theory perspective. Career Development International, 18(5), pp.521-543.