How Collaboration is Different from Teamwork?

Although collaboration and teamwork have many things in common, but fundamentally both are different. A professional community takes the characteristics of both to build collaborative teams whose aim is to take mutual responsibility for the learning outcomes of students. By understanding the differences between collaboration and teamwork, you will be in a position to make the most appropriate choice when asking teachers to work together.

Teamwork defines a group of people working together to make one goal, but each individual within the team may be doing a different type of work to help the group as a whole.

On the other hand, collaboration is still a group of people working together to make one goal or one project happen, but they work together and feeding off one another. They make decisions together and work jointly rather than separately completing their own tasks.

But unlike teamwork, usually collaborative relationship doesn't have a team leader. There are competing goals along with shared goals in collaboration. As a result,

1. Collaborators need to be emotionally engaged with each other.

2. They need respect for each other's skill on the topic of the collaboration.

3. They need the ‘permission’ to negotiate with each other over process, benefits, costs, etc. to ensure coordinated action and resolve any differences or disputes.

The above factors can be important in teamwork also, but teams can often still be successful without these characteristics with a good team leader.

Collaboration vs. Communication

It is important to separate the concepts of communication and collaboration. Communication means that all members of a team are talking to one another, asking questions of one another to make sure the team is on track as a whole, and updating one another on what they are doing and what progress they are making.

Communication is necessary in collaboration. But, collaboration is much more than just good communication or sharing of teaching ideas etc.

A collaboration session is held with the intention of strategizing, brainstorming ideas, or otherwise putting heads together to make decisions or think strategically. That is why so many discover the importance of teamwork in business: to gather new ideas.

Sometimes, depending on the type of project being completed and the goal of the team, certain people within the group must collaborate while at other times the entire group may need to collaborate together so decisions are made that concern the work of each individual.

Conclusion: Difference between Collaboration and Teamwork

Collaboration is a teamwork that requires two or more people to work directly together to make decisions, share creative ideas, or develop strategies to be used by the group or in parts of a project. Usually it involves working directly together to jointly produce an output.

On the other hand, teamwork can be completed on an individual basis with communication open to all parts of the team. But, collaboration is more interdependent, so requires excellent interpersonal and group communication skills.