Building a team is important, we all know that. Having a team that are happy working together, that are committed to the project and the goal, can be the difference between a successful project and one that fails. But what about when building a team goes too far?

There is a danger that a team will stop being a team, and move over into being a clique. In a business context, a team is a group of people who come together to achieve a specific goal for the benefit of the business. A clique, however, is a group of people who work together for the benefit of the group, regardless of the effect on other groups in the business, or the business as a whole.

In other words, in case 1 the team uses the group as a tool to achieve success. In case 2, the group’s existence is seen as important.

This leads to problems because the clique begins to set themselves apart from the rest of the environment they are in. They start to see the group as special, as more important than outside, as something to be defended and fought for – regardless of the wider consequences.

Now, all of this is often subconscious, but I’m sure you can recognise some of the signs – teams start to get more cliquey, they begin to disparage other areas of the business, even other people in the same area not on the same team. An adversarial and antagonistic relationship with the rest of the business develops, leading to an inevitable loss of trust on both sides of that relationship.

This is, suffice to say, not a good thing.

Yes, encourage a team to form. But be careful it doesn’t become a clique.