Many academic development initiatives build on community-based approaches, such as communities of practice or learning communities. While these initiatives are largely successful for the individual academics involved, low participation rates prevent wide-reaching impact on learning about teaching. The research discussed in this article aims at reaching larger numbers of academics. It proposes to investigate "teaching groups," which are defined as the already existing collegial contexts around academics based on shared teaching responsibilities. The teaching groups of focus group participants from a New Zealand university are identified; structure, interactions and atmosphere within these groups are explored. The research derives a scale of desirability for teaching groups, reaching from functioning to tight-knit groups. This scale is applied to the groups of study participants and reveals wide scope for improvement towards the development of stronger community characteristics. Future research into understanding why teaching groups show certain characteristics is recommended.