A reader writes:
I’m starting a business graduate program now and all of the administrators are practically giddy proclaiming, “There’s going to be a lot of group work! Just like the real business world!”
I’ve always struggled with group work because I’m a (recovering) perfectionist and was the type of kid who dominated group projects and only allowed my groupmates to do token pieces. I’ve worked to reduce this tendency and I know that other people have strengths that I don’t but as soon as the pressure is on, I start getting twitchy about other people being “slackers.”
Also, I’ve never understood how to be diplomatic about rejecting weak ideas or saying, “your section isn’t up to par with the rest” or juggling people’s schedules to find effective time to work together. Usually, I either take over the project so I don’t have deal with other people or we just divide up the project equally and everyone retreats to do their own piece with no real synthesis or quality control so we can avoid conflict. I appreciate when teachers let us give feedback on our fellow members, but that always felt like resentful snitching and I don’t think the normal business world lets you tell a client after the fact, “Sorry that presentation sucked, it was totally Tom’s fault.”
I feel like my teachers always emphasized the importance of group work but kind of threw us to the wolves to figure out how to do it, especially when we are all supposed to be equal players with no manager to oversee the final product. Can you recommend any resources for how to do effective, professional group work among peers?
Ugh, I don’t know why schools have put such an emphasis on this because group work in school is really, really different than working on a group project at work.
Most importantly, at work you have totally different types of accountability. If someone is slacking off and not pulling their weight, you have recourse — you can talk to their boss and there’s the specter of consequences.
Moreover, group projects at work usually don’t have the same sort of redundancies that group projects in school have. In school, everyone working on a project is usually bringing similar skills and background to the project. At work, group projects are often made up of people with very different skill sets, because that’s the point of bringing them together to each handle different parts of the project. As a result, it’s more likely to be clear who should take the lead on what and who has expertise where, and that’s much more efficient than the typical school project.
And at work, there’s typically someone in the group who’s charge of the overall project and who has the power to make decisions and hold people accountable — whereas school group work often relies on consensus.
It’s weird that schools so often pitch group work as “just like the work world!” because all of these factors make it very different.
Anyway. You asked about how to do effective group work among peers. The keys are to (a) have clearly defined roles, so that it’s clear what each person is responsible for (one way to do that is here), (b) have someone who is responsible for the overall success of the project and has the authority to check in on group member’s work, raise concerns, and generally ensure that work is on track, (c) have clear deadlines and approval processes, (d) have buy-in from leadership above you about the priority level of the work, and (e) have management that’s willing to step in and hold people accountable if they’re not pulling their weight.
In school, you can have a couple of those — maybe, if you have a good group — but it would be rare to have all of them, and that’s a big reason why school group projects are often chaotic and imbalanced and frequently disliked.
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no, group work in school is not “just like in the real work world” was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.