The dreaded group project
Back when I was in school, I hated nothing more than the words: ”OK class, we’re going to do a group project!” Always delivered with an overly enthusiastic smile and eyebrows cresting the top of my teacher’s forehead. To me, group projects meant doing more than my share of the work yet somehow never delivering something I felt as good about as what I could do on my own.
I thought we’d move past this dynamic after school, but lo and behold, the workplace turned out to be only moderately better. I still managed to come across people who didn’t pull their own weight and often wished to just go off on my own and complete the work myself.
Needless to say, I rarely voluntarily put myself in “group work” situations.
But this weekend, one week into a 5-week program that is built around learning groups you work with, I felt the first crack in the bullet-proof armor I’ve had against group work for all these years.
In the middle of a group discussion on a prompt we’d all been given, which we’d all be responding to individually but were expected to work on together, a thought occurred to me that I hadn’t had before.
In past occasions, when I would be involved in group work, I would foresee the answer and the direction to get there, and any conversation or action in any direction other than the one I’d identified felt like a distraction from getting to the end. I still felt those rumblings as I listened to my group share thoughts or questions that deviated from what I’d identified as the way forward, but a new thought came through alongside those.
If I widen the assumption of what the way forward is (currently limited to what I’ve figured out for myself alone) to allow in others’ perspectives and ideas, there might actually be a shorter way, an easier way, a smarter way that comes out. And I just may end up doing better, faster, simpler work if I invest a little energy into the group than if I look at every output as a distraction to my answer. Sometimes, there is even a different interpretation of the question or the answer that allows you to innovate simply because you now see it from a totally different angle.
This is probably not news to those of you who have learned well how to work with others. In fact, you might already get a ton of value out of collaborating and listening and investing in others’ perspectives and ideas. But for someone who has long resisted and often considered the solo road to be the only road, this felt incredibly freeing. And potentially very powerful.
For those of you anti-group-work’ers (and those of you who, like me, are still recovering), I wish you this moment of consideration and what it might open up for you!
