Most degrees include group projects, which are both an excellent way for students to explore more expansive topics than individual work allows, and a great way for them to practice the teamworking skills they’ll use in all aspects of their life.

The reason that practicing teamworking is useful is because working in a team is hard. A team is a group of individuals, who all have their own ideas, values, ways of looking at the world, level of self-efficacy and self-confidence, and stuff going on in their personal lives. That means that whilst they have a shared objective, they won’t necessarily have shared views of success (90% or 51%?), or how to complete the task, how much time and energy they can commit, flexibility around timings, what acceptable behaviours are and so on. And most people are still learning this stuff too, so making mistakes while working together is inevitable.

This all means that academics are used to fielding complaints from students about how the team is working, and that the resulting mark is unfair.

In fact, one of the most heard complaints is that ‘X’ is lazy; they aren’t pulling their weight; they aren’t completing their agreed tasks; they aren’t even communicating in any way.

But is ‘X’ lazy, or is that just a lazy assumption? This is a great time for the rest of the team, to practice their empathy, and to look at it from ‘X’s point of view.

There could be lots of reasons why ‘X’ isn’t engaging or delivering, such as:

1. Miscommunication – did they understand what was required and when. This can be a particular problem when some people are using a second language, or are from a very different culture.
2. Problems at home – possibly something is going on in another part of their life that is making it difficult to meet their commitments.
3. Embarrassment at a lack of ability – ‘X’ may be finding it hard to complete their task, but can’t face admitting it.
4. Lack of confidence – speaking up, presenting work for the group to see, even going to a group meeting, can be scary for those with little self-confidence.
5. Competing priorities – maybe they have lots of competing priorities at the moment, both in uni and their wider life, and this one wasn’t making it to the top.
6. Health issues – mental and/or physical health issues affect us all at some point or another, maybe these are affecting ‘X’ at the moment.
7. Demotivated – perhaps ‘X’ can’t see the point of the task, or the module, or even the degree they are doing, so what looks like laziness is actually a disconnection.

So the first thing the rest of the team needs to do is find out what’s going on with ‘X’; the root cause, not just the presenting issue. This needs to happen in a non-judgemental, open way, and it’s only really going to work if there is already a relationship of trust and respect, so if a member of the team is particularly good at building relationships, maybe they should be given the task.

Once the root cause is understood, the team can work out an effective and supportive way forward that can achieve the task in a way that develops everyone and demonises no one.

If you find yourself in this situation, make sure that you let the course leader know and keep them up to date with what you are doing. This way, if there is no improvement, the academic can step in to sort it out if needed.

Ultimately, remember that this group activity is practice for all the hundreds of group tasks you’ll have throughout your life – these are skills that you are learning, and they are just as important as the knowledge developed during your assignment.

 

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Graham Philpott, Head of Careers Consultancy