Leadership lessons from working in teams

I also teach a few university courses, including a course about professional and technical writing. In this course, students learn about the different writing genres they need to know for their careers, including how to write descriptions, instructions, proposals, and reports.

Students work independently on most of these projects, but they work in small groups for the instructions project. As I remind my students every semester, it's important to know how to work effectively in a group, because you will work as part of a group for most of your career.

For many of these students, this is the first time they worked as part of a team in their university career. To help them, I walk students through the 4 stages identified by Tuckman: Forming - Storming - Norming - Performing. And I assign them some minor group tasks that are designed to help them through the Forming and Storming phases. For example, one of the group tasks asks students in a group to identify for each other how they might work effectively together, including how frequently they should meet and what communication methods they prefer. Most groups work quickly through Storming to reach Norming, where they can work effectively together.

The instructions project requires students to work with their group to identify a topic, write instructions about it, test the instructions by observing at least two others as they follow the instructions, then revise the instructions. The project concludes with a pair of reflections: one is a group reflection where they highlight how they completed the assignment and what they learned from their user test so they could revise the instructions; the other is a personal reflection where they tell me about three things that went well and three things they might do differently the next time they work in a group.

You may recognize this as a classic "plus/delta" exercise. My goal with this "plus/delta" is to have students recognize what elements of teamwork helped them work effectively together (plus) so they can do that again the next time they work in a team. And to identify where the team struggled (delta) so they can learn from the experience.

I thought their "plus/delta" reflections provided an interesting insight into how students approach group work, and I wanted to share a few common themes from that exercise:

Should meet more frequently. This was by far the most common "delta" identified by the students. I encourage students to meet every day as a group, even if it's just a 15-minute Zoom call to "check in" and report what's been done, and what everyone plans to do next. Groups that meet frequently are often more successful on this group project. But those that do not meet on a regular schedule tend to struggle, and this shows in the quality of the group project.

Should communicate more. This can be a side effect of not meeting frequently, although this is a slightly different issue. A key element of effective group work is communication. Groups that stay in contact do much better on this group project. "Communication" might mean maintaining a shared document that tracks tasks, and you update the document every time you complete a task. Or "communication" might simply be emailing the group when you finish working on a task.

Unclear roles. Part of the small group activities I assign at the start of the project ask students to identify the tasks they will need to achieve, and the roles of each participant. I leave this up to the students. For example, one student in the group might enjoy doing proofreading; why not let that student take the lead in editing the instructions? Another student might be very strong in design; that student might take the lead in creating the document design. Groups that identify and divide roles are more effective in this project; those that do not tend to struggle.

Don't wait until the last minute. This is probably to be expected with any undergraduate work—but if we're honest, we see this in professional work too. If the schedule says this task isn't due until Thursday, then students tend to wait until Thursday to work on it. But the groups that worked on things a little bit every day found that the project was much easier. Those that left things until the last minute scrambled to get everything together, and that showed in the quality of the project.

I recognize that working together in a group for the first time is not a fun experience, but group work is a necessary skill. It doesn't matter what field these students want to work in, they will need to work as part of a group. It was interesting to watch students learn from this experience.