How to Survive Group Projects in School

Biggest Problems reaching a Consensus in Group Projects

Group projects are just that group projects. We started by one person completing an outline of the project then just taking a portion of the project and then reviewing and adding additional input. It went quite smoothly. In every team some have strengths and weakness. You draw upon those strengths in order to complete you team. Skills that everyone needs to excel in the work place and to get along with co-workers are Self Management Skills. These skills include decision making, learned willingness, self assessment, self-discipline, self-marking, and stress resistance. (Cologne, 2000). These skills are known as "Soft Skills" (Cologne, 2000) we know and use these skills every day they are also referred to as social skills. "The skills include personality traits like emotional maturity, eagerness to learn, and willingness to share and embrace new ideas." (Cologne, 2000) Self-discipline is considered to be a work ethic, are you someone that needs to be told what and how to do something, or can you manage your own time. This is a personal trait. Self-marketing is how you present your ideas to the group. Stress Resistance is your ability to meet deadlines and handle stress at work.

Problems often arise when there is conflict among teams or one or more persons on team are "not pulling their weight" or performing poorly. Performance issues can be directly tied to the quality of leadership rather than the quality of people. (Ideabridge, 2002) It is the group leader's position to ensure he does what is best for the team and not the individual.

Communication will be key to keeping employees on track with their status and what they need to do to improve upon their performance. It will be the group leader and / or managers responsibility to ensure that each person of the team performs to his/her expectations.

As I see our team work together on the business plan, our biggest obstacle was over coming time issues and working with others work schedules. Getting us all together at one time was very difficult and most communication was done though the message board and email. I can honestly say that our team did not have a group leader, but each added his /her own input to be sure they contributing to the team.

The most important thing to keep in mind is communication. Be sure that the group leader communicates to its team members what is expected of them and team members communicate any problems that may arise so that the group leaders can assist them.

References:

Cologne, Dr Goeran Nieragden, September 200, "The weekly column, The Soft Skills of Business English, [Electronic Version] retrieved on August 1, 2006 from http://www.eltnewsletter.com/back/September2000/art282000.htm

Ideabridge, 1999-2002, The Ideabridge White Paper Series, "The Leadership Series: Dealing with Performance Issues", [Electronic Version] retrieved on August 1, 2006 from http://www.ideabridge.com/ideabridgecom/whitepapers/46.pdf