Advice on working in a group successfully?

My best advice is not what you want to hear: just do the project for them.

It is not fair. But it will keep you sane (or, saner than you would be while trying to get everyone else to do their share), and you will be happier with the final product. Other people won’t do it the way you wanted anyway.

I had your experience in college many times. The last time it happened, our group had met several times and agreed on how the work should be divided up. When we got together the night before it was due (long after I had wanted to meet) to put the final product together, the other group members had done nothing. I ended up doing their entire share the night before, finishing about ten minutes before we had to hand it in.

Just do the project for them.

@Mariah You’re hosed. You’ve been through so much you’re going to be way more mature than most students your age. I guess the best advice I have would be leave your mark as clearly as you can on the projects, talk to the professors and ask questions so they see you’re doing the work and let things play out. Professors aren’t dumb, they see this all the time. Just don’t whine and pout and complain. They will see a winner for what they are. They also see a whiner for what they are. Good luck.

You have to dominate them with an iron fist.

Buckle down and do the work. It may be a burden now, but when it comes to real world work, you will be better positioned to advance than your fellow students.

If at all possible, try to figure out who else in the group takes the work seriously, and partner with them. Otherwise…. Yeah, you’re pretty much stuck doing what @nikipedia suggests.

Are you a natural born leader? If not, fake it, if you take the leadership role and delegate, you might be surprised at how others will sort of automatically view you as a leader and fall into line. :-)

This afternoon I was in a situation in a retail establishment where a clerk was having trouble processing a customers purchase and everyone in line about 6 of us were starting to get pissy. The poor frazzled clerk was being extremely apologetic and I simple spoke up with confidence and said ” take your time, I don’t believe in getting upset when someone is trying their best.” Heh! Worked like a charm, every other customer just shut right up as I had established myself as the leader. lol

I’d simply take on the leader role and see what happens. ;-)

Edit: replace the word “group” in my above post with “class”. Whoever else in the class takes the work seriously.

I don’t know if this will work in a collegiate environment, but it worked for me on the job. I created a form that had columns for Task, Person Responsible, and Due Date. When the project team met, we discussed the steps that needed to take place in order to accomplish the project. This went into the Task column. Then people volunteered for the tasks. Their name went in the Responsible Party column. Then we all agreed on reasonable Due Dates. Each person assigned a task was held responsible for meeting the deadline. Everyone was copied on or e-mailed the list. Weekly meetings were held for updates and adjustments to the list. If something came up between meetings, the task owner alerted the rest of the group. It worked like a charm.

@Pied_Pfeffer Excellent methodology, and in doing that you also established yourself as a leader. Funny how all it takes is one person to set a precedent and well, the shepherd has the flock following. haha

Thanks @Coloma It ended up being a simple solution that divvied up the work. In the end, everyone felt good about their contributions to the projects. And while it took a lot longer than just doing it on my own, we ended up with better results than I possibly could have come up with flying solo.

I don’t really have any advice, but…I know that feeeeel!
Hang in there!

If you are in the habit of finishing your part of the work, then sit back and enjoy a rest. Let the others either work at your pace or take a long break, while the others do their part.

The other workers have you figured out and they will gladly let you do your part for them.

You are the only one that can change this. Like I said, walk away after completing your part of the work and only come back, when the others have finished theirs.

They are using you.

One thing about @Pied_Pfeffer‘s method is that you can take people who are not ready to start and help them get organized. If you come prepared with a preliminary list of tasks, but go through the process of asking everyone what tasks they think need doing, and put those tasks on the list, you are more likely to get buy-in on these tasks. So you come with a list, but your goal is to get everyone else to put those items on the list.

Then people volunteer. You can volunteer for the lions share, but if you get them to do anything, you are ahead of the game.

Then meeting regularly is essential to keep people on task. Everyone has to hold everyone accountable, but do it nicely. Always solve problems and avoid blaming people for not doing what they said they would do. That doesn’t help. Just offer help in doing what they said they would do. People are grateful for that, and sometimes feel guilty about not carrying their share and will pick up the pace a bit.

Good luck!

You have a huge advantage now that you may not have in a career: You get to choose the team, or whether to be on it or not.

Why be part of a team that would take advantage of you in this way? Surely you can find like-minded serious and motivated students to join with, someone who will both support and challenge you. If not, why not just dump the team you’re on and do the project yourself?

@Mariah – I had a very similar work ethic earlier in my college career until I was taking graduate level seminars and 500 and higher-level courses that had such a heavy workload that I ended up often times having to work on something right near a due date—something that might have looked like procrastination to my fellow grad seminar classmates…but really, it was just because I was overloaded.
I’m not saying that this is why your classmates aren’t working at the same pace as you—but you might want to consider that:
a) they may be working a few jobs and/or are taking a far heavier course load than you
or
b) they work best with the pressure of a deadline and hence don’t pace themselves and work earlier before the due date like you do.

That said, when I was in your position (and because I’m a type-a person) I also often ended up creating a project plan and we all divvied up the work..and I often got mine done first and then spent my time anxious about a few slackers in the group who might cause our group to get a bad grade.

Here’s what I did..mainly to put my own mind at ease. I actually completed all my work, then did some of their work. I was careful not to take materials out of the library that they might need (this was back in the day when we actually needed to use books to write papers…yes, this makes me feel old…) BUT I did my work + the work assigned to the 2 or 3 other people I thought might drop the ball. Mind you, I didn’t volunteer the completed work until it looked like our grade was truly in jeopardy. It was just my “insurance policy”—I kept it in my proverbial back pocket to include in our submission in case I needed it at the 11th hour.

I ended up only needing to hand in work for someone else on my team one time. As luck would have it the professor was also my advisor – someone I knew well enough that I could pop by during his office hours and was able to explain to him what happened. Our group got a good grade, the student in our group who didn’t pull his weight dropped the class after a chat with the professor where the prof told him he knew the work wasn’t his and he was going to get an incomplete.

Thanks all for the advice.

Sometimes I do end up doing like @nikipedia said and I just go ahead and do the whole thing. Frustrating, but it works. How,ever sometimes projects are assigned to a group simply because they are far too big to be done alone. My current predicament is building and programming a robot and it’s just a huge task. Fortunately my partners have been pretty good, they just don’t always want to work as early as I do which stresses me out.

I try to be a leader, but it just feels a little awkward for me to assert leadership over my peers and delegate tasks – what gives me that kind of authority over them? I feel like they’d just end up hating me. But @Pied_Pfeffer‘s idea is nice, having people to volunteer for specific tasks. So long as people actually see it through!

I’m really tempted to do my share and then sit back and say “alright, the rest is up to you guys.” But I just don’t trust that the work will get done if I do that, not with any level of quality anyway.

And here’s why I feel that way. We have group lab assignments due every week. They’re extensive, and it is common to run into unexpected problems, so I like to start them with time to spare. They are assigned on Wednesdays and due the following Monday, and I usually initiate contact with my partners on Wednesday or Thursday to set up a time to get started. One Wednesday, I started feeling crummy. I went to the lab anyway to get a start on the assignment and ended up puking on the ground outside the building. That evening I felt worse and worse so I went to the hospital and had to be admitted for a few days because it turned out I was having a little surgical complication. I put the lab work out of my mind; I had enough else to worry about with getting well and catching up with other work I was missing. My lab partners would surely take care of most of it. I get back on campus on Monday – lab due date – and talk to my partners. They had done NOTHING. So what, if I’m not there to initiate meetings you just won’t do anything, is that how it is? So I went and talked to the professor and got a two day extension and ended up hurriedly finishing up, mostly by myself, while still feeling a little under the weather and having a shit ton of other work to catch up on. Thanks guys. Sorry about the rant.

I think better organization is going to be key. I do really like @Pied_Pfeffer‘s idea. It’s a little late in the game to implements something like that on my current project (due this Friday), but next time I have group work I’ll definitely give it a shot. Thanks everyone!

I would suggest (in addition to the suggestions made above), taking a project management approach to group work. @Pied_Pfeffer has given some really practical tips. I would suggest organising formal meetings – breaking up the work into smaller tasks and delegating those tasks to other people. Try to get people to identify their own strengths (and weaknesses). For instance, don’t give the big picture person the editing task. Get to know about other people’s time constraints. If someone is working and studying, don’t give them tasks that require them to visit the library for days on end. Stay task focused (rather than focusing on the person) to avoid conflict. Keep careful records of meetings, what tasks were allocated to who, when group members said things would be done – work that wasn’t completed that you had to take over. That way, you have proof to show your professor if problems occur. Use Skype/email etc. if meeting in person is hard for some people.

Also, start to identify the people who work hard and get things done. Then you can talk to them about being in your group in the future.

There is no “I” in team, but there is a “me” if you look hard enough.