Episode 107 - Listen To This If… You need to work effectively in a group

Transcript

Jen (00:00:11)

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to another episode of Listen to This If….. I'm Jen and I'm joined by my excellent friend, Michael. We are the team from Let's Talk SciComm. And in these episodes, we give ourselves only five minutes to try and solve a problem that you might be having, or at least to give you some new ideas about something you might be stuck on.

So Michael, today's topic is, what do you do when you really need to work effectively in a group? And perhaps group work is something you haven't had the best experiences of in the past.

Michael (00:00:46)

Hmm, it's always a challenging one, right? We often ask the students, "Have you had challenges in group work before?" And a lot of them have. So you know, it's understandable.

Look, I think the best thing to do here is if you want to work effectively as a group, you have to communicate as a group, not avoid communicating with each other.

And you know, don't think like an individual that you know, I'm just going to do my individual piece here and you know, submit that.

You need to have things like maybe a group chat, maybe some shared documents, some regular check-ins, so that you're all kind of thinking and communicating cohesively together. You know, to make sure that you're, you know, finding problems early.

Because the worst thing is if you're not communicating. You know, there are some issues. They're only found out at the last minute, and then there's not time to fix them.

So, you know, you want to work together as a group, the best thing to do is you know, communicate as a group. And every group probably communicates differently, right? You don't have to have a group chat. But have a conversation around, you know, what works for everyone considering you know, people have other things going on.

So yeah, regular communication as a group. And maybe trying to figure out from the start, you know, how are we going to work best together? You know, maybe you don't need to start by going, "okay, right, we need to come up with a plan in our first meeting".

Maybe the first meeting is about, okay, just setting ground rules. How do we work effectively together? How do we make the most out of the diverse skills that we all bring to this group? And figuring that stuff out first, then the work will follow.

Jen (00:02:37)

Yeah, I think that's all very very good advice, and a lot of what I would have said.

So perhaps what I'll say is I think the first thing to do is to really reflect and work out what your assumptions are.

You know, what is it that you are going into this group project thinking about? Is it, Oh, I hate group projects, and there's always scapegoats, and there's always freeloaders, and I end up doing all the work?

Or is it, Oh my gosh, actually, I don't have time to commit to this right now. I've got so many other things going on in my life. Hopefully someone else will do all the work this time.

Or you know, really be honest with yourself about what your expectations are, and what sort of group member you want to be.

And if you do have something major going on in your life at the moment that is going to impact your ability to contribute. Like Michael just said, communication, being honest about that.

So I think yeah, the first step is working out what you're bringing to the group and owning that. Because if you can own that and take responsibility for what you're thinking about and how you're gonna act in the group, then I think that can set the stage for exactly what you just said Michael, which is to actually spend some time having honest conversations about how do we want this group to function.

So the sort of groups that I've worked in, we call that establishing your group norms. So you know, what are the behaviours that are okay? What are the behaviours that aren't okay? When do I want to be contacted? How do I want to be contacted? What are our expectations? What will the consequences be if somebody doesn't complete what they've been asked to complete? If somebody just disappears, what are we going to do about that? All the stuff you just mentioned.

So that before anything goes wrong, you've had those discussions about what action are we going to take? And often that's called writing a group contract. So it all actually gets written down and people agree.

And then maybe my last step would be... You know, I'm not suggesting that you be the person who gets walked all over and treated badly and you do all the work and everyone else gets the credit.

But I do think it pays to give other people the benefit of the doubt rather than immediately assume ill intent. To just take a moment and think, Well, what could be going on for this person that they haven't upheld their side of the bargain? Have they got mental health challenges? Are there other things going on in their life?

You know, just assuming that people are trying to do their best and then problem solving with them rather than seeing someone as the enemy, I think that can be a really good, good way to go, within reason. You've got to have boundaries, of course. But people generally try and do their best in my experience. And if they're not pulling their weight, it's usually for a reason.

Michael (00:05:07)

Hmm, yeah, absolutely. You know, and if you do encounter problems, it can be really good to keep a record of that because you might be sitting in a job interview in three years from now and they'll say, "Tell us about a time that you had to overcome a problem as part of a team".

If you try and make something up on the spot, not good. But if you can go back to your notes, you'll give a much fuller answer to that. So problems are... in a group are not necessarily a bad thing. Think of them as a you know, a challenge that you can learn from.

Jen (00:05:42)

Yeah, hundred percent.

And good luck. Group projects can be really hard. People work differently, but it's such an important skill. So good luck with whatever your next group task is.

Michael (00:05:53)

Good luck.

Jen (00:06:07)

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed the episode and a huge thanks to our production team, Steven Tang and Madeleine Kelly.

That's it for this week. See ya.