They're probably right to. In the workplace, teams that fail usually bring everyone down with them. But there are a few ways to survive that fallout, or at least minimize its impact on your own career.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
How To Survive Working On An Underperforming Team
They're probably right to. In the workplace, teams that fail usually bring everyone down with them. But there are a few ways to survive that fallout, or at least minimize its impact on your own career.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
As the freshman Design and Production students finish up with a big group project and continue to work on another, this article could not have come at a better time. Sure, a lot of us have worked on history or English projects in groups, but a lot of us have really never experienced designing and starting from scratch as a group. I agree with the article that the first instinct one has when working with a group is "How and I doing?" and not really "How is my work affecting the team?". I think that this is a very important lesson for anyone to learn. The ways in which the article suggests on handling this type of thinking, I think is awesome. The idea to remind the group of its shared goal can get everyone to work hard in order to achieve it. Especially if the group members know each other and feel a obligation not to let their teammates down, that can help each member do their best. another tip about helping people find their roles is something that I had never really took the time to think about. I think that the author of the article brings up a really good point about how any person can be beneficial when you find out how they work. The last tip about find a mentor was something that I have done and I have found it to be very helpful for all of the reasons stated in the article. A mentor also gives you an outside perspective that has more experience and can help you when dealing with problems.
This is a very poignant article that comes in at a very good time. After being involved with Rube and being in the midst of Arcade, much of what this article talks about is extremely relevant! I think that the nature of projects that live within the realm of theatre is much more sensitive and especially dependent on how well one department can cooperate and compromise with the other department. My experience with Rube hit few of the points mentioned in the article. I remember before we started the Rube Goldberg project, we had a whole class meeting about how it was important for us all to not let the project tear us apart and how our common goal was to head into this project together. However, I think that the spirit wavered a little bit here and there (the natural course of the project). We also spoke about dividing groups up into those with specific strengths in order to optimize each group, but groups chose each other before that could happen and whether or not that ended up as a good thing doesn't really matter any more I suppose (cause Rube worked! After 11 times, BUT IT WORKED!).
This article holds many relevant values when it comes to running a team. Not once does it point out or allude to the idea that a team requires one specific leader, but instead focuses on the work ethics and quality of the team members in the overall sense of the team’s output. Group projects do tend to hold that awkward tension of everyone wanting to do well and also being unsure of how their team members can help them achieve their goals. And this article makes an excellent point in saying that sharing your goals right off the bat is a great way to unify and motivate the team as a whole. It is grotesquely difficult to work in a team when you don’t feel as though you’re doing something you care about, but if your voice is heard and collaborated upon from the beginning, this really does raise spirits and work ethic within the team.
Group projects are never perfect and easy for everyone. There is often one person that does not really care or does not know how to contribute to the group. We do a lot of group projects here and I have learned so much about working with different people. You cannot treat every group you are in the same because people have different personalities and ways of working. It always takes a few days to figure out the grove of your group and the best way to get the group to work the best together. There are always the few people that try to take over everything and get most of the work done. Those people can be very helpful because they are going to get the project done no matter what, but they can sometimes prevent other people from speaking up and doing the work that should and know how to do. A balance between the two types of people is very important.
This article has a a lot of important points, many of which are why I ended up coming to Carnegie Mellon. With conservatory programs like UNCSA where you declare a focus from the beginning, I feel like you would loose sense of making it an entire geoup project. For me I was scared that with a program like that i would become consumed with making sure the LIGHTING worked and the show would be less of a priority. I feel like at CMU, especially with projects like rube and arcade, we are really learning to have a group mentality. With rube specifically this lesson hit you right over the head. Even if your steps work, or your groups steps work, you have still failed. When my class was running our rube it was clear that we wouldnt be successful until we all focused on the ENTIRE machine working, instead of our individual elements.
I definitely agree that, at least in the public American school system, we are not taught properly to work together/ function well in groups. I definitely learned more about working in groups through working on my high school tech crew than I ever did in any classroom setting. I think that, too often, the idea of a group member’s lack of effort bringing down your own grade or success trumps the idea of wanting success for the group as a whole, which I think is a key pillar in the concept of theater; that if one person goes down, the whole ship goes down with them. As much as I hate to say this, during rube, I could practically feel the knowledge of how to work with others seeping into me as what felt like the worst kind of chaos ensued around me. I think this connects a lot to what the article describes as a “shared mission”, since the success of one group was a success for the whole class. The idea of roles relates well to our current arcade projects. I think everyone has come across difficulties with the division of labor and how the different departments overlap and interconnect. Although I have always said that I am not someone who likes group projects, this semester has ingrained in me a lot of knowledge about how valuable it can be to work on a team, and how to overcome the obstacles that come with having different perceptions of the work.
Even though this article discusses teamwork in business settings, I think it's applicable to almost any kind of group work/collaborations, including theatre. This second semester, especially after rube, I really learned what it's like to work with others and the nature of collaboration. Unlike high school projects where you can divide up the work and individually work on your own part, there is no way to avoid the collaboration process to achieve the final product. One thing that I didn't know until now that this article talks about as well is how big of an impact it makes once a sense of shared mission is created. During rube, I think the strong sense of a shared mission made us compromise/let go when we encountered conflicts/obstacles that we other wise wouldn't have. One thing this article didn't mention that I think can also be helpful is to be aware of the time limit. This also forces group members to be less stubborn and be more willing to make compromises in order to achieve the ultimate goal.
This article couldn’t have said it any better. Group work is so important when it comes to the work place. There are very few times where you are asked to do something from start to finish without getting some help from other colleagues. I think that there are in fact many universities that don’t do a good job implementing collaboration into the curriculum. CMU on the other hand makes this a top priority and this whole semester has revolved around group projects. This is something that has been very good for me because working on a team can sometimes be hard for me. I have quickly learned that it is important to have a project lead or someone who is driving the project train because it makes sure that everyone is in sync and working efficiently. Being organized and making sure that everyone is playing their role is also very important to having an efficient team. I’m telling you right now this is something you want to learn sooner rather than later, being able to walk into a job and take on a leadership role makes you a much better candidate for any job.
This is especially important to the freshman right now as we're working on Arcade. The point about consiencious workers vs non-conscientious workers is especially interesting, because I feel like as we're growing up we're taught that being conscientious is the only way to succeed and that people who don't have attention to detail and look for multiple ways to solve a problem are just being lazy. However, this article showed that even those who are't detail people are important to a group because they can think their way out of things in a way that more traditional people might struggle with. I think the most important thing in a group project is the balance of power, and ensuring that no one-- whether they are conscientious or not conscientious-- becomes the be-all, end-all person. This may mean that perfectionists have to concede some facets of the project in the interest of time and sanity, or that big-picture people have to step up their game and increase their craftsmanship. Either way, group projects require all types of people and a solid balance between them.
I think the shift from school to work is a very interesting one. I mean by the time I graduate college I will have been in school for the last 18 years of my life. All of a sudden in the real world you don’t get graded and you’re working at an actual job in your field, assuming everything went according to plan at least, but this is a tremendous shift in mentality. When working in the professional world your individual reputation as a person can often be derived from your work separate from your team but the success of your projects is intimately tied to the ability for you and your team to work together well. It’s something we practice a lot here at Carnegie Mellon but I think it’s also one of the hardest skills to learn. It involves understanding others and more importantly understanding yourself and knowing when you may have crossed that line.
Post a Comment