Please give details of a time when you have had to deal with a challenging group situation.
What was the issue?
In the third year of my university degree, the 40 students on my course were assigned a 4 week full-time project with a loose specification to design and implement a multi-agent trading game. The year split into 5 groups of 8 students. 4 groups were designing competing agents within a system that the fifth group implemented. In my particular group I was one of the two leaders, and had to decide and assign work between myself and 3 other students.
The issue was that one of these three students refused to regularly attend daily work sessions, and when he did attend his lack of understanding of the task assigned meant that his progress was slow. He didn’t put in the ground work to try to understand, nor did he have the confidence to admit to others that he had problems. This also meant that there was pressure to complete tasks.
What action did you take personally to resolve the problem?
As subgroup leader I spoke to him regularly about what his tasks were, and what he needed to do to achieve them. I provided him with support and encouragement. I told him that I had concerns that he wasn’t doing enough, and he could come to me with any problems. I did my best to support him, but there is only so much that can be done especially when he didn’t pick up phone calls.
Very quickly it became obvious not to expect results from this team member so I reassigned his tasks which were core to the project. I gave him aspects of the project that were group aims but not core functionality, parts of the user interface. This gave him the opportunity at getting good marks for his participation in the project if he was able to recover and work hard to get it done.
What was the outcome?
I was successful in the fact that as sub-group leader, the group achieved its core aims and implementation while also going out of my way to support and give the student in question a good opportunity to show his hard work and skill to get good marks. But it is a hard thing to learn when it comes down to people and their own future that due diligence doesn’t equate to success.
The student in question didn’t get good peer reviews, and the group project report clearly indicated each individual’s contributions to the design and implementation. The group itself attained good marks, with all other individuals also getting good marks.
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