Trust

[Celey]

I used to have trouble working in groups. I still do, to some extent. I am a lot better at it than I was, though. I had some of the same problems a lot of you have mentioned.

When I was younger and I was put in groups, I would be extremely bossy. I would not let anyone do anything. I had to do it all... I was a perfectionist (I've managed to tone my perfectionism down, I still have relapses every now and then). Everybody hated me for it. Unfortunately, I could not accept that because I wanted to please everybody, too. So, when it got to my middle school and early high school years, I would not boss anyone around. I would sit and ask everyone what they wanted to do on the project. Once my part was agreed upon, I would work on it. I didn't care if my grade suffered because someone didn't do their part. Near the end of my high school years, I managed to find a good balance between the bossiness and the passivity.

However, about a year or so ago, in college, I did have some minor difficulty. I had slipped into being too passive. We were doing this fun little experiment in my Leadership Development Studies class... One group (mine) was given a set of shapes that were supposed to fit together in such a way to form a square. The other group got the directions in how to put the puzzle together, and they had to relay to us how to put the puzzle together verbally (meaning they couldn't touch the puzzle pieces or point or anything). I really love puzzles, so I was pretty eager about trying to solve it. However, someone was pretty adamant about being the leader of the group I was in. So, I sat back and followed orders.

Sometime into the puzzle, I had figured out how to solve it, and I tried to get my group members' attention. They would not listen to me. I was being a little too timid about it, not aggressive enough. I did get a momentary peak of aggression, but it quickly withdrew when one of the group members snapped at me. The other group didn't get listened to, either, because they tried telling my group members that I had the right idea.

Naturally, it turned out that I was right about how to solve the puzzle. The other group told my group that they should have listened to me. Oh well...

[studylove]

So true Max, I have partially the same thing. I'm not like a natural leader but when it comes to school projects people tend to turn to me because they know I'm serious about things. I totally know how you feel like if you let other people do stuff, you just don't know what they've done and if it's good enough. I find it hard to trust people with certain tasks and like someone else mentioned, I'd rather be overworked than disappointed.

Oh and the "having things worked out immediately" is also hard for other people sometimes. I tend to come up with big plans and then they're either trying to politely abandon my ideas, or they're like "yeah, sure, whatever" but they don't really want to cooperate. That's why I prefer individual projects because they give me the opportunity to show who I am and what I've got. Teachers generally aren't interested in who does what within a group anyways, so you never get the chance to show what you're worth if you work in groups.

[tiger_lily]

I definitely despise group work. I have the same perfectionist leanings as the rest, i.e., if it's not done by me it's crap because I didn't work on it.

When I was younger, I wasn't shy about taking the lead and doing everything myself to ensure the project was the best it could be (in my opinion.) It didn't matter what class the work was for, when I was younger I felt I was the best at EVERYTHING, or at least better than my classmates. And for a while, this technique worked until my teachers caught on and made everyone contribute. It was terrible.

The only exception to this would be my gifted classes. There were about 9 of us in my entire school district identified as "gifted." We had a teacher who specialized in gifted learning and teaching come to our school every Thursday, along with kids from the other elementary school, and we'd spend the entire day learning not just skills beyond what our non-gifted peers learned, but entirely different realms of knowledge. And because none of us liked group work, everything was about group work. We finally learned to trust each other's judgment, not blindly, but to an extent. We did a heavy concentration with physics in third grade, forensic science in fourth grade with a section of physics, and a heavy concentration of oceanography in fifth grade. As fifth graders, we had to construct these inflatable mini-room kind of things (that were big enough for several people to fit in), with fans and clear plastic sheeting. So we also had a bit of architecture thrown in. We even got to dissect these small sharks. It was amazing, and made me more accepting of group work---but only if my group members were also gifteds.

In high school, I've kind of adopted a "let them work on it now, I'll fix it later" attitude. I've kind of given up trying to lead the groups, as my teachers always pick group leaders and wouldn't you know, the favorites are picked. I am never a favorite with my teachers. Anyway, once my bumbling group members (even my friends get put in this category when academic work is the focus :/ ) have finished their idea with minimal help from me, I volunteer to keep it at my house until its time to turn it in. They all agree usually, as I'm usually the only one who has the week's assignment sheet by Tuesday. (Organization FTW!)
When they do this, I take the project home and completely re-do the entire thing, while making sure my re-do is essentially identical to their work. I bring it back, we all get A's, and I feel like crap because 1.) everyone thought that they contributed to that grade and 2.) they probably don't think I'm capable of what I've done and I've been doing. It kind of lowers the self-esteem a bit, I suppose. But it works better than insisting to my teachers that I could lead the group better than...them

[a thousand autumn]

You sound like hermione when you were younger o_O And sad case, your teachers pick the leaders. We get to pick leaders on our own most of the time. Or well at least if the teacher picks the leader, we call him/her the representative and not the leader.

I can't remember how I was when I was younger, but obviously not this I don't care, all or none attitude.

[kuyan]

I think we always picked our leaders. And once the leaders were picked, they normally didn't use their power much anyway (except one time).

[a thousand autumn]

It's not like there's much power to use? For me I was talking about like group projects. What kind of power would you have other than ordering people around, coordinating stuff and blah? You could be talking about some other leaders, I don't know.

[kuyan]

I was talking about schol projects. What I meant was that they normally didn't order people around or coordinate them, that I remember. Although, I'm not sure of that- I don't remember that clearly.

[Travisk]

I can't say anything except spot-on.




I rarely let people do something instead of me, and if I do, I watch them to make sure they are doing it right, which they often don't (At least in my mind), and I need to correct them.


One of the reasons I hate working in a group.