by Liz Clark | Aug 2, 2015 | Business Matters, Pursuits, Team Building
Remember that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach when your teacher announced a new group project? Whether the teacher chose the groups or you got to choose didn’t matter – no one liked group projects. I liked to work alone because I was the nerd kid who ended up doing most of the work for the entire group. I always thought the other kids must love group projects. But, no. They hated them, too. We didn’t realize it, but “group work” is an educational theory to help students develop something beyond learning the subject matter at hand – skills like teamwork and leadership. You know, to “prepare for real life.” I’m not sure if that worked as well as the theory postulated it would. But, it is true that teams are an inevitable part of real life: at work, in business, sports, church, with friends and family – every project has the potential to need a team. We may still be groaning and rolling our eyes on the inside at the idea of having to work as a team, but “resistance is futile:” we cannot simply avoid “group work” forever. As a business consultant (and as a human!), I’ve worked with many teams over the years, and it is truly awful to be on a losing team. But, it’s also incredibly amazing to be part of a high-performance team. How do you know the difference? One way is to measure is results: is the team achieving what it was meant to achieve? But, any quick study in human behavior will tell you: achievement is only one measure of success. You can scare, manipulate, bribe (read: “incentivize”) people into “delivering results” – that doesn’t necessarily...
