The 5 types of people responsible for horrible group experiences:
Working in groups is a necessary skill one should have mastered before they enter into a high paying job. It teaches you how to work with a wide range of people, many of whom you may or may not get along with. It teaches you how to work with other people to get the job done, by dividing up work equally. But most importantly it teaches you how to recognize other people’s talents and divide up the work so that each person has a piece that matches their specific skill sets. Overall, working in groups is supposed to optimize performance, and create an atmosphere in which everyone can effectively communicate with one another. At the end of the day group projects are a necessary evil, but that doesn’t stop it from being a lot of people’s least favorite mode of working. Because while working in groups is supposed to be all of those things previously mentioned, there are 5 types of people that absolutely poison the experience.
The Lay-about:
Chances are slim that everyone in your group will be geared toward making sure the workload is evenly distributed. For some reason working within group settings seems to inspire a certain degree of laziness. There will always be one, and in some extreme cases many, who will not make any move to help you with your project. No matter how hard you try these people know that someone else, who needs this grade more than them, will make sure their part is done no matter what. You can try giving them as little to do as possible, but this too will fail in the end. There are two ways to effectively combat a lay-about, either be the type of person who hounds them to the point of irritation, or threaten to leave their name out of the project all together.
The Procrastinator:
One step down from the lay-about is the procrastinator. These types of people are the hardest to spot and therefore the hardest to avoid grouping with. On the outside they seem to care about getting a good grade, and make every promise to contribute. But when push comes to shove these are the people you are texting at two in the morning to email you their piece of the project. Whether done spontaneously or whether its premeditated, these people leave everything to the last minute. The only ways to combat these groups of people is by consistently checking in with them in order to keep them on track. At one point it’s going to feel like reminding your kid brother to remember their backpack before leaving the house in the morning. In other words it’s going to feel like a full time job, a job that you shouldn’t even have to be doing in the first place.
The Dictator:
No matter how hard you try to make sure everyone has a say by keeping things as democrat as possible, one person is always going to have to step up to become mission control. Its this persons job to make sure that everyone has a part that they want to do and that everyone is kept on track. These people generally rise to the occasion naturally, taking it upon themselves to get things done. In cases where those who naturally rise are absent, the group may vote on who will be there representative. Out of the people who rise comes two groups of people, those who try their best to make sure everyone does something, and those who demand everyone do it their way. The latter is what is known as the dictator. The only way to combat these types of people is to come to a consensus that they are abusing their power and try to impeach them. But know that like all leaders driven by power, they will not go down lightly. This is because they hold a fundamental belief that their way is the only way of getting things done, and they will fight tooth and nail to have their way.
The No Show:
Out of all the types of people that you can encounter working in groups, the no show, is the worst. Because while all the other types can be combatted somehow, granted some with better success than others, the no show is so far out of your reach there is nothing you can do. Reaching out to this person is useless because you are not even sure of whom they are in the first place. Trying to give them a part is a waste because you know that whatever part you delegate will never be communicated to them. The only think you can do in this situation is proceeding as if that person is not a member of your group at all. One can only hope that someone holds them accountable for their absence, someone with much more authority than you.
The Negotiator:
Out of the four types of people that I have previously mentioned in this article, the Negotiator is the one I hate the most. I can deal with someone who doesn’t show up, or someone who doesn’t turn in their work on time. What I can’t deal with is someone whining that every little word they have to say isn’t being included in the project. I recently had to do a project in a group of three with very little time to actually pull the work together. We all sat down and started throwing ideas out there to start compiling a presentation, when one member of our group starts to whine. Of all the ideas they had thrown out we had only picked up on the best two or three, and this was troubling them. This person proceeded to waste so much time explaining that they didn’t feel as if they were being properly represented. To avoid drama, we had to make a point of passing every idea through them first, and then wasting more time waiting for them to agree or disagree with the suggestion. I have never been more irritated with someone in my whole life; it took so much self-control not to throttle this person then and there. It took days to do what should have taken us hours, all because of this one persons need to have everything they said validated. The best way to combat these types of people is by avoiding them like the plague whenever you can.
Personally, while I understand that working in groups is preparing us for real world situations, I see no point in them. Half of us could go on to take up jobs that require working individually rather than in large groups. Working in groups is also tailored to helping you learn to work with all kinds of people. But most of the time it feels like working in groups is all about working around those kinds of people, rather than with them. It takes too much time and effort to moderate those few who make it their life’s mission to do nothing. No matter how you spin it these 5 types of people make group experiences exhausting and not worth the trouble.
