TRANSCRIPT:
 

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 108 - how to survive group work. We’ll cover the reasons it can feel like a nightmare and how to try to help your teen in their mindset and with the practicalities - so your teen doesn’t end up doing the work for everyone, or get left out AND gets the grade they personally deserve no matter the contribution or work of others.

Hey VIP’s! I hope you and your teens are doing great.
 

I'm feeling particularly good about this episode because I’ve finally decided to tackle this little beast of a topic. Honestly, I had a request from a parent a while ago - a LONG while ago - to do an episode on the podcast about group work. And as you can tell, I’ve put it off for a long time. Not because it isn’t relevant or important. But because, this one does stump me a little bit.

Group work can be HARD. Especially in school. I think we might agree that it can still be tough as an adult. 

I think group work at any stage or in any arena can be challenging. But at school, where so many factors are at play, and there can be so many uneven variables between the students, then it can be, well, annoying, frustrating, a total nightmare… and I think, ESPECIALLY for those students who are hard working and do want to do well, if ever they are in a group with those less so or with students they don’t personally gel with or get along with that well OR if they are in a group where others want to kind of take over. And let’s be honest, this is what we’re talking about here. Any elements of un-evenness. Because if your teen is with their friends, so they’re on the same social standing, and they are all at the same academic level and all want to put in the same effort, then group work would likely be a lot more enjoyable and probably a lot more successful and I wouldn’t have had this request and wouldn’t be trying my best to give any shreds of help or advice.
 

I can tell you - I have never mastered this myself. And so this will be a bit of a different episode, because I don’t feel like I’m going to be able to give you great advice or tips that I really feel like I’m super confident in, are proven to succeed, or that I’ve had a ton of experience in. Those are the things I really aim to be the case on anything I share anywhere, but, I have thought about this a lot, and if there are maybe just one or two ‘suggestions’ let’s call them, that might just make the group work process a little less painful, and a little more enjoyable or successful for your teen, then I think it is worthwhile sharing them.

So, here’s how I’ll go about this. If you were my nephew in 12 years time (he’s currently 3) and you had a group work project coming - here’s how I’d try to help.  

The first thing I’d say is:

Expect the worst.

It probably WILL be annoying. It probably WON’T be fun. If that’s not the case, bonus, yay. But as much as I’m usually the optimist, in this case I wonder whether we look at this a bit differently. I shared a similar concept to this in episode 78 where I talked about an alternative strategy when your teen ‘hates’ or struggles with a subject. Where instead of trying convince that they’ll definitely need Shakespeare or pythagoras in the future, or that this topic is fun, we accept it isn’t and use the experience to build other personal and mindset skills instead. In this case, that means we basically use the whole thing as an opportunity not only to build team working skills, which is obviously what’s supposed to happen, but perhaps you could also use it as a life experience.  
 

Because, honestly, I don’t see much team building or leadership guidance or training provided before the group work begins in schools. Kids are supposed to just somehow figure it out. Maybe it happens a little in pastoral aspects or off-timetable activity days, but rarely in relation to an actual academic project or in a subject assignment.

So maybe, treating group work as a way to develop the mental and emotional resilience or simply just the life experience of working through a situation that you haven’t chosen or isn’t working well is one way to look at it. 

Maybe your teen could consider questions along the way like, what sort of person do I want to be in this situation? Or how would a person I respect and admire react to this? What opportunity to build what skill is being presented to me here, even though it might not be the situation I’d have chosen?

Because if we can learn to deal with situations we haven’t chosen or aren’t going how we’d like, then THAT will in itself be a useful skill to build for life.
 

For example, I might say to my nephew - Okay, if we plan on the fact that you’re going to at some point feel - let’s say - frustrated - because it’s not fair how the work or tasks or roles have been allocated, or you don’t like the job that you’ve been given, or someone else isn’t doing their job the way you think they should, could we also plan for how we want to respond or behave in that situation? Do we want to step in and try to change something in a calm and positive way? Maybe. Do we want to practise the art of acceptance? Maybe. Or maybe there’s something else that feels like a good way to respond. Or, maybe we plan on this experience being an opportunity to practise some people skills. 

Could this be an opportunity to practise being polite even when we aren’t feeling like being very polite? Or to try to see things from another person’s perspective, to practise empathy or just see how issues in communication can lead to misunderstandings or resentment?

Now, I’m not saying that we should just roll over and just let people walk all over us, though to be honest, as a quiet not-too-confident kid, that probably was how I dealt with group work back in the day. But, is there sometimes some value in keeping the peace, or trying to see the best in someone or something. Perhaps? Could this be an opportunity to try working on that? Likely!! 
But also, there might be some opportunities to get a bit strategic, work with the situation, and I’ll get to that in a little while. 

Right now, we’re basically prepared for the worst. Like I said, if that doesn’t happen - bonus. It’s a great day, or week or term. But we are expecting this to be unfair, that there will be disagreements, clashes in personality, mis-communications and generally a lack of enjoyment. And we’ve therefore accepted that where there may be things lacking, there are likely to be a LOT of opportunities to develop some life experience and practise some social/emotional skills. Both inwardly and outwardly. 

I know this is sounding super-negative right now. I don’t mean it to. But sometimes, just accepting that something isn’t going to be great or perfect, is not always a bad thing in my book. It’s life. And we can totally work with that.

So, let’s get to the tangible stuff and something that leans more to the positive side.

How do we make sure the group produces something that means your teen gets the mark they want and are capable of, without doing everything (or at least their own work and that of the least eager kid in the group)?

Here’s the second thing I’d tell my nephew:
Tackle the task strategically. 

Make some quick judgements about what needs to be done and how those things will come across and be marked at the end. This is where some useful skills related to study, assessment, task descriptors and marking criteria come in. 

If your teen is feeling confident about the topic and task, then they can quickly identify the part of the task that has a heavy weighting of high level commands and criteria. For example, they don’t put themself on making the front cover. Zero marks from the teacher. They put themself on writing anything that’s analytical or evaluative.  More cognitive effort - may or may not be more time - but definitely more credit available.

So if it’s a book review, they don’t put themself on outlining the book and author - those are basic description level things. They put themself on comparing it to another text - because comparison is analysis. Or they write about how it conveys a certain message - also analysis. Or they critique and judge the book, which is evaluation. And yes, some of these strategic decisions might mean that they work a bit harder than some of the other students, but at least they will be credited for it AND it will hopefully lift the quality of the whole piece, which will flow through to them as well.

And finally, following on from that… the final sliver of advice I’d give to my nephew is to try to find a way to make it clear to the teacher who has worked on or produced what. And potentially that might be a subtle way so that it isn’t obvious to certain other students that you’re making it clear they did very little. Or if you’re braver than me, maybe you are totally happy for it to be obvious!

If it’s that drama performance, could you have some fun credits at the end?
If it’s a powerpoint presentation, could each read out the slides or info that you produced or researched or wrote? If it’s a written report, could you each have your name with each section or on the pages you wrote?

You could maybe try to dress it up as a way to keep all of the team organised. Like “Let’s write down who’s done or doing what.”

Or maybe you can pay the person who did a certain task or part a compliment - gosh that ‘whatever’ is so good - we should definitely put ‘designed by ‘Barry or Mildred’ or whoever on there so you get the credit. (And we should probably therefore put ourselves on our sections too.)

Or something less transparent than that. Maybe it’s better just to keep it obvious and just be bold. Did I mention I wasn’t a very confident or outgoing teen?!

So, take these little suggestions however you want. They aren’t proven by academic research. And I know they aren’t ground-breaking. They certainly aren’t official. Don’t expect a workshop or webinar from me on this topic at any point. They perhaps aren’t even that effective. Except that first one. I do stand by that one. 

Prepare for it to be a nightmare and use it as practise for people skills, conflict resolution, accepting that life isn’t fair and other useful life experiences. Not to be negative, but because it means your teen will be ready to find and try to take some alternative positives, or even have to create some positives for themselves, if it does turn into a not-so positive experience. And the others I hope might help get them the marks that they deserve personally, - and ultimately get them into a uni course or job that means they get to work with people they like and on a topic that they like for any future group or team projects they might end up involved with!

So, no miracle solutions to make group work amazing I’m afraid, but please know that if your teen is hating it, they are not alone. And if they are having a great experience with it, then definitely cherish and maximise that. AND genuinely have them look for the reasons WHY it worked, so they can try to use and enact some of those in future projects.

Thank you for listening. I’d genuinely be keen to hear what you think of this episode, please email me support@rocksolidstudy.com and let me know. 

I’ll of course still be checking emails while we’re house moving. Goodness knows how it’s going as this episode drops. We should at the very least be IN and have the keys. Who knows if we’ll have the electricity and internet connected. I’ve been promised it will be on. 

Goodness - this is a bit of a moaning negative podcast isn’t it! That’s my subconscious feelings that group work obviously brings up in me! 

Anyway, I’ll see you back here next week, and until then, I hope you have a brilliant week. 

Take care, bye