Recently a mentee shared that she was concerned about always doing group work. Would it make her less visible and make it harder to get promoted?
I definitely related to this feeling.
What happened at school
I know I went through most of my school days hoping to avoid group projects. It felt like a real risk to have my grade tied to someone else’s effort.
But that was school.
…can hold you back at work
Carrying that perspective on group work into your working world will start to hinder your progress. And you may not even know you’re doing it, because it has been programmed in you for so long.
Imagine an escape room
As a helpful analogy, I thought about an escape room – the game where you and a group of friends go into a themed room, and you need to solve riddles and clues to reveal the key that will unlock the door, usually within an hour.
The first time I did an escape room, I was with members of my family.
In the beginning, we bumped around the room and into each other. Then we gradually settled into a flow. We each gravitated to doing different components of what was needed. And we successfully escaped within the allotted time.
When we went back the next year, it was a different room with different challenges, but we remembered what we were each good at. We knew each others’ strengths.
- I focused on visual patterns
- Someone else did anything involving scanning the room and counting
- Another did combination locks
- And someone kept reminding us not to overthink it
Talking about it afterwards
When we escaped the second time, we were able to talk about it afterwards a lot more easily. We could remember what other people did and acknowledge those breakthroughs, while honouring that the fun we had was generated by everyone.
Ironically, when we escaped in less time, it came with a feeling of being short-changed – that we didn’t have a full hour’s experience.
Perspective of an outsider
To an outsider, we were a team that accomplished our goal. Our “score” of how much time we took was attributed equally to all of us.
If I highlighted to the outsider a blend of examples of how I applied my strengths, how others applied their strengths, and how we found unique synergies together, then the outsider would sense a true team effort that was more than the sum of its parts. (And more than any narrow message of a squeaky wheel emphasizing only a slice of what happened.)
Your work goal isn’t to be assigned to an escape room on your own
At work, as much as you probably want the feeling of being fully in control, your goal is not for your supervisor to send you in to an escape room on your own to prove that you can solve it efficiently.
Your goal is for your supervisor to trust that you work well with any group, able to reach a shared goal within a deadline.
Being seen both as a part of the group and as an individual is about how you relay the experience.
Demonstrate that you can identify strengths
As you aspire to higher levels of leadership, it’s the skills in identifying strengths and navigating team dynamics that you’ll want sponsors to know you’ve been demonstrating.
If you only do independent studies, then you’ll be overlooked.
Exercise for self-advocacy in group work
So here’s an exercise to strengthen your self-advocacy in group work.
- Today, identify an upcoming collaboration session with some team members.
- Through the week, note some of the strengths you rely on those team members for, and then during the session, be intentional in observing those strengths in action, and in noticing new ones.
- At the end of the week, describe the session to someone who wasn’t there, including your contributions, the contributions of others, and how you felt working together. Notice which part is easy and which is hard to describe, and notice your listener’s reaction.
