The Student Observer: When doing your part isn’t enough

One of the frustrating things about group projects is that doing your part isn’t always enough.

You can finish your slides early and answer every text in the group chat. But if someone else hasn’t finished their part, the project still isn’t complete. Then you have another problem: figuring out what to do about it.

I thought about that a lot this summer while conducting a research project on student leadership. I surveyed nearly 300 students from across the country about their experiences in leadership roles. One finding kept catching my attention. Ninety-three percent said they understood what was expected of them, but 41% said tasks still fell through the cracks.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of those two numbers. If students understood their responsibilities, why were things still not getting done?

The more I read the responses, the more I thought about how different it is to be responsible for your own work and to be in charge of something that depends on other people. Students described communication, delegation, accountability, and follow-through as some of the challenges they faced. It made me wonder whether sometimes the easier part is understanding your own responsibilities.

I’ve run into that myself. If something needs to get done and someone else hasn’t done it yet, sometimes I find the easiest solution is to do  it myself. I’ve also been on the other side, when someone has had to remind me about something I said I would do. Neither situation feels particularly good.

The harder question is what happens in between. How do you remind someone without making them feel like you’re constantly checking up on them? When should you offer to help? And when does helping turn into doing someone else’s work?

One thing I’ve started thinking about is whether some of those awkward conversations can happen earlier. Instead of dividing up the work and hoping everyone remembers to do their part, it helps to start out by being specific about who is doing what and when everyone will check back in. “I’ll have my slides done by Tuesday, and we’ll look at everything together Wednesday” gives the group more to work with than “I’ll do the slides.”

Planning a check-in ahead of time also makes following up feel different. If everyone agreed to check in on Wednesday, then asking about the slides isn’t one person nagging another. It’s part of the plan the group made together. And if something has gotten in the way of accomplishing the goal, there’s still time to figure out what to do.

Of course clear communication early on doesn’t solve every problem. People forget things. Schedules change. Sometimes someone still doesn’t follow through. But I’ve started to think that waiting until something goes wrong makes the conversation harder. Agreeing ahead of time about what each person will do and when you’ll reconnect  gives everyone a better chance to keep things moving.

This situation isn’t limited to people with leadership titles. It happens on teams, in clubs, at jobs, and even when you’re trying to make plans with friends. Any time several people are working together to make something happen, everyone has to figure out how to depend on one another.

Before doing this research, I thought about leadership mostly in terms of the responsibilities you take on yourself. The survey responses made me pay more attention to what happens when your responsibility depends on someone else taking responsibility, too. I’m still figuring out how to handle that well, but I’m starting to think that some of the most useful conversations happen before anyone needs a reminder.