Unprofessional and Opportunist
Professionalism! That's my word for the week. I am sure that I have used this word almost everyday this week. Maybe it is because of the business career fair, and I am thinking of my career status by May when I graduate, or just because I can't stand people that don't act in a professional way. I would explain what I mean by "act in a professional way".
So for one of my Econ classes last semester, my professor assigned five of us to a group. We had to research an NGO or a social enterprise, and evaluate a particular intervention that the NGO implements. We had to determine what their approach was by identifying what we like and dislike about it. After this, we had to create a strategy to improve it assuming we were assigned to design an evaluation of the program, and specifically explain whether we find it convincing enough to support or not. Lastly, we had to make a 5-8 minutes presentation to the whole class. At first, everyone in the group seemed energetic, and willing to work. Our first group interaction was nice, as each group member seemed enthusiastic and full of ideas. It made me happy that the group work was going to be smooth since I have had terrible experiences working with classmates. A part of me also felt uncertain because often times there are always shirks when it is time for people to actually do work.
We divided the assignment, and everyone picked the parts that they were most interested in working on. This particular group member and I decided that were going to work on the creating eight strategies to improve the evaluation of the program. We planned to both come up with five ideas each, revise them and scrap the two we think might not be feasible for the project. The plan was to meet up twice as team members, then meet up with the other three members of our group to compile our work and prepare our parts for the presentation. We set deadlines on when we wanted to have our research done and when we wanted to have it uploaded on google doc.
I started to notice the lack of professionalism when this group member did not upload any part of her work by the deadline. I was surprised because she was the one that suggested that we turn things in by a certain date so that we have more time to brain storm and research before we meet up to discuss our ideas and then implement it. I mean, I understand that college is stressful, and we have a lot going on but not communicating is just unprofessional. I felt like she should have texted or emailed me letting me know that she couldn't get her work done on time. We were meeting two days after, so a part of thought she just wanted to discuss her ideas in person. I emailed her to confirm whether we were still meeting, and she said yes. I got to the UGL at exactly 6pm,the time we were supposed to meet, but she showed up 15 minutes late without texting to let me know she would be late. Unprofessional right? These little things count; waiting 15 minutes wasn't the issue, but not letting me know she would be late was. She had not done any of her work, but we went over my work. She apologized that she had a lot going on and promised to work on it before we meet the other group members in two days, that is Wednesday. The project was due during class session on Thursday.
She couldn't make the meeting on Wednesday because of time clash, so I ended up adding four more impacts and completing our part of the project. The other group members and I complied all our parts and finalized the power point presentation. She eventually sent some work about 7am Thursday morning when we had to turn the project in and present by 9:30am. She emailed me saying that she was willing to present most of our part since she did not contribute to researching and compiling the project.
One thing to keep in mind, we were graded as a group, and we had to include all group members name in the project. I feel like this is where opportunism plays in this story. This group member was not putting an effort to contribute to the work because she was certain of getting a good grade since the group members were doing their parts well. She took advantage without any regard for the other group members, but for only herself. She did not consider that not doing any of the work but getting the grade was not fair or right. To me, it is like being rewarded for an act that you did not do. The most important thing to her was getting her grade, and not actually being a team member. She also exemplified opportunism by presenting to the group, and making the class and the professor think that she was a part of the project, when she really wasn't.
Two words for this behavior; unprofessional and opportunist!
Having a group member who is a free rider in a class project is fairly common, based on what other students have told me over the years. The behavior clearly is opportunistic, especially when there is no way for the other team members to communicate their dissatisfaction about the performance to the instructor. That said, I wonder if your group erred in the first meeting by trying to make too much progress then. Let me illustrate what I have in mind.
ReplyDeleteYou really don't know now what was the cause of her behavior. She might have felt it was busy work and wouldn't get anything out of it. That, itself, would be reason enough to shirk. As you said, students have a lot going on. Having too much on one's plate might be another reason to shirk. Then it might be that the person didn't really fell competent to do the work. So shirking is a way to hide this sense of incompetence. There might still be other reasons that don't occur to me now.
In any event, suppose at the the first meeting you spent some time on how the project might fail, or on how the burden of doing the project might be unfairly divided among the group members. In other words, suppose you tried to anticipate the weak links in the chain up front. People who have never had a project go sour might think that a waste of time. But you reported lots of prior experience where projects haven't gone well. I'm guessing your other team members would have reported likewise. Why not let your method be informed by your prior experience. If failure is a possibility, bring it out in the open at the beginning and ask how to make it less likely.
Truthfully, I don't know if this would have been sufficient for your shirking teammate to actually explain what was going on. But you might ask yourself how the others would have reacted if in that first meeting she asked to do less than a full proportion of the work. There's an expression - half a loaf is better than none. After the fact, that looks like a better outcome than what you had.
Now some comments about your use of language. Your still a student as were your teammates. Professional is a term usually applied to people who are working full time. I would term the behavior you described in your teammate as immature and promising to do something but then not delivering on the promise shows a lack of commitment. The thing about students your age, even the ones who screw up in college, there is still lots of time to grow and show maturity later. But I don't think every immature student learns the lesson, because they are not made to acknowledge the consequences of their actions. That's where the real learning would occur.
Finally, unprofessional is an adjective while opportunist is a noun. So unprofessional should be paired with opportunistic, which is also an adjective. In class I mentioned that students should try to avoid distractors in the writing. I could get your meaning fine for your post, but I was a little distracted from your argument because of the word usage. That can be improved in the next post.
It is a very good idea to talk about the possibility of failure from the onset. It is certainly something I never used to do. This is most likely because most times we don't want to quickly think about the "what if situation" especially when new to a group.
DeleteYesterday, I attended a conference for the YWCA Women in Leadership Internship Program, and we had a psychology professor from U of I talk to us about managing conflicts. At first, I was wondering why we were addressing this since we only just met our group members for the first time, and we still have one year to figure this out. However, at the end of the presentation, I realized that it is better to discuss these things ahead of time, and also implement ways to prevent it because certainly conflict do happen.
I agree that unprofessional wasn't appropriate in this post, and hence acted as a distraction. It is definitely true that as college students we learn everyday, and sometimes we set more priority to some classes compared to others.
As seniors we both have been exposed to plenty of classes where we had to collaborate in group. I also have experienced opportunism in several occasions, by students not showing up for meeting or not getting their part done.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I have the kind of personality that I would rather do it myself and make sure it is done right, then to try to explain/coach the student who is shirking. That my be because sometimes doing it myself is faster or because I am very methodical. Because of this, if I noticed that one member of the group was doing the minimal, I would just take over it.
With that being said, when the student would not even show up (common on online classes) we as a group would decide not to include the member name, however, most times they would be a free rider.
The comment about online classes also takes us back to the question of anonymity. In an online setting, or maybe on big lectures where you are randomly assigned to a group, you don't really know them/care about their view of you. In a smaller class/ ones where you can pick your group, you usually pick people who you hangout on other settings, therefore you put more effort into the project to avoid damaging the relationship/image you hold with that person.
Fortunately or unfortunately, it is sort of a "college milestone" to encounter a group member who shirks on his or her responsibilities. I've encounter a few similar situations to what you described where the person on the other side isn't being courteous or professional by letting us know that they're running late or they won't be able to fulfill their responsibilities. I say fortunately because it is a learning experience for us to learn how to handle these difficult situations, and unfortunately because of the obvious inconvenience.
ReplyDeleteI was in charge of an RSO as president where I had to manage the board members to make sure they were doing their responsibility. If you read one of my previous posts, I talk about a member who wasn't doing her job properly because she didn't understand what her role was. In my point of view, I feel like if you're going to commit to taking on a responsibility, you are responsible for making sure you understand what your job is and if you don't, then to speak up and ask, otherwise it is just unprofessional! Another example is when we all decided as a board that we'd communicate over the summer to plan for the fall. Everyone but one person (a different person) was involved in dialogue over the summer except her. I had messaged her privately and emailed her asking if everything was okay since she wasn't contributing to the conversation and I had gotten no response. When we got back to school, I approached her to ask her why she wasn't communicating over the summer and she said she got preoccupied with other things. Like you said in your post, I totally understand being preoccupied and stressed about life's stresses, but letting us know that you'll be busy in advance is the professional thing to do.