Groups of individuals
When I was at school we had work groups. We also had teams; we had football teams and we had netball teams. In class, we had groups. We were educated to be individual achievers. We were not expected to share culpability for a mistake. We were considered to be people, not children in the sense of children who ‘team’ up in gangs, and other favourite children to ‘play’ with.
For us, school was serious. School was preparing us for adulthood; an adulthood during which we were expected to excel, and that excellence would not be hampered by inadequacies in the workplace or our societal spheres. If we did not do well, only ourselves were to blame. We would never, although we didn’t know it, blame someone else for our lack of pernicious engagement on a task. We would never say, in the future, I was distracted. We were taught to focus, without deviation, disruption, and chatter.
On occasion, we would, in class, form into groups. Anyone who understands work teams, would recognise these groups in which we were held, as ‘Cross-functional teams’. Each of us had a separate task to accomplish within a project and inside a specific time. None of us were required to replicate another’s work. This is the only time we could cry off and say, when we received low marks for the completed work, ‘It’s not fair, Martin was in charge of that part of the experiment or project.’ We could have done, but we didn’t.
If we did not have faith in our cross-functional team members we should have checked that person’s workings. If we blamed someone else, we were taught that we had failed to take responsibility for our lack of foresight. The end result was that we learnt to include redundancies in our strategies. One method to accomplish this was by each group member using a strategy to overlap another group member’s work with their own individual workings, though not too in-depth because we were also taught time-management. We could then compare notes to make sure we ALL had an understanding of the veracity of the results compiled by each group member. None of us could blame another.
Often, our conclusions and explanations would differ, but none of us got it wrong.
When our teachers said work from your books or copy this from the blackboard, no one spoke, and no-one fooled around. There were no class clowns and no-one asked another student ‘How do I….?’ or ‘What is…..?’. Most striking is that no-one asked the teacher for help. Above all, none of us offered unsolicited help, and because help was never asked for, we did not get hampered by under-achievers using up valuable time. We all maintained individual accountability.
Later,
as young adults, and as we matured into our lives, we apologised for
our mistakes, because we recognised that we, as individuals, were at
fault. We did not look around for our lost team members so they could
bolster our confused sense of culpability with abstract murmuring. We
did not believe that we could do something ‘Because everyone else
does!’. In short, although we did not know the word, we understood
what an hegemony is, and by this, we do not flounder, or
flop around like a fish out of water. We are equipped with the tools
to be individuals. This means that we do not experience ‘Learned
helplessness’ as a condition of our schooling.
Does this sound like your schooling?
Next: Homogenisation and teams.
Bibliography:
Key Differences, Difference Between Group and Team,
Available at: https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-group-and-team.html
Accessed: 09th October 2024
Lumen, Organizational Behaviour and Human Relations, Module 10: Managing Groups and Teams, Groups vs. Teams
Available at: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-organizationalbehavior/chapter/groups-vs-teams/
Accessed: 08th October 2024
word count 616