Dealing with group work


MBA programs are chock full of group work. I suppose this is to simulate the real world. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is the number of people that can’t seem to work in a group.

Oxford being 95 per cent international, I fittingly have a Ukranian/American, Peruvian and South African in my current group, which stays together over 8 projects and 3 months. Our experience? Peace and relative productivity. For that I am thankful. Very thankful.

Still, it astounds me when I hear about other groups with frequent decompression meetings, or groups where, after one minor assignment, certain members aren’t talking. I can’t say this happened very often to me in the real world, whether Ethiopia, the UK or Canada. Am I simply surrounding myself with good people? I’d like to think so, but maybe I’ve also been lucky.

Our admin suggested a few months ago that we plan to work for some later projects with people we select. I thought, well, it’ll be hard to tell who works well, won’t it?

Apparently not.

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