Group items tagged

This may sound elementary, but many teams screw this up. One thing you will eventually learn is that team members have very different abilities, motivations and personalities. For example, there will be some team members that are totally involved, and others that just want to disappear. If you let people disappear, they become dead weight and a source of resentment and frustration. You must not let this happen!

One of the first things you should do as a group is make sure everybody knows everybody's name. Don't just introduce yourselves once because some people will immediately forget the names or never quite hear them the first time. So make sure that everyone has written down everybody's name. Then go on to talk about each other -- what major, where you live on campus, who you know, etc.

If the word "vision" makes you want to puke, think instead "what are we really trying to accomplish? Besides the explicit tasks, what are our real goals?". For example, for a class team, does the team want to do whatever it takes to get an A? Or is having a comfortable workload more important? Does the team want to really get involved with each other socially, or keep interactions to just what's required to do the work? Does the team want an atmosphere of military efficiency, or do they want to horse around and have a good time?