Teaching people that team wins are individual wins is hard.
Many kids in the UK grow up belonging to a ‘house’ at their high school. Yes, just like in Harry Potter. Their actions as individuals reflect on their house for some things. This means all of them are a team, and some can hold more formal roles. At the end of the school year, just like in Hogwarts, one house wins. Then it starts all over again when the new school year starts.
When it comes to team assessments at university, it’s all different. Some students look forward to the challenge and what they can do together. Most are unexcited by the prospect. They know they are useful for them with respect to their future careers, but they also worry about how the team will function. All of them wonder if/how their team members actions will reflect on their own assessment mark.
The past is not the future
A key part for me is helping them realise that everyone can and should contribute to the team, and that this team experience can and should be different from what has happened in past team experiences. I want them to know they have the power of choice: the decisions they make will impact on how the team does its work.
Too often at the start of the team’s journey, everyone assumes it will be as in the past. I aim to disrupt this idea. They should know they have options about how to do their work, and how to make their decisions about how to do their work.
You can counter the nightmare fears by helping them express these fears, and find ways to mitigate them. This works by bringing these fears into the open so that they can discuss them in their teams, and across the teams too.
This introduces another tension to every team: Yes, they can try new ways of doing things, as I suggest. No, thanks, they say: we know the outcome of doing things as we have before, and that will get us the mark we’re aiming for in the course. Every team is somewhere along this continuum: some try more things, others only a few. Still get them to try new ways of collaborating. There are so many to explore.
Test drive the idea where possible
A useful way to gain more trust with the students is to create opportunities for them to try new ideas in their teams, before they need to use them for their collaboration. Run an exercise, or game, that lets them experience the situation for themselves. This moves it from theory to praxis.
Remind them too, that these are professional skills. These are as much about life experience, as they are about building software as a team. It is all helpful for them to practice now, so they are good at it later in life.
This post is part of a project pulling together my materials and ideas about Teaching Team Collaboration: the Human-Side of Software Development for software development to students.
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The ideas above are from my book 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration, which covers all of these little things that students can do to improve their collaboration. Also available via Kindle.