Totally OT: The Team Experience

[Webstral]

I’m in a Master’s of Ed program now, which is why my contributions to the board have fallen off. I have very little time for Twilight: 2000 or any personal projects, I’m sad to say. My learning team has been a trial for me. All of the classic leadership and teamwork concerns that the Army works with have been present.

Any of us could have looked down to road for our second project and come up with suspenses for components. By the time one of us did, we were already behind the power curve. Two team members simply disappeared for the week with no explanation as to their absence. The two team members chimed in on the day the work was due with a happy “We’re here for the team.” Any of us could have read the syllabus carefully enough to note that this particular item was due the day before the last day of the week. I didn’t pay attention to this detail, so we all got burned. Doh!

Discussing what had happened afterwards, most of us refused to take any responsibility for anything. There was finger-pointing, counter-accusations, and the whole wretched lot. One of the two disappearing acts tried to cover her tracks by insisting that nothing got done without her leadership. She doled out tasks for the next project and berated everyone else for letting her down. Unfortunately, she didn’t read the syllabus very carefully. In a very timely manner, she produced 1100 words on the wrong topic. Another team member produced some very attractive PowerPoint slides—also on the wrong topic. I failed the team by not looking critically at the self-proclaimed leader’s list of assignments right at the beginning. I was annoyed with her for her attitude, so I decided to let her take responsibility if that was what she wanted. This was not my most mature decision ever. Only once my part of the project, which was to combine the work of others into a cohesive text, did I look carefully at the requirements. The upside is that everyone provided their materials with enough time to react if something went wrong. Something went VERY wrong, because we had virtually no material on what we were supposed to be doing. Since then, we’ve been running around like chickens with our heads cut off.

If I were being reviewed by the cadre at OCS, they would tell me that I stepped up to a leadership position too late. While I did make the adjustments necessary to salvage as much of the previous work as possible, and I did assign new roles and all that jazz, I did so after things had gone badly wrong. The cadre would have told me that I could have saved the team a lot of trouble by looking over the list of responsibilities and comparing it to the list of requirements at the beginning of the project—regardless of who had announced ownership of the leader’s mantle. The team could have and should have had some conversations about the requirements before anybody did any writing. I could have made this happen. I didn’t because I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. [Buzzer] Wrong answer, candidate.

Ironically, I used to be a good XO. I need to resurrect those skills so I can properly support the team no matter who is technically the leader.

Webstral

[pmulcahy11b]

That goes along with the experience of a lot of career military or even police vets. A common complaint I've heard through the years out of vets about civilians is something like "A bunch of people all out for themselves, running around with no one in charge."