An Old Cliché about Groups

image credit: duncannuggets.com

Here’s a common workplace problem. I’m going to describe it with a really worn-out example, but it still works for me when I want to explain this phenomenon.
There were four colleagues called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.
Everybody was sure Somebody would do it; Anybody could have done it; but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
So where did this group go wrong?

• It went wrong because it couldn’t become a team. And it couldn’t become a team because:
• there were no clear-cut roles assigned
• the process—the “how do we do it” was not addressed
• there was complete lack of accountability
• there was no interaction among the group’s members as to the status of the task
• no information was shared
• there was no ownership or pride in the task that they were required to perform

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee, is Managing Partner at Expressions@Work, a training, consulting and mentoring studio for the development of communication and soft skills