Why Dungeons & Dragons Taught Me Good Group Dynamics
For those unacquainted with the game each person plays by portraying a character in a fantasy world. Going on adventures and rolling polyhedral dye to determine your success and failure when attempting a feat or action.
One person in the group takes the role of the Dungeon Master and it’s their job to direct the story like a referee for the other players.
It’s important to note that in these games you’re not a ruthless real estate mogul trying to bankrupt your fellow players and erect hotels all across Middle-earth from Hobbiton to Mordor. Instead you all work together, collaboratively. And a majority of the game is about understanding each-other’s diverse strengths and utilizing them throughout the adventures.
For each group the party has a range of skills and talents to draw from. Some that can cast spells, some that can bend arrows through the air, and some that can heal the party when they’re facing a great challenge.
So, What Causes Poor Group Dynamics?
Weak Leadership: When a team lacks a strong leader or dominant member of the group that can take charge.
Excessive Deference to Authority: This can happen when people want to be seen to agree with a leader, and therefore hold back from expressing their own opinions.
Blocking: This happens when team members behave in a way that disrupts the flow of information in the group.
Groupthink: This happens when people place a desire for consensus above their desire to reach the right decision.
Free Riding: Here, some group members take it easy, and leave their colleagues to do all the work. Free riders may work hard on their own, but limit their contributions in group situations; this is known as “social loafing.”
How Does D&D Solve These Issues
Know Your Team: In D&D a Dungeon Master is the first one to be assigned and they will try and start the campaign of sessions with a session zero. This allows the players to align to what they should expect from the campaign and have everyone agree what type of campaign it will be. Funny, serious, slap stick, etc. It also gives the Dungeon Master the ability to set up opportunities for specific characters and to make the story more interesting for that group of players.
Tackle Problems Quickly: When the Dungeon Master notices a member of the party isn’t playing with the rest of the group or is intentionally betraying the rest of the party. It’s the Dungeon Master’s responsibility to offer an opportunity for that character to realign by giving them a task in game. If that player continues to resist the story and play nice, the Dungeon Master has the choice to pull the player assign after a session or during a break in the session to discuss what they can do to make the experience more enjoyable for them. Of course not all solutions can be implemented in the session and if a compromise cannot be met, normally that player will need to make a choice to reconfigure their character to align with the story or leave the group entirely.
Define Roles and Responsibilities: Thankfully in D&D each one of the characters need to pick a class before playing, which not only suits them up with abilities for the adventure but gives them specific roles to the parties success. Some will be healers, locksmiths, offense, or defense. Now although we don’t have classes in our groups we can still organize this by giving each one of our team members the ability to write down three of their strengths and three of their needs on post it notes then the team can collectively look at every note and assign the roles to each-other. Of course it’s always good to have two people with the same role if it’s critical just encase that nest of spiders starts to cause a lot of trouble.
Break Down Barriers: Another major advantage that D&D has for group dynamics is the role-play. With the game everyone is encouraged to explore their ideas through a character as mentioned. And with that a lot of critical judgement that might come from a friend or fellow party member is separated with a portrayal of a character that’s not yourself. I feel that it’s important that we all try and create an open, expressive team culture to try and stifle any issues where someone isn’t feeling like they are part of the team. I’ve seen this most successfully achieved with activities outside of the work environment to allow for a more open dialog with your team members. Maybe with a light sport or physical activity to build camaraderie. And please don’t forget to celebrate victories as a team.
Focus on Communication: Something that D&D tries really hard to do is to get everyone under a common goal this is normally a responsibility of the dungeon master. By avoiding ambiguous descriptions of locations and things happening for the players. The players are also encouraged to share as much as they learn with the rest of their party because everyone has different responsibilities and abilities and although one person can’t unlock the door your rouges sure can.
Ultimately open communication is central to good team dynamics, so be sure that everyone is communicating clearly.
As a side note Bruce Tuckman’s 5 Stages of Group Development is a great template for how you can expect your team to grow.
Bruce Tuckman which was a professor of educational psychology at The Ohio State University and carried out research into the theory of group dynamics. In 1965, he published one of his theories called “Tuckman’s stages of group development”.
This theory can help us understand the ebb and flow of group dynamics and how they evolve over time. In my experience these have been present in not only my D&D groups but also teams I’ve worked with on the job.
Where D&D shows most of its strengths, is with it’s understanding that it’s OK to rely on each-other to play their part even when the odds are stacked to favor the fantasy worlds most ruthless horrors.
And at the end of the day we’re talking about building trust within our teams and not just loosely structuring teams on paper, built only by confederations. And once we can attune trust we can hopefully build relationships and start collaborating.
