How to Not Suck at Teamwork
Responsibility Bias — If You Hate Group Projects, it’s Probably Your Fault
The first time I ever received an F was in 7th grade math. We were split into groups and given one class period to construct a bridge out of toothpicks, glue, string, and paper clips. The bridge that could bear the most weight would win extra credit points and any bridge that collapsed received an automatic F. Back in 7th grade, I was a little sh — t and I thought I was THE sh — t.
Our bridge collapsed and I immediately chastised my group for messing things up. There was no way it could have been my fault. If they had just listened to me everything would have been fine. For the next decade or so I’d grow to hate group projects, not realizing that what had happened in that classroom was mostly my fault.
When I got to high school I did individual sports like tennis and cross country. In college, I researched classes to avoid ones where there was group work. However, after college, especially in management consulting, it was pretty much impossible to avoid working in teams. So, begrudgingly, I learned to play nice with others mostly through watching those above me and mimicking them. It was mostly a case of ‘monkey see, monkey do’ as opposed to truly understanding what great teamwork entailed. Then, Larry Wei told me to read Give and Take…
I’m late. I finally took Adam Grant’s Give and Take off of my Reading List and moved it onto my Favorite Books of All Time That I Will Read Once a Year and Give to Friends as Gifts List. If you haven’t read it yet, definitely check it out or at least read some schmuck’s Medium post talking about it. You won’t regret either.
In the book, one of my favorite concepts is what he calls Responsibility Bias:
“Exaggerating our own contributions relative to others’ inputs.”
How many times when working with teams have we lionized our own deeds and denigrated the work of others? That train of thought has become so commonplace that it has even earned a meme:
This phenomenon plays out across many relationship/group dynamics. In a study on couples by psychologists Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly, they found that three out of four couples who added up their % of total effort contributed ended up with more than 100%.
Why?
Grant argues that the answer is actually quite simple — Information Discrepancy.
You know everything that you did but only some of what your partner(s) did. For that reason, it’s easy to construct a narrative in your head in which you did all the work. Conversely, most people have a hard time considering the efforts of others. In Grant’s universe there are three types of people — Takers, Matchers, and Givers. The former two claim credit for themselves willingly when things go well and castigate their team members as deadweight when things don’t go well. Exhibit A — Stephon Marbury.
Givers are able to overcome this and thus work better with their teammates by doing the following:
- Taking care to observe where others have contributed; start by making a list of everyone else’s contributions before measuring your own
- Being tough on themselves while congratulating others for successes
- Creating a psychologically safe environment for others to contribute by doing all of the above
Twelve years ago I only cared about making sure my ‘brilliant’ ideas were heard. I blamed my group members for everything that went wrong while owning up to nothing. I created a toxic environment where no good ideas could possibly have survived.
While I’ve stopped doing that in my old age, I don’t think I understood the repercussions of bad behavior nor the immense benefits of good behavior until recently.
Perhaps if I knew this in middle school, my toothpick bridge would have stood a chance.
