Three Lessons to Drive Workplace Collaboration

“Lauren, you’re good at this; you just do it.”

I graduated from high school a quarter of a century ago, and I can still remember a classmate saying that to me during a group project session.

We learned all the wrong lessons from group projects in school.

The lesson I learned then was that if I wanted to excel and meet the standards I had, I better just do the work myself. And that might have earned me A’s in school (and perhaps the admiration of a student or two who didn’t have the skill or will for the work).

But it definitely isn’t the lesson we should be taking daily into the workplace. We learned all the wrong lessons from group projects in school.

In the workplace, you want to position yourself as a leader and a coach to champion collaboration.

Here are three lessons I’ve learned from group work I wish I knew in high school:

It starts with buy-in. Take the time to get everyone who will contribute to a project together at the front end. If you’re the ring-leader, create an agenda for that meeting. You don't have a party without an invitation; you can't have an effective meeting without an agenda. Be clear about "the why" and the expected outcomes. Have specific measures. Ask every person for input (whether they volunteer to speak up or not). Whether it’s a social media campaign or a new product launch, buy-in from the team is essential.

Set the PACE. The flip side of buy-in is a lack of clarity about whom the final approver is for a given project. PACE is Process Owner, Approver, Contributor(s), Executor(s). Sometimes the Process Owner and Approver are the same people, but I find usually the process owner is a project manager or editorial teammate who reports to the Approver. If you don’t know, ask this question. If someone adds, “I need to get this to Sammy to see this,” and Sammy wasn’t part of the buy-in meeting or the project group, find out of Sammy is and make sure all are clear on Sammy’s role in the PACE.

Great example of what PACE is and how it works:

The deadline is not when the project goes live. Go on a streaming channel and watch Ron Howard’s The Paper, starring fellow Kent State University Grad Michael Keaton. I love this movie. I can probably quote this entire movie. That’s a topic for a future post, and not the point of this story.

Robert Duvall, playing the editor of a New York City newspaper in the film, famously pulls out a Merriam-Webster and recites the definition of a deadline:

Deadline: A date or time before which something must be done.

You wouldn’t send raw video to the TV station at 11:30 a.m. for a commercial that’s meant to start airing at noon. You wouldn’t send out your invitations for a wedding the morning of the event.

In real life, the deadline for a project is not when the commercial is scheduled to go live on TV, when your digital ads go into the field, or when the bride is walking down the aisle. The deadline is at least a day before when the project must be done.

The most straightforward way I can think of to meet a deadline is to create a reasonable timeline for every tactic in the project and align that to finishing your project at least 24 hours before it’s delivered. Write out the timeline. This could be on a white board, using an excel file, or using fancy platforms like Asana or Monday Morning. Be clear about the deadline and timeline every single time you talk about the deliverables for the project. Ask the team questions: if you receive this information by this time, does that give you enough time to finish your piece? Ultimately timelines and deadlines aren’t about you as the leader; they are the community guardrails that ensure the group functions effectively.

I’m sure we earned an A for that high school group project — I wouldn’t have been happy with less. I don’t remember the topic; I only remember the lingering resentment that “I had to do all the work.” However, if I had approached the project as a coach and leader rather than a martyr and busybody, I could have created an environment where each person on the team contributed and was part of the success.

Read more from Harvard Business Review about how leaders can develop their collaboration skills.

I’d love to hear from you: how do you manage group work and group projects? What tips do you have for others? Share them in the comments.?