An Army of One

During my academic career I've been left holding the bag a few times. In team situations you usually start out with four or five team members. Then you set-up a list of procedures, you figure out each one's role in the project, then you hit the ground running. Well as you all well know, that last for about a week.  

Slowly but steady the efforts of others on the team starts to fall. Till pretty soon you become a one man/woman team. No matter what material you have read on team building, to some degree it usually happens. One person is either driving the project or doing the project or both. 

Now I don't mind taking the lead on a project. In fact while an undergraduate, following the same group of students through my major studies. I kinda became the go to guy to get projects done. But this is a learning situation and my school pushes team study. So why do so many seem to hate team course work? 

In the working world team work is a dynamic you usually deal with everyday. Where a group of individuals get selected to do a project. But you know in those situations you run into the same thing. Individuals who choose to do as little as possible to contribute to the effort. So what do you do?

You know all I can say is communicate with others in the team as much as possible. Drive home to each individual their efforts matter to the goal of the team. I believe this can work more effectively in real-world situations as opposed to academic situations. Simply because people drop courses everyday as opposed to jobs. 

But when left with the reality of being an Army of One, let it be known to the powers to be. That your doing your best with the limited resources you have. And hopefully, someday you'll finally find yourself a team.

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