Team Leadership in College

Team Leadership in College

Aug 15, 2010

In all of my college & grad school courses, I do not remember any one course/project where a team leader was selected.

Our projects usually went something like this- "Okay, the 5 of us are here for this Marketing project for the rest of the semester. I guess let's divide tasks among ourselves...and we'll see how it goes..." This was the way teams worked in my experience during college.

A leader for the team was never explicitly chosen. Usually, over time, you got the sense that Mary was the unofficial team leader, or me, or Ola. Someone usually either takes the stage as the leader or finds his/herself delegating duties and stuff.

This is fine, but the problem with not explicitly naming one as the head is that no one takes the blame when things go wrong. I would encourage teachers & professors to have their class teams to select a team leader in every project. This way, everyone knows who to report to. Tasks are delegated properly, and when the "defecation hits the oscillation" (-credit http://twitter.com/jeffcannata), we know who to blame...and that is important in preparing students for life.