Being able to effectively collaborate and share leadership are fundamental skills in academic, professional, and social life. Both effective collaboration and leadership require one to be aware of the diverse skills and needs of a group, the tasks required to succeed at a project, and the interpersonal relationships and dynamics within your group. In my time at UWB, I work to develop both these skills.
In my first quarter at UWB, I completed a group project focused on the involvement of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the genocide in Sudan. This project required me to work with five of my peers to identify the underlying issues in Sudan that led to the genocide, the ways in which the ICC got involved, and the limitations of their involvement. Working on this project taught me valuable lessons about effective teamwork, collaboration, and leadership.
One lesson that I learned during this group project was the importance of being proactive and ensuring that all members of your group are supported. In the second to last week of the project, I discovered that one student was completely confused about the genocide that we were presenting on in less than a week (and had been learning about for the previous nine weeks in class). While it would be easy to blame this student’s confusion on his own inattentiveness, it demonstrated to me a failure within our group to make sure that everyone was moving at the same pace. Instead of quickly moving through the project because no one spoke up about their confusion, we should have slowed down to make sure that everyone had a solid grasp on the content.
I applied the lessons that I learned from this project to my future group work. Just over a year later, I was invited to join a research project with numerous professors at UWB. This project, which is currently in progress, is a collaborative effort to author a book reflecting on the Harris campaign from a sociological perspective. While this project has had far fewer hiccups than my first group project at UWB, it has taught me even more valuable lessons in leadership. As the primary assistant to the professor in charge of the project, I have been emboldened to take significant amounts of leadership in this work. Taking on this role for this project has taught me about the importance of how a group presents themselves, in my role I have been responsible for (among many other things) arranging interviews with people who worked on and with the Harris campaign. Reaching out to these organizers, I quickly realized that it is not only what we are researching that matters, but how we approach them and present ourselves. Ensuring that we come across as a cohesive, professional group makes it far more likely that people will agree to talk to us. Another thing that I have learned is the power of properly utilizing the strengths of a team. Because this is an academic work, most of the people working on the book are experts in their fields, having these experts involved in the entire process has revealed how efficiently work can be done when everyone is playing to their strengths. A final thing that I have learned from this project is the importance of collaborative efforts in fostering a safe working environment. Because this work touches on emotionally sensitive topics, having a team working on it, as opposed to a single person, has provided a sort of catharsis. Working on this as a group means that we are able to have a place to effectively discuss the issues that are impacting us in the research and writing process and use our teammates as support beams throughout the process.
These projects, along with the many other group projects that I have done in my time at UWB, have allowed me to become a strong collaborator and leader. I have learned how to ensure that groups function cohesively, how to create work that reflects the strengths of the entire group, and how to effectively support the needs of an entire group.
Leiney Gamache 