Suffering through Flu-like symptoms while kicking people out of my group

As I type through violent bouts of coughs, sniffles, and achyness, I’m thankful that I have a great group member for my Coaching assignment that is due on Friday.

As it stands, my group consists of one other person-Sandra. Most of the other groups in the class consists of 4-6 people. This is a 16-20 page report that we are responsible for producing. This report is about performance management and coaching practices of at least 2 different organizations.

My group did not start off as a group of 2. It started off at a group of 3. But, I had the VERY unpleasant task of having to eject one member out of the group. We all became a group 2 weeks ago. Sandra and I were desperate to get a third group member to reduce our already packed workload, and this third individual did not have a group at all. So after a brief discussion, we decided to allow the third person into our group.

It began to go downhill when the third person did not come to class the following friday. When I sent the person a email via my blackberry, the person responded by saying that he/she was on his/her way. I looked at my watch. 1:30pm. Class started at 12pm. You do the math.

We left class early as the remainder of the class was allotted to work on the assignment. Without any of the third member’s work, doing any in-class work would be impossible. What a let down since the assignment was due the following friday. I sent the group member another email at around 2:45, and the response I got was the fact that he/she was still on his/her way. What? That indicated to me that this person probably hadn’t even left their house when I sent the first email. Great.

So on the weekend, I set up a google doc page and shared it with my other two group members. The third group member wrote a bunch of stuff on the google doc. After 30 minutes spend editing just 2 paragraphs, I knew there was a problem. I barely understood what the group member was trying to say, and what I did understand was simply not pertinent when it came to the assignment. I asked the group member to send me the performance management document that they were drawing their information from…and they agreed to send it ASAP.

After about 30-45 minutes, the group member responded and said they could not send it now because they were still at school and could not find the performance management document. I sat there, staring at my blackberry, wondering why the group member didn’t say this when I initially asked for it. That’s ok… I responded and asked them to send it AS SOON as they got home. They agreed and promised to send it.

I was less than shocked when the next morning came and went and I still hadn’t received the email of the performance document. I emailed again, just after 12, asking for the document. No response. I emailed again, this time stating that if I did not receive the document within 30 minutes, we were no longer going to use the organization that he/she was working on, and I had another performance document from another company, and I would start from scratch using that company.

An hour had passed. I began working on the assignment with the new performance document. After all, who knows if this group member was going to respond, and I had only a few days to come up with a whole lot of pages of information.

A few minutes after I had started, the group member emailed me and said that they would email the document to me shortly. I responded by saying that I did not want it, and I was starting the assignment with another company. The group member proceeded to send me a partial, non-sensical document anyways, about 40 minutes later.

At this time, I had emailed my prof and explained the situation. I told him that it was my plan to eject this person from my group. He responded and said that I should inform this group member that they’d be responsible for handing in an assignment on their own. After I essentially received the “go-ahead” from the prof, I very politely advised the group member that Sandra and I would be doing the assignment ourselves and no longer required his/her work. I removed the group member’s access to the google document to ensure that they did not try to delete the work already done by Sandra.

The group member responded, asking for the work that he/she had done, since it was in the google document that they no longer had access to. I compiled the information and put it into a word document. I had even saved the group member’s work, pre edititing by me, into a word doc, but at the last moment I decided to send the already partially edited part with the introduction I had created.

Before I had a chance to respond, the group member lashed out a bit, saying it was partially my fault as well as Sandra’s because we did not wait after class for ever for them to show up *rolls eyes*. The group member also stated that their blackberry is slow which is why they did not respond quickly enough to my 30 minute deadline. I quickly shot that excuse down, as I have the exact same blackberry and mine works fine. I also reminded them that I had asked for the document the day prior, and it was technically over 17 hours late.

In the end, Sandra and I managed to bang the project out, in spite of the fact that we both have much to study for and much due, and in spite of the fact that I am about 5 minutes away from hacking out one of my lungs. Go team awesome!

So that’s my story of having to eject a member out of my group. It’s not fun…but definitely necessary. As the day went on I felt a bit bad and I told my father about it. He reassured me and reminded me that it was necessary for everyone to pull their own weight. What I had asked for was not unreasonable-I simply asked for an email of the performance management tool. If that proved to be such a chore…that’s definitely not a good sign.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Prior to ejecting the group member, on Sunday the group member said that they could not work on the assignment anymore because they had an assignment due the next day. Ok. The next day, they once again said they had an assignment due, but if I wanted, they would stay up ALLL night to work on the assignment. Nice attempt at trying to make me feel guilty.

Didn’t work.