Absence makes the heart grow fonder... Yeah right!

Whilst at the beginning I promised to be unbiased and retain a level of professionalism I can feel myself literally seething at the sight of this topic. Missing team meetings is a challenge in itself, and something unless on your death bed (sick note would be preferable) I cannot see a reason for. The attitude of receiving an e-mail from the missing member(s) with a shopping list style note of what is apparently their contribution is nothing more than an insult, not a catastrophic one though! However whilst the impact is not immediately apparent, the effect on the team and how we worked together is best akin to erosion, slow but just as damaging. It creates an environment whereby the remaining group members become disengaged. However one friend who has been listening ear throughout the project said to me ‘At least if they don’t turn up then you don’t have to force smile when they come up with a rubbish idea’. Hilarious I know but is this really how I want to view team work as, surely I want the best group of people who together we can create work which not only meets the brief but is intellectually stimulating.

You can’t force people to turn up – this I found out much to my peril; we ended up delivering the pitch with two members missing (one with completely mitigating circumstances, which couldn’t be helped). The other member however failed to show due to be plain drunk/hungover. This I have to say is one of the worst positions I have been in, during all my group work whilst at university. Apart from the complete embarrassment felt, came much worse; when it finally sunk in that we were going to have to deliver our presentation without certain people there, pure panic started to set in. I had absolutely no idea what the script was to accompany his assigned slide and the topic that it covered was not one of my strong points. Upon reflection this gave me one of the most important lessons; which is whilst it may be good for each team to contain specialists who are able to contribute; this in practice can lead to nobody having either interest or tangible knowledge on subjects that they are not working on. Instead a level of a generalist attitude is needed to ensure a complete and rounded piece of work is produced. That by the way is not a free pass for me to take control of everybody’s work – simply perhaps a little familiarising presentation given by each member so people can become more comfortable with each other’s task. Team work is not a new concept yet it continues to be an albatross around the necks of most leaders. The topic as to whether and if so to what extent this concept varies dependent on the setting that the PR is taking place, be it in house, consultancy, agency or perhaps a hybrid is one that will continue long after my collection of blogs, sp who knows it could even become the topic for my dissertation.