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How Group Projects Help Students Develop Leadership Skills

Most students dislike group activities for one of two reasons: either they don’t feel comfortable expressing their ideas and feelings among peers, or they end up completing the majority of the work for the entire group. While these challenges can be difficult to overcome, they don’t overshadow the benefits of student collaboration. Arguably the most overlooked skill students develop during these exercises is leadership — a quality that organizations certainly value in future employees.

Emphasize The Importance Of Teamwork

While one person can formulate the idea for a start-up, companies don’t flourish without contributions from many different individuals. Therefore, it’s important for students to learn how to trust their peers and work alongside them to achieve a common goal. Some students might argue they operate better independently, but when a company starts to scale their product, it’s not feasible for one person to handle the entire workload. That’s why students must gain experience collaborating with their peers early on in their development.

Require Effective Communication

It doesn’t matter how tech-savvy the leader of a company is, if they can’t communicate a vision or interact with their team, the entire organization will most likely implode. The same philosophy applies to group projects. If students want to create a successful project, they must effectively communicate their thoughts to each other and the audience as a whole. Group activities usually ask students to form goals, prioritize tasks, and delegate responsibilities — all of which require communication to achieve.

Promote Self-awareness

The students who frequently complete the majority of a group project usually do so because they think their work is best, or they don’t want to dedicate time to figure out responsibilities. Instead of taking over a project, great leaders empower their employees to take initiative. Understanding your role doesn’t mean you have to sit back, stay silent, and let the higher-level employees do all the heavy lifting. Roles should be defined based on strengths, weaknesses, and specific skill sets, but that only happens when leaders have spent enough time with their team to know these details. Working in groups helps students become more self-aware of a lot of these factors as they mature.

Are you struggling to coordinate group projects in your online classes, or just looking for a way an easier way to set up meetings? Bongo’s video-based platform enables students to meet synchronously with their team, record video presentations, and organize video or text submissions all in one place. For more information about how our software facilitates group projects, visit Bongo’s website.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]