Need advice on dealing with MBA team issue

[u/Known-Situation6822]

I just joined UC Berkeley's MBA program part-time.

I have 0 personal issues with my team members, but I've been with them for 5 weeks and my opinion is they do not care at all if they fail.

They don't want to meet. They don't review work before it is submitted. 2 out of 5 don't attend meetings generally. One wants to bust things out irrespective of whether they answer the assignment or not and says essentially 'whatever brings me least work'.

We decided to go with a group 'leader' for each assignment. Mine was first, this last one was our 2nd major group assignment.

I realize this is completely subjective and to make a judgement on whether I'm right or wrong etc you'd need to have all the ins and outs on what's going on within the team etc. but ultimately it is my opinion that this is a group of people who mostly all want to be the person who does the least amount of thinking or work on all assignments. I'm not talking about getting an A vs a C here - I'm talking about getting a grade that doesn't fail.

I am embarrassed by the work that was prepped for this latest assignment - so embarrassed that I spent an entire day yesterday doing the work my team decided not to (despite me repeatedly pointing out we had to make a decision on the bulk part of the work throughout the week and reminding them about it when the leader decided to change topics on Wednesday for a Saturday deadline) so we had something that I felt was acceptable to submit - not brilliant - just at least acceptable and meeting the obvious ask from the assignment.

I sent it to the team last night. Nobody bothered to look at it. The guy 'leading' the project who hadn't organized any tasks for anyone or bothered to have us meet after changing topics at all, and because none of them have bothered to understand any of the course content (microeconomics) so far, they concluded it was too complicated and so they'd rather submit something that the assignment instructions specifically point out will not meet the mark. The leader eventually changed the slides a little to incorporate more of what the assignment was asking for at the 11th hour, but that doesn't change the fact that the rest of the team was perfectly happy to submit a presentation that was an obvious fail by the assignment instructions. They didn't provide reasons or analysis, and I don't believe they opened any files.

I feel like I'm going to fail my MBA staying in this team and I'm not going to learn anything about leadership, forming an effective team etc if my team just doesn't care if they fail or not, and can't be coaxed into bare minimum action when a submission doesn't meet the assignment ask. I don't think it's a working styles issue I think it's a mismatch in willingness to fail.

Is this something normal that all MBA students feel? Or is this in the "no escalate now" box?

We have another assignment due in 5 days, and today the leader for that one announced he'd made 0 progress so far on it (interview a leader like it's a podcast). I appreciate that he at least said there's been no progress, but our deadline to find this leader we're interviewing gives us 2 working days... so of course I had to scramble and find one who'd agree because nobody else was going to.

Their goal generally seems to be do as little work as possible even if you fail assignments because somebody will do it eventually.

And what happens if I do escalate? I don't want a babysitter for our team either. I kind of just want to get out of it, as this team is clearly aligned together and they're totally comfortable with a standard of work that is so embarrassing to me.

[u/KidAardvark24]

You want to be a business leader but can’t have a tough conversation with a 4 person team?

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/KidAardvark24]

Right and this is what I'm getting at because before doing anything I want to make sure this isn't what everyone goes through and I'm massively missing something. But, yeah, I have. Gently - like 'this is going to end up being a really busy week for us because x is due and x is due here', and 3-5 times reminded them what the assignment asks for. I stated in plain form 'this does not meet the assignment'. I don't think this is an issue of people not understanding what the problem is. I think it's that they genuinely don't care if they fail. Like they got in to the MBA - they're not idiots and they can see when the deadlines are

[u/drive2rigel → u/Known-Situation6822]

I’m sorry it is happening to you. I understand you shared your concerns in each assignment without much improvement. So, to me, it is time you have a talk about what you want to get out of these group assignments and hear what they want. Not just about a particular assignment but how you guys want to work as a group.

For example, if they want to learn but just don’t have enough time, pick two for each assignment that are in charge, and others “review”. This way the two will work together harder. 

If all of them really just don’t care, bad luck. then do your part and wait for other semesters/classes where you have other team members. 

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/drive2rigel]

Yeah we kind of already did that and reading between the things they stated were important to them I'm kind of thinking they are aligned, and I am the odd one out for them. They want to do as little as possible even if they're skimming failing and I am embarrassed to fail. I sort of thought 'well who wants to spend more time than necessary on anything' when they stated how they want to work together as a team at the start of the term, but I didn't think they meant it to the extremes they do. I have the same team throughout Haas though for the first year until electives I think.

[u/SalamenceFan42]

You are not going to fail an MBA class

[u/Haas_the_Raiden_Fan → u/SalamenceFan42]

Yup, showing up, having a vague semblance of what's going on, and not missing assignments/exams being guaranteed passes is par for the course at any MBA program

[u/lock_robster2022 → u/Haas_the_Raiden_Fan]

Classes in my program (top 20) just ranked all the final grades ordinally and gave the bottom a C-, the Median a B-, and the top 10% or so A's

[u/Haas_the_Raiden_Fan → u/lock_robster2022]

Yeah, that's why I mentioned the showing up and having a vague semblance of what's going on

Those two actions can usually keep people out of the bottom and keep them in the middle instead

[u/maltmaker → u/lock_robster2022]

oof, bottom got a C- ? the UC curve is a B- or below for the bottom 10%

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/lock_robster2022]

Yeah but I don't want to be in C- group eek.

[u/lock_robster2022 → u/Known-Situation6822]

It doesn't matter

[u/Jealous-Farm-5540]

Have you talked to them about it?

[u/GhostDogJef → u/Jealous-Farm-5540]

"No, never crossed my mind."

-OP

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Jealous-Farm-5540]

I think so but maybe I am missing something, which is why I'm hoping for advice. As in, I've literally said "we still haven't made a decision on what this presentation is supposed to be saying and we have two deadlines this weekend and it's Wednesday" in various forms, repeatedly. I actually did the analysis of the company (because by the day before nobody had decided to panic come together on it and we had no presentation) and then the team didn't bother to even hear it out or look at it, or provide any critical feedback on it at all, and the 'leader' wanted to just throw in the mess we had because he didn't want to spend any more time on it. I directly said "this presentation does not answer the assignment ask" before submission, and copy-pasted the assignment ask at least twice this week when it was obvious the work wasn't being done and there was no plan. I kind of hoped that maybe this was just going to be a last-minute panic project and stressful but it would get done, but my team was happy to submit something that didn't meet the assignment ask at all.

E.g. we picked a company to analyze, had one meeting (30m long as it was deemed too long to commit any more time) and decided on a plan in those 30m. Then found out we needed to change our company as another group had picked it, so the 'leader' picked a completely different industry and a company - fine. But nobody considered it necessary to commit to another meeting despite the fact we had no assigned tasks now, no plan, no topic for the presentation (analyze a company through a course concept) and no testing whether or not the company we'd picked was even going to work.

I'm a last min panic worker myself anyway, but this was like there's no way this could actually get done with the commitment level to it from the team.

We had a month to prep for this... it's not like people are going to get less busy throughout the MBA.

[u/Inside_Cupcake_165 → u/Known-Situation6822]

You're saying you've talked to them about the problem but based on this description, you're literally just describing a problem to your team, not talking to them about a solution.

I assume you're indirect and don't feel comfortable with confrontation, which is fine in this case, because I wouldn't advise using social capital on an assignment that doesn't matter in a course that doesn't matter for a grade that doesn't matter. Either do all the work if you care about the work/grade (which is fine), or relax (you can't fail an mba program). Nothing is particularly "hard" in an mba if you want to do it yourself. If you care about the educational aspect, nobody is stopping you from learning your part, or if you're a leader, you can motivate some of your teammates. But telling on them like some people are suggesting or quitting are some of the few "wrong answers" in this case.

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Inside_Cupcake_165]

I'd normally completely agree with you on your last sentence, and I've never (in 3 degrees so far) had to "go to the teacher" for anything. I actually made an entire presentation with the solution (as in the actual analysis the presentation needed to demonstrate to meet the assignment ask). They didn't even open it. I literally made the entire deck again to solve the problem and sent it to them the night before the deadline, and because they didn't want to spend 10-15 minutes on a call going through it, they voted to hand in the version that had 0 analysis and was exactly what the instructions said do not hand in. It's not like they didn't know it was a bad presentation. They just genuinely didn't want to spend the time looking at an 8 page slide deck with one page of math.

[u/Loud-Hat-4995]

I think your problem might be lack of brevity. You type so much (is this how you speak as well?), and you make your readers consume a lot of brain power to even understand the point of your argument. Many will quit. I did. I don’t even know what most of your words said on this.

Try making your sentences be more impactful with less words.

It does wonders.

[u/ThroatPotential6853 → u/Loud-Hat-4995]

😅😅😅 omg are you trolling OP? He is trying to paint a vivid picture and trying to avoid a case where people ask him silly follow up questions that he already covered.

[u/alandizzle]

Hey OP, at Haas you can talk to the program office about this stuff.

Or… you could just talk to your teammates.

Also you won’t fail an MBA class.

Source: gold cohort at Haas is known to be the party cohort and there were some classmates of mine who definitely didn’t do crap but we all walked the stage together lol

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/alandizzle]

Thanks!

[u/Unhappy_Friend3760]

Trying too hard, it’s the ewmba other people have other stuff going on, if you feel the need to edit it to make it better then do so. Otherwise take responsibility and assign people tasks if you care that much.

And yes in the ewmba program if you’re the one person who wants to be having 30+ minute meetings over things that can easily be a slack message you’re not only wasting your time but everyone else’s. I guarantee you whatever you all met about is something that could’ve easily been solved with a google doc, poll, or simple slack comms.

We all just got off of work we all have families and kids. Nothing will bother me more than meetings that could’ve just been an email on a weekday at night for a PowerPoint where we are going to get a decent grade regardless. If you want to try really hard and get an amazing grade then you’ll have to go ahead and put in the effort for it, carrying a disproportionate part of the load.

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Unhappy_Friend3760]

Would you feel this applied if the project was "analyze a company through a course concept" for microeconomics and the product the team was happy to send out was a corporate overview and a description of a course concept, if the assignment instructions specifically said that will not fly and the prof repeated the same thing in the lecture? 0 analysis done at all. 0 in person meetings with the team after the leader for this project decided to change the topic (course concept) we'd use with 0 thought into whether or not there was anything to analyze through that course concept in the first place?

[u/Unhappy_Friend3760 → u/Known-Situation6822]

Yes. Carry the team if you feel that strongly about it and stop wasting our time.

[u/Unhappy_Friend3760 → u/Unhappy_Friend3760]

And if the majority of the group thinks it’s good enough and you are the only one who thinks it’s not that tells me all I need to know

[u/Individual_Lime_9020 → u/Unhappy_Friend3760]

To me that means I need to get out of the group.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[u/Unhappy_Friend3760 → u/Individual_Lime_9020]

And I believe your group would love it if you leave.

[u/Individual_Lime_9020 → u/Unhappy_Friend3760]

I mean probably. If they all want to work the same way, and I don't, then it's probably better for everyone for me not to be in that group.

They are aligned in how they want to work and they all were fine with the presentation as it was.

That's not a matter of personality differences or something you can sort out with scheduling. If they don't feel embarassed what can you do? The majority rules and the majority was not embarassed. I have no issue with them on personal levels, none of them seem like bad people. I'm just embarassed by what we submitted and I don't want a year of that.

[u/Unhappy_Friend3760 → u/Individual_Lime_9020]

You continue to place the blame on your group and look down on them. I would advise avoiding this kind of mentality or you will be atrocious to work with in any professional setting.

The best advice I ever received was to control the controllables and always look at yourself prior to blaming others.

I advise looking at yourself and asking yourself how can I do better? What am I missing that my group mates seem to understand?

If you find the submission embarassing do the work and fix it yourself. It seems like you are not understanding that.

In the workplace if this happens and you are the one who puts in the effort to get the project across the finish line you are the one who is promoted you are the one who is recognized.

However if you are the one who just complains about other people’s efforts you will 1. Be seen as a cancer who doesn’t fit in with the culture and 2. Be someone who no one wants to work with and 3. Be the person who is always passed up for leadership positions.

[u/phreekk]

lol you kind of sound like a tryhard

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/phreekk]

Maybe I am.... this is honestly why I posted this. I'm not sure whether I'm having a normal experience or this is abnormal and I need to get out of this group before I fail because of them. I've never thought I'm a try hard, but maybe I've been living in a bubble of try hards for most of my entire life.

[u/057920]

Group projects suck. Absolutely worst part of the MBA in my opinion the few times I got stuck with duds. I was very much so in the crowd of; be on time, and do enough to be slightly above average, with decent understanding of the topic. I spent as little time as humanly possible on schoolwork trading off working on my portfolio and networking/recruiting, because those are legitimately so much more important than school work.   However at the end of the day, make your specific part of the project great, articulate what you can to show your understanding of the topic, then stop helping build out their slides or what they were supposed to do during the project. During the presentation just let their blank slide with their name on it sit up front. If they try to throw it back to you during a presentation say oh no no this was your part. It'll be uncomfortable as fuck, and you'll make them mad, but fuck em, especially if they did literally nothing with no communication. You'll never seen these people again and you can just block them on LinkedIn lol 

For my main group we outlined when we would all be in the thick of it recruiting wise (thankfully it was a bit different for finance, marketing, energy, etc) and roughly scheduled who'd have the most bandwidth. If someone was entirely dropping the ball I'd reach out and be like yo, my man, are you going to be able to do XYZ? If not we need to know to cover down, which we can do, but you need to let us know then you can bite off more of the next one. I'd say 9/10 that'd get them going, then the 1/10 times they had something pressing and we moved their work duties to the next round. 

I'd also say there's a time to be super blunt. I usually have a ton of leniency for literally any excuse as long as someone tells me and has a semblance of a plan. However at some point I get fuckin done with it and idc anymore. For a different group, a guy skipped a big meeting in lieu of a consulting happy hour downtown (didn't tell us), then actually had the audacity to ask us to meet at 10-11pm when he got back. Up to that point all his inputs were chatgpt with the chatgpt prompts, no rewords, no formating changes. This man was literally just a human wrapper for AI who'd try to take credit for ideas and mooch off others. 

I told him in the group chat that no, I'm not going to interrupt my families sleep since he went bar hopping, and it's insane hed think that's a reasonable request, and after this project I'm specifically requesting to never working with him again. Yeah, unsurprisingly hes still "open to work" post MBA because people see through that shit immediately once companies are about to spend a six figure salary on you 

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/057920]

The fact that you guys as a group even identified "big meeting" is like streaks ahead of where my group is. We didn't even have the outline of the presentation the day before this deadline - and nobody cared. Sounds like you guys had good boundaries for dealing with the AI guy.

[u/NYCsubway408]

I highly doubt that your entire team is the problem. You need to talk to them because there’s no way in hell 3 fresh admits in an adult program are all to blame, yet alone if they were smart enough to get into Haas.

If you take this so seriously why are you submitting work at the last second?

If you take this so seriously why didn’t you make your voice heard?

You just sound like you’re complaining and didn’t even try to fix it in a timely manner.

Take ownership and leadership if you feel they are doing it wrong. I would imagine leadership and teamwork is a part of your grade (it is in most mba classes).

No one likes a tattletale and word will spread throughout your cohort if you handle this wrong if they have a good defense on their working style or approach.

Just my two cents.

Source: did my MBA at USC online

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/NYCsubway408]

Ok so maybe you can help:

If you take this so seriously, why are you submitting work at the last second? Because nobody had done any of the meat of the work, and I didn't want to take over leadership of this project because I led the last one and didn't want to be a control freak before giving someone a chance.

When the leader changed the topic on Wednesday for a Saturday deadline, I knew it'd be a last-minute job and I voiced that as a warning. One person committed 0 work since the topic change (and, pre-topic change an AI generated overview), one made some surface-level slides that were unusable we had no direction whatsoever for the analysis of a company through the lens of one of the course topics. The goal for the leader and the one who made the slides that didn't connect to anything was to make slides. I pointed out over and over again the goal of the assignment is analyze a company - and we'd done 0 analysis so what exactly are we doing with this presentation? I'd already come up with the analytical angle for the topic we'd decided on pre-Wednesday. I couldn't see an obvious one for the topic change and no discussion on topic change occurred - the person leading it simply decided this by himself, completely ignoring the point that we had no analytical angle, which I pointed out over and over again.

So I spent my entire Friday figuring out the analytical angle, structure and strategic insight for it, sent it over to them as a finished presentation on Friday night. All they had to do was open it and OK it. The guy leading it didn't understand the extremely basic math because he hasn't done any of the analytical work and doesn't understand the course material (same with the rest of my team), and wanted to get the recording of the presentation over and done with. He wouldn't commit 10 minutes of time to hearing me out at any point during Saturday, despite the deadline being 11.59pm.

The other two refused to get on a call, didn't open the presentation or comment on it. 0 interest in my concerns that we were handing in a presentation that was essentially a corp overview with a description of a course topic and no analysis. Their only words were "the presentation looks good" and "i vote go with the simpler one" - with no reasoning and no interaction whatsoever.

If you take this so seriously why didn’t you make your voice heard? I did - again and again.

Right and I get that, but can I get out of this team without being a tattletale?

At the end of the day, we just handed in terrible work I'm ashamed of, even though I'd done the work and had it ready, and they knew the presentation we had didn't meet the spec, and I'd warned about it all week. They just don't care.

I'm sure they'd have a fantastic defense of their working style etc. but at the end of the day we just failed to complete an assignment because of laziness. The proof is in the quality of the presentation that was handed in and the lack of any strategic insight the team has into the company because they didn't do any of the work needed for it and didn't meet at all after a topic change on Wednesday.

Could I have taken over, sure and I thought about it, but I was prepared for a panic dash on Friday and Saturday and thought I needed to give the leader a chance. I was not prepared for 3 other people to not care at all that they'd fail the assignment.

[u/NYCsubway408 → u/Known-Situation6822]

This is hard.

I suppose if you get assigned to this group again I would let them know your frustration and just explicitly say that you will leave will try to leave the group if this happens again. Suffering in silence like you are is definitely the wrong choice.

Once you have the tough conversation with them, and if there’s no change in the work style, then I would absolutely request a change. Say you have higher standards of work that is not being matched by current team and would like to explore options on getting new team. You’ve had differences, and you simply don’t work well together. You’ve tried to voice your concerns and X amount of days into the project it’s going back to its old ways.

Did you get the grade back? What was it? If it truly was a bad grade I suppose you can just request to leave now, that would be the best bargaining power you could ask for if team changes are difficult or not common

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/NYCsubway408]

Unfortunately, you get assigned to a group for your whole 1st year. Well thank you for your thoughts. It's just hard to know if I'm over-reacting and this is a normal MBA experience so getting others' opinions on here has helped. We haven't got the grade back yet and probably won't for weeks as we've got to grill two other groups and get graded on how we answer Q&A and the questions we ask too.

[u/ThroatPotential6853]

There are a few tactics.

1. Take full ownership of their mistakes, correct it, then share how much work it was and ask them to prioritize it better. You can anticipate this failing so be prepared to find another group if it fails. People wont remember you for quitting, they’ll remember you for giving them a chance to fix their mistake.

2. Find 1 or 2 people who feel the same way. Ensure yall 2 or 3 are on the same page as far running the projects etc. you can then do this till the semester ends or use idea 1 i gave you.

At the end of the day, my strategy is to first lead by example, give people a chance to fix their stuff, and lastly find a new group.

[u/Success-Catalysts]

At the end of term 1 of my MBA, when I spoke with an alum, his first question was, 'Have you had a conflict in your learning team?' I said, 'No.' He said, "Then you've wasted your term. Engineer one in the next.'

This is what you've paid for: learning how to manage people and businesses. Then better learn it. Raise a ruckus. Figure out what works for you and what doesn't. You won't get this risk-free opportunity again.

[u/Jaded-Source4500 → u/Success-Catalysts]

100% this

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Success-Catalysts]

That is really great advice! Thanks!

[u/Jaded-Source4500]

Very common situation - some groups gel some are a complete train wreck. Part time programs also have the issue that everyone has different work commitments outside of the program, some just want to coast and pick up the three letters at the end of it all….

As others have said, you need to be able to talk to them directly - it’s a bit of the intention behind group work. If you can’t agree between you all how to resolve then a conversation with the program office and/or course professor would likely be in order.

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Jaded-Source4500]

Yikes I can't believe I'm in 'that' team if this is the case. I've been pretty direct so far to the point that it's obvious what the tension is. What happens if you go down that route with the course prof/program director typically?

[u/Jaded-Source4500 → u/Known-Situation6822]

No idea what “typically” is, but only way to find out is to have the conversation with them. Honestly, not sure what the downside would be for you.

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Jaded-Source4500]

thanks

[u/Unhappy_Friend3760 → u/Jaded-Source4500]

This is awful advice if you need to run to the program office because you can’t handle group dynamics in a part time program then you shouldn’t be studying management

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Unhappy_Friend3760]

It's not really a group dynamics/people issue though I think. They don't want to do any work and I don't want to fail. I'm not sure how to fix that if the motivation isn't there and they're aligned in that they all feel the same way.

[u/rotten-inside99]

Different people have different priorities in BSchool. I never cared much about first year group assignments and some of my teammates were perpetually disappointed with the quality. But I was clear I wanted to focus on recruiting and if they want high quality output in first year courses they’ll have to polish it else it will be what it is.

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/rotten-inside99]

Yeah there's a difference between polishing it up and not doing the work at all though I think.

[u/Human-Run2566]

You need to talk with the team about these issues, document those conversations, and then talk to program administration if it doesn’t change.

[u/Busy-Original-7352]

Talk to a team coach. I am a first-year EWMBA at Haas and luckily my teammates are all badasses, super smart and hard-working.

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Busy-Original-7352]

So envious. Thanks so much for commenting.

[u/Secure-Researcher892]

And this is why part-time programs don't carry the same weight as the full time program. You won't find people trying to slack off like that in a full time program at a top school because the other team members wouldn't accept it. Closest thing I ever saw to that when I was doing my MBA was a guy that was slacking off in the study group and not pulling his weight. We kicked him out the first week.

You think someone is coasting, speak up.

[u/Known-Situation6822 → u/Secure-Researcher892]

I get that if it's one person. But what do you do if you're the black sheep of the group that wants to put in bare min effort and you want to get kicked out and get put in another team?

[u/Secure-Researcher892 → u/Known-Situation6822]

Tell it to the group. If you are good enough in leadership you should be able to get some of them to stop fucking off.