Roaring is for Lions...

It seems difficult to believe but yesterday marked two months of business school already behind me.  This is hard to comprehend both because two months feels like nothing but a blink (seriously, where DID August go?) and yet it also feels like a I've lived an entire lifetime since the morning two months ago when I packed up my car and drove to Ithaca for our very first week of school.

As with everything that's new, there comes a certain honeymoon period.  Teamwork is a very strong component of our program, group work is more the rule than the exception.  Our teams of six are predetermined by the administration and are assigned from the get-go; we are expected to work together for the entire semester.  My team started off strong in Ithaca.  As with any group dynamic there were some people I gravitated to more quickly than others, but in general we gelled well.  However, about two weeks ago, my team's own honeymoon period ended.  Reality sunk in, true personalities have surfaced, and the kid gloves are off.

The details don't really matter.  The long and the short of what went wrong is pretty much what one would expect among any group dynamic.  Some people cared about a specific assignment, some didn't.  Some procrastinated, others didn't. Some thought someone else was managing an element, while that someone thought someone else was managing an element. There were a lot of balls in the air and no one had assigned which juggler was supposed to manage them.  It was, in short, a disaster.
We ran through multiple fire drills in just a matter of days trying to make our homework deadlines.  When we finally held our debrief meeting after the dust had settled, we generally agreed that the biggest take-away was: "this can never happen again."

To be fair, this is not meant to be a gossipy post.  I am and remain a team player.  However, something interesting occurred when basically everything that could go wrong did go wrong in terms of homework assignments and projects and delegation.  While the assigned leaders for the projects had clearly failed, those of us on the outskirts of these assignments (we work on a rotating schedule of who is a lead, etc. on a project) stepped up to the plate, in triage mode. We divided, we conquered, we rather amazingly pulled off the assignment given the disaster we'd walked into.  What did those that jumped in to save our quickly sinking ship have in common?  (Besides being on the same team and recognizing the looming disaster?)  We were the two women in our group of six.

Now, for the most part, the guys in my group are great. Really.  But as we all started to realize we were in full blown crisis mode, the men continued to dance around in circles about who should do what and how we should divide and conquer while my other female counterpart and I were planning and delegating tasks to make sure we made our deadlines.  Given the amount of sexism and misogyny women encounter on a shameful regular basis, I find it fascinating, on point, and extremely relevant that the take-away from virtually any work crisis or planning event that I have ever been a part of, including this most recent example, is this:  We women?  We get stuff done.