How to Survive Dysfunctional Group Work (and Become a Better Leader)

Everyone says they hate dysfunctional group work. But what if the thing we resist most is what we most need to grow?

Introduction: The Unspoken Curriculum of Group Work

Group work has become the most hated pedagogical tool of higher education. Whether it’s an undergrad marketing course or an elite MBA program, mention "group assignment" and watch the collective eye-roll and sigh ripple through the cohort. The dread is almost universal. Why? Because we’ve all had that experience: someone doesn’t do their part, deadlines get missed, and emotional labour falls unfairly on one or two people.

But here’s the overlooked truth: group work isn’t just about collaboration. It’s a real-time test of leadership under constraint. It reveals how people behave when they have no formal authority, conflicting goals, and little time. In other words, it mirrors real life.

If you’re in an MBA or navigating any professional development setting, group dysfunction is not a bug, it’s part of the curriculum.

Illustration of a frustrated leader standing in front of a chalkboard labelled ‘Group Assignment’ while students react with dismissive expressions, symbolising dysfunctional group work in an educational setting. — We can all relate to difficulties working with peers in work or educational settings

The Fantasy vs. the Reality

In theory, group work builds skills in negotiation, teamwork, delegation, diversity of thought, and collective problem-solving. In practice? It often exposes unequal effort, vague accountability, and wildly different standards of excellence (McKay, 2022). These are the hallmarks of dysfunctional group work - frustrating, yes, but also revealing.

In MBA programs, it’s worse. You expect high performance. Everyone’s paying a premium. And yet, someone ghosts the Slack channel. Someone else constantly reschedules. Deadlines inch closer while quality stagnates. It’s frustrating, and deeply human.

What institutions rarely teach is how to work with people you didn’t choose, under conditions you can’t control. But this is the real training. This is what separates potential leaders from the rest.

Lessons from Dysfunctional Group Work Trenches

In one of my MBA group projects, we had all the ingredients for chaos: five different schedules, unclear roles, and wildly divergent work ethics. As the deadline loomed, I noticed a quiet tipping point. Either I’d step up, or we’d fall short.

So I did what needed doing. Took ownership of the key analysis. Managed the timeline. Coaxed contributions from others. Was it fair? Not really. Was it necessary? Absolutely.

That experience reshaped my understanding of leadership. It wasn’t about control. It was about creating enough structure for others to succeed, even if they didn’t notice or care. It was important to work through to the result, and not dwell on the dysfunction - to learn to be a facilitator and plan our way to the result I needed.

With hindsight, Marcus Aurelius had it right: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Illustration of a person pushing a heavy stone block through a narrow tunnel, symbolising perseverance and the Stoic idea that obstacles create the path forward. — Where is the lesson in your struggle? Who you become on the journey is often more important than the destination itself

What Dysfunctional Group Work Really Teaches You

Forget the rubrics. The true lessons of group work are psychological:

1. Emotional Regulation Under Pressure
You learn to manage your reaction to missed deadlines, unclear communication, or disappearing teammates. This emotional stamina is what carries over into tense stakeholder meetings later.

2. Leading Without Authority
When you have no formal title, all you have is influence. You learn to earn trust, suggest without condescension, and motivate without threats. This is the essence of soft power, which Harvard Business Review calls the currency of modern leadership (Gambill, 2025).

3. Boundaries and Ownership
You figure out when to take initiative, and when to step back. The temptation to fix everything must be balanced with enabling others to step up.

4. Self-Awareness of Role Preferences
Do you default to organiser? Creative? Critic? Group work reveals your instincts, and your blind spots. The task as a lifelong learner is not to escape discomfort, but to examine it.

Groupwork usually lacks hierarchy, so leading without authority becomes a crucial learned skill during your studies

Applying the Lessons to Real Work

Dysfunctional group work isn’t limited to education. In the workplace, you will face teams with misaligned incentives, weak leadership, or clashing personalities. The habits you develop in academic projects, including expectation setting, overcommunication, documentation, deliverables, are the ones that prepare you for real-world ambiguity.

Stoicism offers a frame for us here: Focus on what’s within your control - namely your effort, your tone, your contribution. Everything else is noise.

James Clear (2018) reminds us that “you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” In dysfunctional teams, your personal system - i.e. how you plan, reflect, execute - becomes your safety net.

Also worth reflecting that some dysfunction is a systems issue, not a people issue. If your workplace keeps producing broken collaboration, maybe the org structure needs more scrutiny than the individuals within it.

How to Handle Dysfunctional Group Work (Without Losing Your Mind)

1. Contract Early
Set expectations before the work starts. You can use “team contract”, but I've found that simply airing expectations early does the trick - i.e. what are the roles, deliverables, time commitments. Even HBR backs this up as one of the most underused but effective practices (Bregman, 2016)

2. Communicate Ruthlessly
Don’t assume silence equals alignment. Use clear updates, action items, and follow-ups. Document decisions. Leave a trail.

3. Don’t Fix Everything
It’s tempting to do it all. Don’t. Set a hard stop on how much you’ll carry, oversee the rest - delegating the parts that can be delegated. Over-functioning only hides others’ underperformance.

4. Reflect Post-Mortem
When it’s over, run a post-mortem. What worked? What broke? What role did you unconsciously take on? Growth only comes when experience becomes insight.

5. Stay Curious, Not Cynical
Group work can harden you, or it can hone you. Resist the urge to just complain. Observe the dynamics. Study what helps people engage, or retreat. Learn to facilitate and lead people where they are, not where you wish they were (North, n.d.) .

Illustration of a frustrated man at a desk surrounded by arguing colleagues, symbolising the stress of handling dysfunctional group work in a high-pressure environment. — In the chaos and dysfunction of group work, it's important to recognise that the only thing you can control is yourself - your reactions, actions and organisation

Conclusion: The Obstacle Is the Way

We don’t learn resilience from reading about it. We learn it by facing resistance. Dysfunctional group work might feel like an exercise in futility, but it’s often a disguised invitation to develop patience, strategic empathy, and leadership.

In my case, those projects taught me more about managing competing priorities, influencing peers, and seeing the bigger picture than any textbook did.

So next time you’re handed a group assignment, especially one that feels doomed from the start, instead see it as a dojo. You’re not just submitting a project, a slide deck, a video or presentation. Rather, you’re training for every messy, complex, cross-functional challenge the real world will throw your way.

And that’s the kind of education worth paying attention to.

It can be useful to incorporate various techniques for managing your emotions, which can often be crucial in navigating group dynamics.