The ‘dreaded’ group project

Hearing the words “team project” can spark fear in the hearts of students and business professionals alike. Does this
perception mean the project is doomed from the start?

Dustin Sleesman, associate professor of management in UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, explored this question with colleagues from Michigan State University, Queen’s University and Iowa State University. Their study, published in Small Group Research, found that the initial beliefs of team members can influence success.

Although their research focused on business students, Sleesman believes the findings are also applicable to team dynamics in the workplace.

Historically, teams in organizations and academic settings could expect to work on multiple projects together over a period of time, allowing team members to get to know each other and work on any issues within the group dynamic as the project progressed.

However, to keep up in today’s competitive marketplace, organizations are now shifting to temporary teams that focus on one short-term task, to increase flexibility and overall project output. Educators are also creating many different group project teams, which form and disband throughout the course of a class. Although in each case, a team’s time together is more compressed, managers or teachers still assume these teams will be effective in yielding high outputs.

Sleesman and his research team found, however, that this view overlooks the many challenges that come with working in either temporary or well-established teams.

“This is the first study to demonstrate that teams are susceptible to the self-fulfilling prophecy effect,” Sleesman said. “Past research has presumed that group-level beliefs take a while to form. Our study found that the perceptions of team members can actually spread and crystallize very quickly. There is a clear implication for team leaders: Once they notice team members saying something negative, or acting as if the team won’t be successful, they need to address it immediately.”

Mittens from 1909 expedition conserved

The way Matthew Henson described it, the brutal cold that punishes those who dare to approach the North Pole is enough to turn a man’s flesh into something like hamburger.

“Freezing of the nose and the whole front of the face is an ordinary occurrence,” he wrote in 1910. “The skin keeps peeling off and freezing again until that part of the face is like raw beef and it leaves spots on the face like smallpox.”

Henson’s hobbling partner in exploration, Robert Peary, had lost nine of his 10 toes to frostbite on one expedition.

So the sealskin mittens Henson wore on April 6, 1909, when he and Peary and four Inuit guides reportedly became the first to reach the North Pole, deserve a good bit of credit for keeping the brilliantly resourceful Henson alive.

Whether they were first or nearly first at the pole (debate continues), Henson was without question the first African-American to sledge across the shifting ice of the Arctic Sea and stand on top of the world.

“The people at the Winterthur/UD program have been so incredible and professional—I had no doubts.”

— Lacey Flint, The Explorers Club of New York City

The harsh conditions and the intervening century took their toll on the mittens, though. They were matted, rigidly creased and brittle in some places, compromised by insects in others.

But then they wound up in the hands of Caitlin Richeson, a student in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation.

At Richeson’s workbench, they found new life.

Why, you might ask, would the owner of these mittens trust a student to tend to them?

“The people at the Winterthur/UD program have been so incredible and professional—I had no doubts,” said Lacey Flint, the archivist and curator of research collections at The Explorers Club of New York City, to which Henson gave the mittens in 1934. The Explorers Club counts some of history’s most adventurous luminaries, including Henson, among its members.

“I met Caitlin a number of times,” Flint said. “She had done so much pre-research on the expedition and Henson. It was blind faith. I handed them over and said, ‘Good luck.’”

Flint knew Richeson would not rely on luck, of course. She would draw on the skills she gained in the renowned Winterthur/UD program.

She would rely on careful scrutiny, using ultraviolet light, infrared reflectogram examination techniques and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to analyze the materials, understand their true condition and develop a treatment plan.

When her plan was approved, she documented each step. She also would develop a storage system to protect the mittens in future travels.

Seeing the treated mittens reminded Flint of Henson’s 150th birthday celebration. She brought the mittens to it, and one of Henson’s great-grandsons picked one up. What he said has stuck with her.

“I feel like I’m shaking hands with my great-grandfather,” he said.

The mittens worn by Arctic explorer Matthew Henson sit on the workbench of Caitlin Richeson, graduate student in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. Richeson helped to restore the iconic mittens while retaining distinctive marks of wear they earned during their historic travels.