Working in Groups is better than Working Individually

There is a belief that working in groups brings better results than working individually. In the process of work, there appear more ideas. Further, each of them is discussed by all the members of a group, and only the best ideas and solutions are taken for further consideration. Obviously, working in groups makes the results of the work more objective and more universal. Such work is usually more creative than the work of an individual.

Working in groups allows better sharing of ideas and thoughts. Moreover, different methods of their further implementation can be applied. The mistakes that can be made by a person while working alone may be overlooked, because there is nobody to control the very process of the work. On the contrary, the group work can reveal such mistakes on the initial stages. The group work is also more effective, because the participants can change each other in order to provide the best results. Therefore, even if one member of the group is tired or lacks inspiration, this disadvantage can be compensated by the other participants.

Besides, the well-known proverbs say: “More hands make for lighter work”, “Two heads are better than one”, “The more the merrier.” It means that working in groups becomes more pleasant duty, because communication makes the whole process more interesting and exciting. What is more, the participants are aiming at achieving the best results at a particular sphere, which makes them supporters of the same idea and promotes friendship and mutual understanding between them.

The group work also allows the participants to take responsibility for more complex tasks than they could perform individually. The complex problems can be separated into smaller ones in order to make every participant of the group responsible for a particular part of the work. Such a method of wok helps the group leader to delegate the duties and responsibilities and provide a better management of a particular project. Students can share diverse perspectives, and the result of the work is no longer limited by the outlook of a particular person. The group work allows holding each other accountable making sure that there is no leisure or defects in the work. The other substantial benefit of the group work is a mutual support. Sometimes, one may lack creativeness or just get tired, and that is when the other participants have a chance to support this person and inspire him/her to go further. There are many projects that failed, because the person that was responsible for the project did not believe in success, which resulted in stopping of the work. Unfortunately, such failures happen very rarely.

Of course, there are certain disadvantages of the group work. There are people that do not like to work in groups. Such people are called introverts who come up with ideas in complete silence and loneliness. Therefore, they are not very good in the group work because they are too shy to express their ideas. The other disadvantage of working in groups is that the participants of the group have less control over the performance of the tasks than they could have while working individually. There can also be a situation when some tasks are unaccomplished because every group member thought that it was the responsibility of other participants. Besides, some students, especially the high-achievers, often feel that they could get a higher mark if they worked individually. These students often have nothing to do except of working instead of the weaker group members to deliver better results, and this makes the evaluation of the work unfair.

In conclusion, it should be to mentioned that there are many advantages of the group work. The most substantial of them are the ability to share ideas, support each other, criticize the work of one another and  choose only the best solutions for a particular problem. However, there are certain disadvantages of working in groups such as weakness of some participants, unequal separation of efforts inside the group, and unreadiness of some participants to work in group.