Why Can’t I Choose My Teammates in Your Classes?

Students often ask me why they can’t pick their own teammates in my classes. In many classes, choosing your own group is common, and I used to prefer it too. But over time, I noticed that most students select friends or people who seem similar to them. This is a normal human tendency—called similarity or affinity bias—but it can accidentally create cliques or limit opportunities to meet new people or work adequately with individuals that are different from us.

To give students a more valuable learning experience, I moved to an evidence‑based system where I assign teams. This lets you work with classmates you might not interact with otherwise. Diverse groups—whether in gender, background, major, skills, or perspectives—better mirror real workplaces. In most jobs, you don’t get to choose your early‑career teams, and you will often collaborate with people who have very different experiences from yours. Practicing this in college helps you become a stronger, more adaptable teammate in your professional career.

Why I Use Assigned, Diverse Teams

In this course, I build teams using specific demographic and behavioral criteria rather than allowing self‑selection. Research shows that diverse groups outperform more homogeneous ones on complex tasks and that assigned teams often share work more fairly, avoid “social loafing,” learn more from one another, and benefit from a wider mix of ideas.

My Goal

My goal is to prepare you for professional environments by giving you practice working across differences. By collaborating with a broad range of peers, you develop important communication, teamwork, and conflict‑management skills that employers value highly.

The Research Foundation

Reduced "Social Loafing": Research shows that instructor-assigned groups often exhibit higher accountability than friend-based groups, leading to more equitable work distribution (Maguire & Keceli, 2023).

Knowledge Spillovers: Interacting with peers from different demographics and disciplines has been shown to improve individual learning outcomes and exam performance (Hansen, Owan, & Pan, 2015).

Collective Intelligence: A team’s success is driven by “Collective Intelligence”—a factor enhanced by social sensitivity and a wide range of perspectives rather than just the individual IQ of its members (Janssens, Meslec, & Leenders, 2022).

References

• Chapman, K. J., Meuter, M. L., Toy, D., & Wright, L. K. (2006). Can’t we pick our own groups? The influence of group selection method on group dynamics and outcomes. Journal of Education for Business, 81(3), 150–157. https://doi.org/10.1177/1052562905284872 

• Dachner, A. M., & Beatty, J. E. (2023). A selected review of exemplary diversity articles published in the Journal of Management Education. Journal of Management Education, 47(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/10525629231178798 

• Hansen, Z., Owan, H., & Pan, J. (2015). The impact of group diversity on class performance: Evidence from college classrooms. Education Economics, 23(2), 238-258. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1048197

• Janssens, M., Meslec, N., & Leenders, R. T. A. J. (2022). Collective intelligence in teams: Contextualizing collective intelligent behavior over time. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 989572. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.989572

• Maguire, D., & Keceli, Y. (2024). The impact of formation and diversity on student team conflict. Active Learning in Higher Education, 25(3), 409-423. https://doi.org/10.1177/14697874221144998 

 

…lessons from Martial Arts

Sometimes we can see valuable Management lessons at work in unexpected areas, such as the martial arts. For several years now, three of my kids have been practicing Tang Soo Do, a traditional Korean martial art that is similar in many respects to Tae Kwon Do, the Olympic sport. Last year, I decided to join them, since I was the one driving them to and from their classes.

Though my original motivation was the physical aspect (I felt I had been neglecting my body too much), I have been finding out quickly that there is much more to martial arts than exercise or learning to defend oneself. I have been learning about the history and customs of Korea, China, and a bit of Japan, as a consequence of researching the diffusion of these disciplines. But, more importantly, I have been observing first-hand the application of many concepts I teach in my classes, in a fascinating context that I had not previously considered.

Exhibit 1: Organizational Socialization
Take for example the organizational process of socialization. As you might recall from (or are about to learn in) your management classes, this involves introducing new members to the organization and to its culture, in an explicit effort to integrate them more speedily and smoothly. Identifying and assigning “sponsors” –well-established employees—to guide the newcomers through their new environment is perhaps one of the best techniques to bring new members onboard. Though this is not a formal process in our studio, I have been observing that the new students who have friends or relatives who are more advanced tend to stay longer and learn faster than the new students who come as “pioneers” from their social circles (so-called “boundary spanners” in the field of social networking).

Similarly, Human Resource Management researchers have found that new employees hired through internal references tend to become more productive and adjust more rapidly to their new employer than other employees hired through external labor markets. To me, this suggests that organizations (especially those that depend on volunteer work like NHSMBA) would do well to ensure that every new member is assigned a sponsor if they do not already have other friends or acquaintances inside. Not only would this reduce attrition, it will increase the chances that these new members will be more engaged, committed, valuable, and satisfied.

Exhibit 2: The Danger of Narrow Evaluations
There are ten different belts from white to black belt. To advance from belt to belt, students have to fulfill attendance requirements, self-defense techniques, hand and kick techniques, a few language and culture terms, and a specific “form” (hyung is the Korean term, also known as “kata” in other martial arts). These forms represent a fight with an imaginary group of enemies, who are defeated through the use of specific, tightly choreographed defense and attack techniques. Because these forms are much more complex than the rest of the requirements, they tend to capture to a greater extent the students’ attention. It is easy for the less mature students to think they deserve to skip belts because they have learned the forms that correspond to those more advanced belts.

This narrowing of the evaluation scope tends to occur in businesses too! Sometimes new employees find themselves more deserving than their managers think they are. But other times it is the managers who fall prey to the “halo” or the “recency” bias that cognitive psychology has identified. Of course, this might happen in any martial art as well: if we are not careful, we might believe that someone is ready to take more responsibility than they truly are because we restricted our appraisal to only a few outstanding factors, neglecting to see the full picture.

Of course, it is also true that people often “grow into” new roles; sometimes the best available candidate only has the essential competencies and some training and development in the near future will bring them to their full potential. But the main point remains, that there is danger in restricting our personnel evaluations to only a few aspects, especially when they are a complex, yet incomplete part of the whole picture.

There are many other lessons that have been coming to my mind as I am about to reach the end of my first year as a Tang Soo Do “artist” (that seems to be the preferred term). I know that some of my friends and students have reached the black belt, that highly priced, attainable by very few individuals. If you have been having similar considerations from another martial art or from a different field (for example, music), I would love to hear from you.

¡Hasta la próxima!