What to do when your kid ends up with a bad leader in a group project
The knock on my classroom door came after school last Tuesday, backpack slipping off one shoulder, eyes shiny but not crying yet. It was Lila, a 9-year-old from my 4th grade class who’d spent all week working on a dinosaur exhibit for our school’s science night. She pulled a crumpled half-drawn fern out of her bag and said, “Mia took over the whole project. She said my drawing was messy and threw it away. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
I pulled out an orange fruit snack from the jar I keep under my desk for moments like this, and slid it across the table. I knew Mia. She was the kid who always raised her hand first to be group leader, who turned in her projects a day early, who reminded me when I forgot to pass out the homework. I also remembered last semester, when another group worked on the book fair entry sign: Javi was leader there, and he let Tao draw all the cartoon dinosaurs even though Tao’s letters slope way to the left. The sign was lopsided, and half the words were hard to read, but every kid who walked past stopped to point at Tao’s dinosaurs. Javi’s the kind of leader people remember. Mia, so far, is the kind people survive.
Lila’s mom called me that night, frustrated. She asked if she should email the principal, or request Lila be moved to a new group, or even just let Lila do her own separate project instead. It’s the question I get most often from parents when their kid comes home upset about group work: why do we let the bossy kids run everything, and why should my kid have to suffer through it?
Most of the time, we default to calling any kid who speaks up first a “natural leader.” We praise them for taking initiative, we put them in charge, we don’t stop to ask what they’re actually doing with that power. That’s the mistake. Childhood group work isn’t just about getting a project done. It’s the first place most kids learn what leadership actually looks like, for better and for worse. The bad experiences are just as useful as the good ones, if we handle them right.
I didn’t move Lila to a new group. Switching groups solves the immediate problem, but it robs all the kids of learning how to fix a broken dynamic. The next day, I pulled the whole four-person group to the side table during morning free play, and I didn’t start by scolding Mia. I said, “I hear everyone has different ideas for the exhibit. We’re going to go around right now, each person says one thing they want to make sure is included, and no one talks until it’s their turn.”
Mia went first, as usual: she wanted a big foam T-Rex skull as the centerpiece, that was her idea she’d brought from home. Lila went next, quiet: she wanted to add drawings of all the prehistoric plants, because she’d just gone to a natural history museum over spring break and had fallen in love with the fern garden. When everyone was done, I turned to Mia and said, “You volunteered to be leader of this group. What’s your plan to make sure everyone’s idea gets in?”
She stared at me for a second, then shrugged and said, “We can put the ferns along the bottom of the display board. That works.”
That’s the concrete trick I tell both teachers and parents to use: if a kid is already in the leader role, don’t take it away from them to fix the problem. Remind them what the job actually is. For parents, if your kid comes home upset about a bad group leader, you don’t have to jump in and email the teacher to fix it. Start with two specific questions: “What’s one thing you wish your leader had done differently?” and “What’s one thing you can do next time to speak up for your idea?” It helps them move past being mad to thinking about what they want and how to get it, instead of waiting for an adult to fix everything.
If your kid is the one who always takes charge, the fix is even simpler. Next time you’re doing a family project—planning a camping trip, putting together a new bookshelf, decorating for a birthday—stop them after they’ve told everyone what to do, and say, “Let’s go around and hear what everyone else wants to do before we decide.” It’s a small, low-effort adjustment that teaches them leadership isn’t about getting your own way.
The dinosaur exhibit turned out fine. Lila taped her fern drawings along the bottom, Mia put her T-Rex skull in the middle, and at science night, Lila got to explain prehistoric plant life to every visitor who stopped by. She left that night with a blue ribbon for third place, and a story about what it’s like when your idea gets pushed aside, and how to get it back.
Last weekend, I got a text from Lila’s mom saying Lila volunteered to organize her soccer team’s end-of-season party. She told her mom, “I’m going to ask everyone what food they want before I order, not just pick my favorite.”
I still have kids come to my door after school with crumpled drawings and hurt feelings every month. Some years, I have more bossy leaders than good ones, and some kids leave elementary school still thinking leadership is about being the loudest. It’s not a problem you solve once. It’s just something you practice, a little bit every time a group gets together. The leaders we remember and the ones we survive both teach us something, if we stop to pay attention.
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