I am a project leader and need advice

[Sidi]

Hello and thanks for taking your time to read this.

I am 19 years old and an IT student. I'm quite inexperienced in leadership and projects. My only experience was a one month internship in a international company as a programmer where i could see how people handle problems there. I am the project leader for my diploma group. We are a group of 3 people. One of those is a close friend.

In the beginning i told everyone what they had to do in the project. But part of their work is the individual documentation which is very clearly explained in a file uploaded from our school. In that file there are clear and exact orders how to do the documentation. One of our team members is really behind with his documentation (which takes really long beacuse its scientific work) and now that we are near a deadline he started getting all stressed and blaming the team leader (me) for not telling him exactly how to do his documentation. Its true that i didn't talk a lot about documentation because teachers talked a lot about it and everything was explained in that file available to everyone.

He didn't say it directly to me but told the other team member (my close friend) via text that its my bad. We get individual grades and me and my close friend are doing pretty well, hes the only struggling to catch up. He even skipped the meeting we had 2 day saying he was sick witch i highly doubt.

I'm asking you guys for advice because I'm not sure:

1) If its really my bad.
2) Should i take responsibility and if yes for what
3) Should i confront him
4) How should i communicate or what can i do so this doesn't happen again.

THANKS A LOT IF U HAVE TOOK UR TIME TO READ THIS I REALLY APPRECIATE U!!

[Arthur]

@Sidi I think you definitely have to take the responsibility, and especially as a project leader. 

Although you can interpret it both ways:
From one hand it's your fault for not checking up his documentation regularly and not setting up milestones.
From his side, he should be on top of all technical and non-technical project documentation.

However, you cannot do his job for him. So the situation at hand is that yes he is behind, but blaming is not going to be productive. You have to face the problem that is at hand right now.

Maybe get together as a team and go through his code to help him document it?

[Elisabeth]

Clearly, your classmate didn't handle his part well. Now he's stressing and externalizing blame. You don't have to take on the blame, however, it's an experience for you - next time you supervise something, maybe you could check in earlier, and tell the person that "hey, you should get started with the documentation too, it's more work than you imagine". 

As for helping him with his part or not, that's kind of up to you, and also what kind of relationship you have with him and want to have with him in the future. Being generous, disregarding the accusation and helping him now is the difficult thing to do, and likely the choice that will make you proud of yourself. But you are under no obligation to do so. 

Edited December 10, 2018 by Elisabeth

[Chase Ellfeldt]

I think it looks better of you take ownership of the situation so that you can influence the situation. If you put it all on the failing teammate then you will not have a favorable outcome. 

I would come along side this teammate and help them with their work or assign another teammate to assist. 

It's not fair that this teammate did not pull 100% of their weight but the goal is the accomplished mission which means some people will have to work 120% while others work 80%. 

If you want to learn more on leadership I'd recommend my favorite book on leadership. The title of that books is Extreme Ownership. The audio book is only 7 hours long but it is soooooo good.