Diffusion of responsibility is the actual mechanism
When a task belongs to "the group", it belongs to nobody, and everyone assumes someone else is closer to it than they are. This is not a character problem — it's a structural one, and it reproduces in every group regardless of who's in it.
Which means the fix is structural too, and it's available in the first thirty minutes.
The first meeting, done properly
- Every task has exactly one owner. Not two. Not 'the group'. A name.
- Every task has a date that is not the deadline. Internal deadlines, a week early, so a failure is recoverable rather than fatal.
- Write it down where everyone can see it. A visible list is a mild, constant, entirely impersonal form of accountability.
- Agree what happens if someone misses. Now, while it's hypothetical and nobody is defensive. Afterwards it's a confrontation; beforehand it's a policy.
- Book the check-ins in advance. A meeting that must be arranged will not be arranged.
If someone genuinely isn't delivering
- Ask early and privately. People are far more often drowning than idle, and a drowning person hides. The kind version and the effective version are the same version here.
- Do not silently absorb their work. It feels virtuous, it is the most common response, and it removes the only signal that would have fixed the problem.
- Escalate before the deadline, not after. Tutors can do something in week four and nothing in week eleven.
- Keep the written record. The visible task list from meeting one is now the evidence, and you did not have to construct it under pressure.