I had a similar experience once in high school. After a first round where the top four students were assigned to a group of the lower end ("You'll be a good rol

I had a similar experience once in high school. After a first round where the top four students were assigned to a group of the lower end ("You'll be a good role model", he said, which failed miserably) we then picked our own groups for the next project. He went down the class, in order of grades, and had us sit at a group table. So the student with the highest grade in the class sat as a table of their choosing, followed by the second, then third, etc. My group had 3 of the top 5, and one who was somewhere just above the middle. The three of us had flagged her over to be the fourth member. The reason for this? She didn't have the highest grade, but we knew she worked hard (it was a somewhat unfair consequence that we learned everyone's standing in this way; we assumed she'd have been higher) It didn't matter. We divided tasks, made sure everything was covered, and all got As. The lesson out of all of this was, in group work, having the smartest or best test scores didn't matter as between four of us, we could work it out together. But having people who could do the work did. And that is more valuable in a team. These days, I work in a group of eight managing engineering and operations for a specific technology. We have some who are crazy smart but don't do much, and a few others who are pretty new to the tech but work pretty diligently. The former talks alot but has few deliverables, but the latter, while asking us a lot about the higher end stuff, has taken it upon himself to clean up little inconsistencies and chasing down the non-serious, but obscure errors in our system. You have to be careful not to play favorites, but we try hard to make sure the latter guy knows his work is valuable and that he's appreciated. Go team.