Career and Leadership Strategies
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CRG Weekly eZine
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September 2, 2008
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Greetings!
I hope you had a great Labor Day holiday weekend with your family and friends.
This week's eZine explores the phenomenon of "Groupthink", which when group members
feel that it is more useful to go along with an idea presented
than to suggest their own, or criticize or comment on
the ideas of others.
Groupthink can be mildly harmful or even disastrous, but it can be controlled by an effective team leader.
How well do you and your team mitigate the possibility of Groupthink?
Andy Robinson
Head Coach
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Groupthink Can Lead to Spectacularly Bad Decisions
A plane crashes in the desert and six survivors are left to choose
what items to salvage. Should they take a gun? Salt tablets? Heavy
overcoats? How about a cosmetics mirror? With 15 possibilities and
limited time to make their choices, the group must quickly prioritize.
You might think that a high degree of initial consensus about what
to take would indicate the survivors chose the "correct" items, the
ones experts deemed would best help them stay alive. After all, five
out of six people aren't likely to be wrong, right? As it turns out, an
experiment that presented the above scenario to business-school
students revealed that groups with more initial dissent were more
likely to pick the right items, ultimately choosing wisely almost twice
as often as the other groups. In teams where there was little
disagreement, says Richard Larrick, a professor at Duke University's
Fuqua School of Business who ran the experiment with Ph.D. candidate Al
Mannes, "no one asked, 'Where might we be wrong?'"
This experiment is part of a growing body of research on Groupthink. First analyzed by Yale psychologist Irving Janis in 1972,
groupthink is hardly a new problem. Yet it continues to sway all sorts
of important decisions. Groupthink has been blamed for a number of major fiascoes, from the Columbia space-shuttle disaster to the
implosion of Enron to the prolonged war in Iraq. Corporate boards and
committees are said to be particularly vulnerable to the phenomenon.
While averaging individually generated answers may produce
astonishingly accurate answers, strange things start to happen when you
put a handful of otherwise intelligent people in a room together. One,
for example, is "the fear that everyone else knows more, so I'll lust
go along," says Larrick. "Another is the fear that the boss has already
really decided, so why bother to stick my neck out?"
But groups can be more intelligent than individuals working alone,
say professors who study them, if groupthink (a form of "process loss"
in academese) can be avoided. To that end, "group processes have to be
actively and repeatedly managed," says John W. Payne, a professor at
Fuqua. "You've got to make sure that people with unique information
share it, or else you're likely to focus only on what is held in
common."
ENCOURAGING DISSENT
Managing a group for optimal performance begins by gathering people
with diverse perspectives. A bigger group is not necessarily better.
"You're better off with a smaller group representing diverse viewpoints
than a larger group that is similar," says Payne.
Then, to get the appropriate amount of dissent, "people have to
feel psychologically safe to make mistakes and say stupid things," says
Paul Paulus, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who
has studied group interactions for almost 20 years. That means coming
up with a process to allow all voices to be heard and perhaps
appointing a devil's advocate to make sure all possibilities are
considered. It's also important for the leader of the group to appear
genuinely impartial, to avoid influencing would-be sycophants.
BETTER BRAINSTORMING
Maximizing group performance from creative tasks, such as
brainstorming, takes slightly different skills than guiding a group
decision. "We find that groups tend to shut themselves down after about
15 or 20 minutes, long before they hit their potential," says Paulus.
His research shows that brainstorming groups typically generate only
half as many ideas--and half as many good ideas--as do the same number
of individuals working alone.
For optimal brainstorming Paulus advocates a combination of
individual contributions and group work. Prime a group beforehand, he
recommends, so members will bring ideas into the meeting. Then let
people express ideas, but aim to create a flow--don't allow
explanations or interesting anecdotes to distract from idea-making.
Hold back on judgment, or comments like "we did that already," since,
says Paulus, "even stupid ideas can lead to better ideas."
Plan on 30 to 40 minutes of hard work, with short breaks (no phone
calls or Email checking), and press the group to come up with more
ideas, even after they say they are tapped out. Ask people to keep
thinking about the discussion after the meeting, and schedule a
follow-up to see if you can gain any improvements.
RECOGNIZING THE CAUSES
These five conditions are "especially conducive" to groupthink,
according to Hersh Shefrin of Santa Clara University's Leavey School of
Business:
(1) The group dynamics feature amiability and esprit de corps.
(2) A powerful, opinionated Leader runs the group.
(3) Group members operate under stress.
(4) Group members are strongly influenced by a desire for social conformity.
(5) There is no explicit decision: making procedure.
GROUPTHINK ANTIDOTES
If you are leading a group in the decision-making process,
make sure that you highlight the importance of looking
at the pros and cons of any ideas under consideration.
Set the tone by focusing on the issues, and not that people
disagree.
When people support an idea with general statements such
as "I think that's a good way to go, encourage them
to explain why they believe the idea is a good one. Another
tactic is to ask those that support the idea to critique
it; find the weak points.
Treat pros and cons of ideas equally, particularly if
it is your idea under discussion. Feel free to advocate
for your position, but advocacy, on it's own, can overpower
reason. Keep in mind that although you believe in your
idea, it may not be the best of all possible solutions.
Time constraints tend to result in increased pressure
to agree. While occasionally, fast decision-making
is needed, keep in mind that people will be less
likely to raise objections if they feel that raising
objections would result in delaying the process.
Stay conscious and aware of this phenomenon in your group and team meetings. Consider discussing the topic of "Groupthink" with your team and ask for ideas to control this dysfunctional team behavior.
SOURCE: Alix Stuart at CFO.com.
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Quotes to Inspire
"When everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks."
Bill Walton
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