Groupthink – does this exist in your team or company?

Is your company or team suffering from Groupthink?  What is Groupthink and how do we avoid it?

First, what is Groupthink?  This occurs within a group of people, where there is a high desire for harmony.  The members of the group, when tasked with a decision seek to minimize conflict by suppressing viewpoints that might differ than other members of the group.  The result of this is a dysfunctional decision making evaluation, which can have quite negative consequences, or at the minimum provide a less desired outcome when implemented.

We can see why and how this situation can happen as no one really wants to seek out conflict or be the one that brings it about – OK….there are SOME people who seem to enjoy this – but on a whole, people seem to want to get along and agree.  When a group encounters Groupthink, the results can have quite an impact on a team or company.  So, how do we avoid or at least put things in place to counteract this?  Here are some strategies taken from an article I read recently: (http://www.hrmonline.ca/features/going-against-the-tide-avoiding-groupthink-120361.aspx)

1. Keep vision of the decision and situation clear. It is much easier to get sidetracked when you are unclear about what the main track is.
2. Encourage people to disagree. Most people form opinions too quickly and give them up too slowly.
3. Cultivate ‘Insultants’. Find people in your organization that you can trust to tell you what you need to hear, no matter how unpopular or unpalatable that is.
4. Make sure that your actions as a leader reflect what you want to happen in your organization. Followers reflect the behaviour of their leaders, rather than their spoken word
5. Honour your intuition. If a decision maker thinks that they is being manipulated, then that is probably the case.
6. Delegate, do not abrogate. It is important to share control and to empower your managers. However, it is important to remember who is ultimately responsible for the outcome. As is often stated in politics, trust but verify.
7. Bring in a consultant who has specialized knowledge in the area that you are deciding on. A good consultant will present perspectives which may not be apparent to your team and may well prompt those who do have doubts to voice their concern.
8. Finally, another way to identify risks in the decision is to use the Delphi Method. Within each group, feedback is taken from individual members and presented back to the group anonymously. Group members can then modify their opinions in the light of other member’sopinions. This process is repeated until no changes are made by the group. By using this anonymous feedback, feedback and individualopinions, the decision making group has the opportunity to view group thinking – seeing things holistically and from everyone’s point of view – and avoid groupthink.

If you recognize that Groupthink might be occurring in your workplace, consider looking into the above strategies.  Though it is fantastic to have a unified and cohesive team, we do want to ensure that our desire to “all just get along” doesn’t impact the quality of our decision making.