Group Think

You may have heard about the term ‘Group Think’. In any case, here is a timely reminder on what it is and, more importantly, how to manage it.

Cohesive teams tend to have a higher desire for harmony, conformity, and a sense of loyalty.  As a result of this priority controversial issues, ‘crazy’ ideas, and individual creativity tends to be somewhat suppressed. In other words, Group Think can cause the team to be blinded towards threatening challenges and opportunities.

 

How to deal with Group Think as a manager?

Firstly, clarify a few definitions with your team.

Harmony – The best way to achieve long-term harmony is NOT to smile at each other and agree with each other all the time. The best way to achieve long-term harmony is to respect each other. Respect means to trust each other’s good intention, speak up about the important issues that concern the team success, listen carefully, argue each other’s points and come to a conclusion.

Loyalty – Loyalty does NOT mean to support each other even to the point of failure.  Loyalty refers to loyalty to the team goal and to the team (member) to succeed. Hence, if a team member has better idea or a critical concern, loyalty to the team requires these issues to be brought up.

Recommended action for your daily management life. Try some or all of the below.

If you like to discuss a challenge during a meeting. State the challenge. Ask each team member to write down their solution on a post-it sticker. Post the stickers on a white board and start discussing.

Let your team member always express their opinion first before you, as manager, express yours.

Assign the same challenge to sub-groups or individual team members and let them come up with an answer. If it is a big issue, let them talk to different experts.

Give each team member a different role to discuss an idea e.g. ‘Accountant’,’ Visionary’, ‘Risk Avoider’, ‘Implementer’, ‘Realist’, ‘Technology Freak’.

As I read recently ‘Feeling is easier than thinking’. Don’t dismiss an idea just because it doesn’t ‘feel’ right. Or the person contributing a concern is disliked (Liking and disliking is also a feeling). Each idea deserves to be thought through and discussed based on facts and rational reasoning.

When you are about to implement an idea ask your team members to imagine for moment that this idea will fail. Request them to write down the sequence of events, in their view, how this idea would fail. Listen carefully to each view and make your assessment. The point here is not negativity. New ideas will always require some risk taking. But whatever we do, we want to walk into it with ‘open eyes’.

In summary, find ways for each team member to think on their own first. Ask them to commit to their idea by writing things down. Then discuss.