Q 226. During brainstorming sessions, members sometimes converge to a solution without speaking up their minds. This leads to poor decisions many a times. What are the strategies to avoid this phenomenon of Groupthink?

 

 

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Groupthink is defined as a  phenomenon involving a bunch/group of people in pursuit of trying to resolve an issue and reaching to a  harmonious, mutually agreeable situation, actually leads to a wrong decision, without much analysis of the deleterious consequences, it bears. Group thinkers feel immense pressure to reach a consensus and are often not able to speak up their minds and raise skepticism, inspite  of sighted negative aspects of the decision. There is often a tendency to go along the flow or the conventional norms. 

Certain factors play a big role in the outcome of the group thinking.

- High cohesiveness of the group with lack of diversity.

- Irrational structure of the  groups with lack of an impartial leader.

 - Highly stressful situations, recent setback, an extreme degree of fear and anxiety.

 There are various case studies and disasters reported due to groupthinking outcome. 

- Groupthink is accounted for the paradigm shift in US policy, that lead to the invasion of Iraq by USA.

- The infamous attack of Japanese on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

-The fall of Marks & Spencer and British Airways in London Stock Exchange in the 1990's.

-The failure of media houses to read the exact mood of the nation in 2016 US  Presidential election.

 There are various methods,  suggested to mitigate the  phenomenon of group thinking in decision making groups.  

 These are as follows:--

-Creating diverse groups with even gender diversity.

- Independent senior level thinkers, who just do not nod their head to appease the management.

-  Leaders need to be unbiased without any prejudice towards any group members.

- Freedom of speech and raising doubts about the agreed idea, to be facilitated.

- Leaders should abstain from opining, while asking rest of the group members to opine.

-Leaders should deliberately be away from many of the meetings, to let the group members freely discuss and state their free views and concerns about the issue.

- Several independent groups should be set up, especially on the critical issues,  and each group should be blinded on other group's discussion and decision outcomes, to prevent bias.

-All possible solutions and alternative of a particular problem should be taken into account, their merits and demerits discussed.

-Technical subject experts are invited in group meetings to lay their expert opinions.

-At least one of the group members should behave like a Devil's Advocate. This person should be a different person, designated for each meeting. The Important role to be played by Devil’s advocate is to provide in-depth analysis, show skepticism towards a mutually agreed decision with technical facts and also provide a logical and better alternative.

I have summarized some of the methods to overcome and defeat Groupthink during a brainstorming session:

Few best practices include below methods:

• Engage in Open discussions

• Allocate a “Devil’s Advocate” in the team - Red Teaming

• Structure the brainstorming session

• Encourage Wild Ideas

• Evaluate alternatives cautiously - Use "Six Thinking Hats" approach

• Disrupt abundantly when required

• Encourage Conflict of ideas, so that group doesn’t ends up with limited decisions

• Give everyone chance to speak up, during the session, may be in a Round-Robin fashion timely

• Add new elements to Brainstorming à Introduce “Reverse Brainstorming”; “Brainwriting”

• Give more attention to Group Dynamics

• Encourage Diversity

• Occasionally, Invite Cross function team member as external consultant

• Remain to be Impartial until to wrap up

Quote

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas” – Linus Carl Pauling

 

Groupthink may be a difficult construct. Irving Janis, a social scientist attributable because the initial to develop the concept, outlined it as a ““psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group.” initially Janis’ combat decision making doesn’t appear thus dangerous. After all, isn’t the purpose of meeting to assemble people along to come back to associate degree arranged call regarding what must be done?

However, Dictionary.com defines decision making as “the apply of approaching issues or problems as matters that are best restricted by agreement of a group instead of by individuals; conformity.” Ah, there’s the rub. tucked behind the punctuation mark may be a one-word definition of decision making that captures in totality exactly what’s wrong with this phenomenon: conformity.

Just after you thought that conformity was a malady restricted primarily to high colleges and community neighbourhood associations, it rears its ugly head within the room, making a military of clones at your geographic point.

 

Groupthink generally happens Associate in Nursing exceedingly in a very} geographic point culture wherever staff concern having an opinion that differs from the ruling majority. In some cases the concern is because of AN employee’s own insecurities and his/her need to fit-in with the cluster.

In alternative cases, leadership has cultivated a culture of concern by taking part in favourites with numerous staff, teams and departments, and/or close themselves with “like-minded” individuals. Environments wherever deciding thrives generally price harmony and avoid conflict, however the difficulty thereupon approach is that there is no vital analysis of ideas and solutions while not considering totally different opinions from those at intervals, similarly as those outside a bunch.

Psychology textbook author, Kendra Cherry, expressed in a very recent article on deciding, “The suppression of individual opinions and inventive thought will result in poor decision-making and inefficient problem-solving.” the nice news is there area unit steps you'll be able to go for address and overcome this challenge, however 1st we’ll examine a way to apprehend whether or not or not your meeting goes nice or going toward deciding.

 

In his in depth analysis on deciding, Janis developed a list of eight symptoms that your cluster is united jointly, and not in an exceedingly great way. They are:
1. cluster cohesiveness is viewed as additional necessary than individual freedom of expression
2. The cluster operates in AN insulated atmosphere
3. cluster leaders demonstrate impartial behaviour
4. there's no commonplace methodology in situ for evaluating ideas and choices
5. Members’ social backgrounds and beliefs area unit consistent
6. The cluster is underneath tons of stress to perform
7. The cluster has old recent failures
8. there's excessive issue placed on the task of constructing a call, like an ethical quandary

 

If throughout your conferences, you notice your cluster displaying any of the aforesaid symptoms, don’t panic; Janis additionally developed eight steps you'll want facilitate avoid decision making and stop killing important thinking and inventive problem-solving in your cluster. Here are some steps on a way to eliminate decision making and avoid it altogether.

Step 1: need everybody within the cluster to judge ideas critically:
This step is definitely performed by asking everybody within the cluster to require a quiet moment to write each execs and cons of ideas that are submitted before they're mentioned. If you're still upset concerning workers feeling free enough to precise themselves you'll use a polling app that enables individuals within the cluster to vote or touch upon topics anonymously.

Step 2: If you’re leading the cluster, keep your opinions to yourself:
The trouble with being a frontrunner is that your opinions have an enormous influence on others and timid workers can turn over before dissident along with your opinion or submitting a plan that's higher than yours. If your opinions lead a discussion, you may invariably miss nice opportunities to find individual abilities and strengths in your cluster that will prove important to future successes.

Step 3: If you’re the cluster leader, take into account being a no-show:
Because visual communication is almost not possible to cover, you don’t got to say something for individuals within the cluster to understand however you are feeling a couple of topic, therefore don’t offer them the chance. Let members recognize you price their ideas most that you just arrange to be absent from sure cluster conferences wherever your presence can to a fault influence the result.

Step 4: take into account a team approach:
If your cluster is giant, take into account indiscriminately dividing of us into smaller teams to figure on a similar downside. Not solely will this approach foster comradeship between workers, it fuels a competitive atmosphere wherever the simplest ideas will win.

Step 5: completely examine all alternatives:
Once your cluster has compiled a listing of ideas or solutions, submit those ideas to the same technique of analysis that answers queries such as: however will this idea support the goal? What are the costs? What are the risks? Etc.

Step 6: Get Associate in Nursing outsider’s perspective:
As your cluster begins evaluating varied ideas and solutions, assign every member a task of obtaining Associate in Nursing outsider’s opinion. If the solutions being mentioned are sensitive, then raise them to speak to a selected and trustworthy leader within the corporate.

Step 7: Consult an outdoor expert:
If a project or resolution has parts that run outside the experience of the cluster, take into account tantalizing an outdoor knowledgeable to a gathering to participate within the discussion of the group’s planned solutions. Outsiders typically offer a refreshing modification to social psychology, Associate in Nursing knowledgeable opinions alter everybody within the cluster to be told from an expert’s insights and knowledge.

Step 8: choose one person indiscriminately to be the devil’s advocate at every meeting:
Once meeting attendees are all gift, draw straws to examine WHO can function the devil’s advocate for the meeting. The one who is chosen are going to be charged with “thinking like Associate in Nursing enemy” and countering all in style ideas and opinions within the meeting so as to encourage healthy dialogue and check the strength of opposing arguments.

Take conferences one step further:
Now that you just recognize the signs of decision making and the way to avoid its creativeness debilitating presence in your conferences, you’re one step nearer to holding the type of extremely productive conferences wherever workers be at liberty to submit their best ideas. however don’t forget face-to-face communication – a vital part in death penalty a number of the key steps to avoid decision making. therefore move, kick decision making to the curb and provides yourself a praises. .

Brainstorming: -

Brainstorming is technique for generating the idea to solve a problem. Generally, group involves in this technique and thinks under the facilitator, in other word we can say it is group creativity technique. The strength of this technique is that people can think more freely and suggest many spontaneously new ideas. All ideas are noted downed and evaluated  post brainstorming session.

We must follow below steps during the brainstorming

1. Set a time

2. Focus on problem statements

3. Do not criticism

4. Encourage weird and wacky idea

5. Aim for quantity – sorting of idea will do later

6. Build on other idea

7. Stay Visual

8. Allow one conversation at a one time

We can also follow below listed steps to get more ideas from individuals

1. Circulate the topic at least one day before from meeting for preparation

2. Mandate to write ideas before joining the meeting

3. Do individual round before making a group or start group thinking

4. Change group members if we have more than one topic  

Groupthink

 

Groupthink is a term coined by the social psychologist Irving Janis, which means that when ideas are not challenged in the group discussions or brainstorming sessions on any issues, but accepted without any debate, then this psychological phenomenon of groupthink sets in.

 

In many of these situations, people may think that it is always better to go along with the opinion of the majority, instead of contesting it.  This leads to poor performance of the team and also bad decision making on any particular issue.

 

In many cases, people think that if they object the ideas being floated by the team members, it might create some kind of disharmony or friction among the team members, and they may get alienated from the other members of the team.  This kind of groupthink is more common in groups with more cohesiveness and also with impartial leadership, which results in suppression of individual opinions and creative thoughts that leads to poor decision making and ineffective problem solving capacity.

 

Symptoms

 

There are some symptoms by which this tendency of groupthink in the team can be identified.

 

1.  Group cohesiveness is valued more than individual contribution or creativity.

2.  Lack of intention to debate on any alternate approach.

3.  Group leaders behave in a very impartial or biased way.

4.  The group has faced recent failure and is in a great stress to perform to achieve success.

5.  There is no standard method or metric in place to evaluate the ideas.

 

Prevention

 

There are various steps to prevent this phenomenon of groupthink -

 

1.  Encourage debate - the team leader should talk to the team members and make them understand that how important is the ideas and opinions of other team members’ to be challenged, to induce the creative thought processing and arrive at the better decisions.  The group leader should ensure that everyone in the group has offered their opinion/ideas, and also should ensure that a real debate has happened before the decision has been taken.  If the leader realizes that there was no enough debate happened on the ideas, then the leader should postpone the decision making, and ask for more research.

 

2.  Devil’s Advocate – during the group discussion or brainstorming sessions, one person should act as Devil’s Advocate, who could counter all the ideas and opinions being discussed in the group, and this will help to create an environment for more healthy debates and creative thoughts, which will help in better decision making.

 

3.  Team Leader Ethics – ideally the team leader should abstain from attending such group discussions or brainstorming sessions; if he/she attends due to the gravity of the situation, at least they should refrain from sharing their opinions to the team.  The trouble with being a leader is that his/her opinions will have a big impact on others, especially some timid team members, who would not dare to dissent the team leader’s views.  Apparently, those team members might be have a better idea than that of the team leader’s.  In that way, we are implicitly, stopping the other team members from exploring some great ideas.

 

4.  External perspective – the group’s decision can be scrutinized by any outsider, from outside the group, but still who can provide a better idea on the issue on hand; he/she could be one of the stakeholders from a different department, a team member or a group leader of the team that had handled similar type of projects before, etc.  The logic is that these outsiders would not be influenced by the ideas of this group’s leader or any other factors, and hence they would voice out their own ideas, which might be better than anyone else in the group.

 

5.  Standard methodology to assess – after collecting all the ideas from the team, we need to put them through some standard evaluation methodology to find out how those ideas could help the team to move towards the better solution for the issue on hand and also towards the organizational goal, steps and risks involved in executing them, etc.

 

By following the above stated steps, the phenomenon of groupthink can be avoided in any of the group discussions.

 

One of the strategies that i can think of in brainstorming sessions is to have a moderator who ensures that the reasons stated by every person for the solution given by him are recorded. 

I believe Six Thinking Hats methodology as stated by Edward De Bono works wonderfully in brain storming sessions. According to this method, there are six hats of different colors, namely blue, red, green, yellow, black and white which are worn ( symbolically) by all members.

Blue hat. The person wearing the blue hat is the moderator of the session. This hat is only worn by one person and he manages the entire discussion making sure that noone diagresses from the subject of discussion and the entire discussion is steered in the right manner.

 

Red Hat. This hat is for emotions, feelings, hunches, etc. about the topic of discussion. All members wear this hat and discuss what they feel towards the topic of discussion.

 

Green Hat. Green Hat signifies creativity and new ideas  for solutions or topic of discussion. All members work towards generation of new ideas while wearing this hat.

 

Yellow Hat. Yellow hat lists down the advantages or the benefits of solutions generated.

 

Black Hat. Black hat states what can go wrong with a particular solution or lists the disadvantages.

 

White hat. White hat focusses on data at hand or for consideration. 

 

The method necessitates that at one time only particular color hat is worn by all members.

This method facilitates effective discussions and can help the members of the discussion to reach a solution soon.

 

Brainstorming was conceptualized by Alex F. Osborne in  1948 in his book called "Your Creative power" which embodies 4 fundamental pillars:-

Quantity over Quality,

Withhold criticism,

Wild ideas should be welcome and

Combine and improve on Ideas.

 

Groupthink can be avoided if we work on the above fundamentals cautiously.

Due to the combative force of the power of brainstorming a lot of folks tend to go with the group's decision hence while there is quantity over quality, the fear of criticism, bringing out of box ideas to the forefront and combining and improving on the new ideas tend to take a back seat thus instead of the outcome of the brainstorming meeting  being 1+1=3 , it becomes a groupthink outcome of 1+1=2.

 

Some of the steps to avoid Groupthink that can be deployed are:-

1) Brainwriting-The team members are asked to write their ideas on a piece of paper in private and they rotate it through the group for the other group members to add on to the idea, till this stage the ideas are still not public. Once its come a full circle the ideas are opened up for brainstorming.

2)Assemble a diverse team-Build a team which has individuals from different background, age, experience. Some who are SMEs and some who are not. This will ensure that you would get ideas which are truly diverse and creative in their approach and these individuals would not be slighted by the force of consensus and will bring in a more collaborative thoughts and ideas.

3) Passionate Champions-The team should also comprise of these champions who are passionate of the ideas and the drive behind them, once the brainstorming session ends, the session could open up for Individual champions to provide their inputs on the ideas which might have developed in one direction. They have the potential to look at the issue very differently and can pick up ideas not advocated by the group. their ideas contribute to 20-30% of the ideas that make their way to final vetting.

 

Hence encouraging collaboration through brainstorming using the above ideas is possible and we can effectively avoid groupthink by deploying these steps effectively.

There are 5 winners this time -

• Shaily
• Saravanan S
• Deepak Pardasani
• Mohamed Asif
• Shashikant Adlakha

Answers from Anshu Goel and Sudheer Chauhan are also acceptable.