From the course: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Avoiding small group pitfalls

From the course: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Avoiding small group pitfalls

- Great groups make terrible decisions sometimes. I've been part of it. I had an amazing team running three establishments, and I had the genius idea to do one more with a partner. It was a terrible idea. None of us saw it at the time, but in hindsight, the issue should have been abundantly clear. Me and my management team were in good company though. JFK and his cabinet got it in their heads that the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a good idea. This was the basis for the term groupthink. There are a number of pitfalls even good groups can fall into that can derail critical thinking and good problem solving. I want to identify these for you and offer a few tricks to counter them. One of the odd ways that groups can go right is actually ending up more extreme than any one member had started. This can happen in two ways. Say you lean towards one idea and Angela leans the other way. As you go back and forth, defending your ideas, what naturally happens is you become more and more extreme in your support of your ideas and she in hers. So when you finally you settle on something, you've likely chosen a solution that is more extreme than anyone in the group originally was. At a word of caution, this can be much more intense when there's a sense of inside groups against outside groups. Another way this can happen is that as you decide between ideas, you get more and more excited about an idea and sometimes forget what some of the initial detractors were. To solve for this one thing you can do is to pause for a moment before you make the final decision. Talk about why you didn't take it up immediately and talk through some reasons against it. Groups can also center themselves. This occurs when groups too readily focus on agreement rather than dissent. If two people come forward as supporting an idea, it's less likely that someone is going to speak out against it. Additionally, people are more likely to voice opinions they feel the team will support regardless of whether this is the best idea. This is the yes man syndrome. But trust me, you need a healthy dose of skepticism to keep things balanced. Perhaps the most famous pitfall is the phenomenon called groupthink, which is when otherwise good groups start to center around bad ideas. Some of the common things that lead to groupthink include, a highly charismatic and likable leader, high levels of cohesion in the group and illusions of invulnerability among other things. A common sentiment in groupthink is, how can this be a bad idea? We thought of it. Obviously this can spiral into dangerous territory when left unchecked. So here's how you can defend against these issues. Keep the leader quiet. The leader should ask questions, not offer ideas at least at the beginning. If the leader offers an idea, it's much more likely that the rest of the group will be stifled. Another thing you can do is appoint a devil's advocate. This person's job is to point out the negative. One key thing here though, is to make sure you switch up who has this role. If it's always the same person, people are going to start disliking them. Another, is to have second chance meetings. At these, analyze how and why you made the decision and look for potential issues. And a final strategy is to run concurrent solution groups and then compare. No matter what you do remember that the more cohesive and high functioning your group is the more likely it is to fall into these traps. Ironic, right? Keep your team honest and keep yourself focused on the best solution possible.

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