Understanding Group Think - Nightly Business Report . Your Mind and Your Money - Resources - | PBS

Nightly Business Report . Your Mind and Your Money - Resources - Understanding Group Think PBS

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Eight Main Symptoms of Group Think & Avoiding Group Think >

Eight Main Symptoms of Group Think >

1. Illusion of Invulnerability: Members ignore obvious danger, take extreme risk, and are overly optimistic.

2. Collective Rationalization: Members discredit and explain away warning contrary to group thinking. >

3. Illusion of Morality: Members believe their decisions are morally correct, ignoring the ethical consequences of their decisions. >

4. Excessive Stereotyping: The group constructs negative sterotypes of rivals outside the group.

5. Pressure for Conformity: Members pressure any in the group who express arguments against the group's stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, viewing such opposition as disloyalty. >

6. Self-Censorship: Members withhold their dissenting views and counter-arguments. >

7. Illusion of Unanimity: Members perceive falsely that everyone agrees with the group's decision; silence is seen as consent. >

8. Mindguards: Some members appoint themselves to the role of protecting the group from adverse information that might threaten group complacency. >

Avoiding Group Think: >
1. The group should be made aware of the causes and consequences of group think. >

2. The leader should be neutral when assigning a decision-making task to a group, initially witholding all preferences and expectations. This practice will be especially effective if the leaders consistently encourages an atmosphere of open inquiry. >

3. The leader should give high priority to airing objections and doubts, and be accepting of criticism. >

4. Groups should always consider unpopular alternatives, assigning the role of devil's advocate to several strong members of the group.>

5. Sometimes it is useful to divide the group into two separate deliberative bodies as feasibilities are evaluated. >

6. Spend a sizable amount of time surveying all warning signals from rival group and organizations. >

7. After reaching a preliminary consensus on a decision, all residual doubts should be expressed and the matter reconsidered. >

8. Outside experts should be included in vital decision making. >

9. Tentative decisions should be discussed with trusted colleagues not in the decision-making group. >

10. The organization should routinely follow the administrative practice of establishing several independent decision-making groups to work on the same critical issue or policy.

See Original Post. http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/subdir/mind_and_money_resource_group_think/


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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.