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Team
Decision-Making - Beware of Groupthink
Cohesiveness,
loyalty, consensus and commitment to the team are all worthy attributes
of a team. However, at times, these characteristics can work against
the quality of team decisions. Teams need to be vigilant in guarding
against "groupthink." Eight symptoms of groupthink were
developed by Irving Janis (1972):*
- Illusion
of invulnerability - Creates excessive optimism and encourages
extreme risk taking;
- Collective
rationalization - Discounts warnings which might lead
to reconsidering assumptions before recommitting to past decisions;
- Unquestioned
morality - Inclines members to ignore the ethical or
moral consequences of decisions because of unquestioned belief
in the group's inherent morality;
- Stereotyped
view - Characterizes the opposition as too evil for genuine
negotiation or too weak and stupid to effectively oppose the group's
purposes;
- Direct
Pressure - Discourages dissent by any member who expresses
strong arguments against any of the group's stereotypes, illusions,
or commitments that this type of dissent is contrary to what is
expected of all loyal members;
- Self-censorship
- Reduces deviations from the apparent group consensus, reflecting
each member's inclination to minimize to himself the importance
of his doubts and counter arguments;
- Illusion
of unanimity - Shared by members with respect to the
majority view (partly resulting from self-censorship of deviations,
augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent);
- Self
appointed mindguards - Emerge
from the members to protect the membership from adverse information
that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness
and morality of their decisions.
*List
derived and adapted from Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink,
Houghton Mifflin, Boston (1972)
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