BUSINESS
Overcoming Toxic Groupthink in the Workplace
A discussion on group thinking and how it can obscure logic when mismanaged
Leaders need to be challenged. At times followers must challenge the thinking of their leader and indeed the wider group.
Some groups are fractious and need support to stay on track, to focus on the common purpose.
Other groups are cohesive; whereby members closely support each other, a collective strength.
This article explores a dimension of the latter when cohesiveness becomes toxic.
Cohesive Blindness
Cohesiveness can become a weakness if close support develops into a need where value is placed on concurrence. It can substitute the central purpose, becoming the primary, although unstated.
Suggestions that conflict with a group’s vision or policy tend to be proposed weakly, and likely to be withdrawn, if opposed. Over time it diminishes creative friction.
This phenomenon is known as Groupthink.
A symptom of groupthink is held in a group's self-image; a perspective of elitism or superiority. The rhetoric sounds something like this:
What we do is excellent, what others do is inferior.
Groupthink invalidates data, beats down feedback or views that challenge the image. It eases out those who offer divergent ways of thinking. In this situation, the group becomes obsessed with its own self-importance, its delusional cleverness. Obsessed only with its power and image.
The main risk is that it develops an illusion, believing that it's impenetrable, invulnerable to danger.
The business world is littered with examples of the consequences of unchecked groupthink.
The subtle tyranny of groupthink can replace the obvious tyranny of an authoritarian leader. Leaping from the frying pan into the fire.
The Followers Role
Followers should challenge, encouraging their peers and their leader to question themselves.
- Are we using the right metrics to measure success?
- Have we compared ourselves with similar groups, or do we think we’re superior?
- Are we consistent with our values?
- Do we only rely on self-measurement?
- Do we invite those we serve to evaluate us?
- Have we grown complacent?
- Does pressure force us to demonstrate performance, manifesting in inflated performance statistics?
- Do we invest time researching new ways to accomplish our purpose?
- Are other groups doing things that we need to consider?
- Are we overconfident — so sure of ourselves that ignore critique to evaluate risky ideas or identify warning signals?
- Do we force new members to conform to our ways or do we embrace ways to learn from them?
- Do we fail to treat environmental changes seriously, thinking that it doesn’t affect us?
Groupthink results in self-censorship, denying our own divergent thoughts. In doing so we relinquish responsibility, which can be a fatal error.
If group members accept the status quo of an organization, we invalidate our ability to experience discomfort, a key ingredient for innovation. What’s worse, when we behave like this, even when the status quo dramatically departs from values, our ideals are quashed, becoming disposable.
We must trust ourselves to rise above groupthink.
Trust in ourselves does not correlate to being right, rather trusting that we’re:
- Relevant
- Keen
- Important
- Meaningful
As long as facts are unbiased and validated, of course.
Final Thoughts
Only individuals can rise above groupthink, giving others permission to do likewise. This helps the collective, the leader, challenging each to test their ideas and actions in reality.
So what is the message here? We need to listen to our “inner voice”, in an unbiased fashion, asking for questions:
- Am I in agreement with things that I would not accept under different circumstances, in another environment?
- Am I uncomfortable with things that others are happy to accept?
- Are my actions inhibited because no one else seems to share them?
- Am I ignoring data, information that contradicts with what should be happening?
As an individual, your voice and actions are powerful beyond measure.
