When making decisions, teams are susceptible to what is known as Groupthink. The term was coined by social psychologist Irving Janis in the 70s. Groupthink occurs when teams are highly cohesive and especially when they are under huge pressure to make a quality decision.

Teams affected by groupthink tend to ignore alternatives and take irrational actions. A team is particularly vulnerable to groupthink when its members have similar background, is insulated from the outside world and there are no rules set in place to break from groupthink.

When managing teams or team building, you need to take steps to increase the team’s awareness on groupthink and follow a specific process to minimise this.

What is Bad About Groupthink

• Not being critical of each other's ideas
• Lack of analysis of early alternatives
• Considering few alternatives
• Being biased and selective when collecting information
• Not using contingency plans
• Not seeking opinions of domain experts

What are the Symptoms of Groupthink

• Believing in the team’s invincibility
• Limited and narrow-minded decision making
• Rationalising poor decisions
• Applying pressure on others to fall inline
• Holding back true feelings to appear in line with the team’s mentality
• Being defensive against external criticism
• Self-censorship
• Stereotyping out-groups
• Self-appointed ‘mindguards’. Members protect the team from information that is contradictory to the team’s cohesive view.

As you can see groupthink does not lead to healthy decision making. There are many historical examples of groupthink which led to disaster. Hence groupthink must be taken very seriously whether in politics, business, media or engineering.

How to Beat Groupthink

To improve decision making and avoid groupthink, you can use the following guidelines:

• Use a well-articulated team member as Devil's advocate to question all the team’s ideas
• Each member should be assigned a role of critical evaluator. This helps to bring new ideas to the team.
• Divide the team to a number of sub-teams. Let them discuss the matters together and then get them to report back and record all views. Now ask them to discuss their views and defend their positions.
• Leaders should remain impartial as not to influence the team or force them to follow a particular opinion
• Use different policy teams for different tasks
• Use a policy-forming team that reports to the larger team
• Bring outside expert and get them to discuss their views with the team. External expert should be encouraged to challenge views of the team members.
• Hold a second-chance meeting to provide another opportunity to review the decision
• The team leader should avoid stating expectations and preferences at the outset
• Each member should periodically discuss the team’s discussions with an associate and report back the reactions received
• Allocate time to formulate alternative courses of action and alternative decisions to make sure that all avenues are explored

The best way to tackle groupthink is to introduce a solid process and make sure that the team follows it. Usually this is the responsibility of the manager or those who set up and define the team. If a team is formed based on mutual interest, then a process must be set in place that is agreed by everyone which increases team members’ awareness about groupthink and its dangers.