Groupthink
There is a person in my department, let’s call her Susan, who is very intimidating in meetings. When we have a discussion or meeting it’s her way or the highway. In meetings there is generally no one who will stand up to her. Let’s have some background for perspective. Susan has been at the company for twenty-five years and knows everything. She is the historian who remembers everyone and everything we have ever tried.
The director of our department recently left for another job. In her place we have an interim director who is not trained to be a manager. So it can be hard for the interim director to rein in the group during a meeting. In one case, we had a meeting to discuss whether we should start implementing a certain process. …show more content…
She was the one who was here the longest, she knew everything and none of us could stand up to her. We frustratingly discussed her as another meeting went down in flames because of Susan and our cowardice. And really, our leader’s incompetence was a factor too. In the above situation, I can see that there are a couple of different examples of Groupthink occurring. First, Self-Censorship, which is when an individual decides not to say, or do something that may offend someone else. In our case, we didn’t want to get Susan going on a rant because we dared to oppose her. We were afraid of her. Trust me, we had seen it happen when someone clashed with her and it was not pretty.
The second example of Groupthink as Irving Janus identified it is Illusions of Unanimity. In the meeting we all kept silent and in doing so gave Susan the impression that we agreed with her. This is particularly dangerous in some respects because it causes each person to suppress their feelings and to go along with the status quo. We don’t think about the cost of going along with Susan, we only worry about the here and now of arguing with her or disagreeing with her opinion. As Ben Carlson wrote “Be aware of the consequences if/when the group is wrong.” We can’t worry about the consequences if we don’t state our
The director of our department recently left for another job. In her place we have an interim director who is not trained to be a manager. So it can be hard for the interim director to rein in the group during a meeting. In one case, we had a meeting to discuss whether we should start implementing a certain process. …show more content…
She was the one who was here the longest, she knew everything and none of us could stand up to her. We frustratingly discussed her as another meeting went down in flames because of Susan and our cowardice. And really, our leader’s incompetence was a factor too. In the above situation, I can see that there are a couple of different examples of Groupthink occurring. First, Self-Censorship, which is when an individual decides not to say, or do something that may offend someone else. In our case, we didn’t want to get Susan going on a rant because we dared to oppose her. We were afraid of her. Trust me, we had seen it happen when someone clashed with her and it was not pretty.
The second example of Groupthink as Irving Janus identified it is Illusions of Unanimity. In the meeting we all kept silent and in doing so gave Susan the impression that we agreed with her. This is particularly dangerous in some respects because it causes each person to suppress their feelings and to go along with the status quo. We don’t think about the cost of going along with Susan, we only worry about the here and now of arguing with her or disagreeing with her opinion. As Ben Carlson wrote “Be aware of the consequences if/when the group is wrong.” We can’t worry about the consequences if we don’t state our