Question

1. Have you ever been in a group or team (or observed a group or team) that was a victim of "groupthink"? What symptoms did you observe? How did its members behave? What were its goals, and to what extent were they achieved? How did non-members (e.g., outsiders such as other groups/teams/departments) react emotionally and behaviorally (if at all) to the group or team exhibiting groupthink?

Answer 1

I remember being in a team which falls out because of the groupthink. Groupthink is one of the phenomenon that occurs where the deaire for keeping the group consensus over rides the people's common sense desire to present various alternatoves, express an unpopular opinuon or critique a position. In my team I was leading, I was the onley female where the people working with me are males. The groupthink situation occurred where the guys in my team decided to make a male member as a leader and not the female one because of the gender ratio being higher. Knowing I had better communication and management skills, the men were trying to take over my position because they cannot withstand a female being a leader for their team.

The symptoms share for the same groupthink are the Rationale and the predefined assumptions. The male members in my team were holding a predefined assumption that a man could manage the job better than a female member. These symptons are a negative sign of groupthink which were trying to take over my position because of the assumption and the wrong judgement they hold.

Thus, the goal of the groupthink and the same process was to remove me from the position and appoint a male member in place of mine. The objectives weren't achieved as per what the guys thought they would go. This is because of the reason that I myself proved to be an effective and a better leader than other male members. I let the team appointed the male member as per what they wanted and the group realised in a week that they made tbe wrong decision because that male member doesn't possess the same knowledge and communication skill to make himself a better leader. The group eventually realised that the gender has nothing to do with who can effectively be a good leader or not and after a week they re appointed me because I was better than him clearly.

No outsider's role was seen in my example of groupthink.