In: Psychology
The increased use of teams in today’s organizations necessitates having leaders who are knowledgeable of various group and team dynamics and strategies. Discuss recommendations for battling the occurrence of groupthink.
Real life application: What are your personal experiences in making decisions in highly cohesive groups? Have you ever experienced groupthink? How would you address groupthink in your organization?
It is necessary to have transformational leaders in an organization to lead teams. A transformational leader leads the team by facilitating motivation. Transformational leadership style helps fellow team members to motivate each other, increases the level of morality as well as motivation of the followers. It helps set clearer and achievable goals, it encourages the followers to perform better, provides support and recognition which helps the followers to reach their maximum potential. A transformational leader involves team members and encourages their participation in the process of decision making.
Groupthink refers to the outcome of a decision being irrational and dysfunctional in a group. Groupthink refers to conforming to the majority or to the leader of the group. The members of the group are not even given an opportunity to voice their difference in opinions. The members of the group cannot give suggestions and are not allowed to voice if they think that the decision made by the leader is irrational. They have to conform. It involves unity in a group instead of evaluating the situations, its options and alternatives. Groupthink involves thinking with one mind instead of with the number of individuals in a group. It does not give the liberty to the team members to think out of the box.
Decisions in a homogenous and highly cohesive group focuses on maintaining unanimity, thus failing to evaluate alternatives fairly and suppressing contrary opinions both from within the group and from outside the group. I have experienced groupthink and had to conform to the decision of the leader. Suggestions were not encouraged. Having a transformational leader in an organization would definitely be helpful to negate groupthink.