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Strategies for Group Effectiveness
Compromise on polarizing topics;
Explain diverse issues to colleagues;
Influence major business decisions;
Teach colleagues how to cooperate with one another;
Lead colleagues to create plans and strategies to reach business goals;
Build friendships and camaraderie with other employees; and
Resolve conflicts without management interference.
Group Think
Group Think
Despite facts and evidence to the contrary, groups every day make the wrong decisions, unanimously, in order to maintain harmony, sometimes due to a certain team member who is a dominating force. Groupthink was christened by Irving Janis in 1972. After making "conclusions based on studies on the American Soldier Project and U.S foreign policy decisions" (2018).
Symptoms of groupthink include, but are not limited to, direct pressure on dissenters, self-censorship, and collective rationalization. Businesstopia explains groupthink impairs creativity and moral judgement, suppresses good planning, and among other things, also diminishes critical thinking, causing bias decisions to be made.
Examples:
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - 1941
Bay of Pigs Invasion - 1961
Mass resignation of MLB umpires - 1999
Kodak cameras
Salem witch trials
Nazi Germany
Group Cohesion
"Group cohesion is a social process that characterizes groups whose members interact with each other and refers to the forces that push group members closer together" (psychology.iresearch.com, 2022). Many people will do group work in their jobs, some of us understand the torture of low-cohesion groups and the ineffective ideas and low morale that comes with it. Added stress can be eliminated if businesses put the effort into guiding groups and helping them meld together.
There are a few elements that can sway a group's cohesion. Group members that have similar characteristics whether "external (age, ethnicity) or internal ones (values, attitudes)" (psych, 2022). The size of a group matters, small groups tend to work more cohesively than larger ones, as well as how difficult it is to get into the group. Group success and external competition and threats round out ways a group's cohesion can be impacted.
Functional Group Communication Theory
Roles:
Promotive
Disruptive
Counteractive
Devil's Advocate
Group Cohesion: A Game for Seeing the "Big Picture"
Group Cohesion: A Game for Seeing the "Big Picture"
Great for: Understanding the importance of having clear goals in mind when planning activities
How it’s played:
Give your team a puzzle and instruct them to solve it as quickly as possible, but don’t provide them with the “Big picture” that shows the finished puzzle
Interrupt their process after 5 minutes, and ask them: “What makes this task difficult?”
They’ll likely tell you that the problem is not knowing the expected outcome for the puzzle
Give them the “Big picture” to continue, and see how they speed up and finish much faster
What you’ll learn: Knowing where you’re supposed to end up, makes planning the steps that will take you there much easier. Unless you have the “Big picture” of a task that shows how the task relates to the project, it’ll be harder to figure out whether the task is important, or whether you should find different priorities.
WORKS CITED
Ahmed, A. (2019, November 15). Effective Group Communication Processes. Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/effective-group-communication-processes-3187.html
Businesstopia. (2018, February 15). Groupthink theory. Businesstopia. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://www.businesstopia.net/mass-communication/groupthink-theory
Gaille, B. (2021, December 17). 25 most famous groupthink examples in history and pop culture. BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://brandongaille.com/most-famous-groupthink-examples-in-history-and-pop-culture/
Group cohesion - iresearchnet. Psychology. (2016, January 22). Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/group/group-cohesion/#:~:text=Group%20cohesion%20is%20a%20social%20process%20that%20characterizes,bad%20experiences%20from%20participating%20in%20such%20group%20work.
Mordvinova, M. (2021, April 10). Functional theory of group decision making | communication theory | EDX series. YouTube. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLCtnVhZaAE
Narvarette, C. (2018, July 24). "erase the 'I' from groupthink: A fun-sized perspective" | Carlota Navarrete | TEDxYouth@ANS. YouTube. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOfm1utfB3s
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