Dr. Abiola Salami | Performance strategist with valuable insights for high-performing professionals, entrepreneurs & nation-builders | CHAMP
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Leaders play a significant role in the growth and development of any organization. It is therefore vital for the CEO, COO, CFO, CTO and other C-level executives to have the mindset, skill set and tools that will enable them to harness the wealth of human and material resources available to the organization.
As these leaders engage, a common practice that can be misinterpreted as cohesion is groupthink. Groupthink happens when leaders seek consensus so strongly that they discard alternative opinions without appraising the pros and cons. When the pressure to conform and agree in order to avoid conflict overrides the resourcefulness of leaders in presenting alternatives or expressing potentially unpopular opinions, groupthink may be getting the best of your leadership team.
Leadership is all about influence, so when groupthink makes leaders have a low appetite for risk, everyone else in the organization is going to be bitten by that same docile bug. The same idea applies to things like sales drive, integrity, quality control, work ethic and more.
In my work coaching senior leaders, I’ve found that some leaders—especially strong, persuasive group leaders—subtly or unconsciously put pressure on their leadership team to create an illusion of cohesion, to present the team as a collective and convey the impression of invulnerable leaders.
While this type of leader can find success, here are some of the limitations groupthink places on their performance.
1. Restricted Innovation
The traditional organizations of today started with founders who challenged each other and questioned their own beliefs, but groupthink started slowing down their rate of innovation. "Traditional" here doesn’t infer that a system that works should be discarded or that an organization that has been in existence for a long time isn’t doing something right—it simply speaks to the lack of innovation, creativity and evolution.
To unleash the higher potential of such organizations, leaders must be ready to tweak their business models and corporate governance systems and to empower their teams to exploit more creative approaches to running the business. In a world where changes occur in real time, being dogmatic becomes an existential threat to any organization’s survival. Leaders must thus commit to reviewing the company’s practices and policies regularly to identify and remove the clogs to the next level of productivity.
2. Restricted Decision-Making
With groupthink, people avoid rocking the boat and critical thinking is suspended. Since the pressure to conform interferes with that group's capacity for rational analysis, poor group decisions are the result and the organization’s productivity takes a hit.
This can be solved by developing an effective corporate structure that allows critical appraisal of alternatives. Line managers, mid-level managers and other team members should be given the opportunity to contribute their observations about the practicality of plans that may appear inimical to growth. This is because there is an illusion that only senior leaders have the experience to comment on high-level plans, but the insights of employees on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder can prove instructive. Plus, asking for this level of input makes employees feel valued and ensures they do not behave like corporate "robots" who are programmed to execute specific orders without question.
3. Restricted Growth
The act of preserving the status quo restricts growth. Sometimes, organizations are not doing badly; however, they could move from good to great if groupthink didn’t prevent them from taking calculated risks.
The idea that mere survival equals success affects organizations’ ability to achieve peak performance, because the bar has been set so low that there is no incentive to push the needle in terms of people, profits and productivity. This mentality sees expansion as a dive into the deep end and would rather manage a lower level of growth instead of testing the waters at a higher level. This can manifest when an organization fails to capitalize on an inflection point or a trend that could have proved profoundly profitable.
This can be addressed by investing in research and development. Most successful organizations invest heavily in R&D because they understand that markets are becoming increasingly volatile and their survival, just like that of all organisms, hinges on the ability to evolve. Leaders must realize that investing in R&D is a gamble that must be taken. When it’s not successful, it becomes feedback, which has little negative consequence in the grand scheme of things. When done successfully, it can catapult the organization to heights that can be only imagined by its competition.
Conclusion
Groupthink is a slow-killing poison in organizations because those entrusted with creating, inspiring and positioning the business for favorable outcomes in the foreseeable future are instead choking off its possibilities. It’s like the anecdote of the emperor who walked the city stark naked, somehow convinced he was wearing an invisible garment. If you notice groupthink in your leadership team, the beginning of progress is ensuring that you yourself are not encouraging groupthink.
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