A lot of people attribute groupthink to cohesion. They think that if we’re too close, if we trust each other too much […] then we’re not going to challenge each other. That turns out to be false. Cohesive groups often make the best decisions. People frequently when they trust each other are willing to challenge each other and say, “I know this person is not going to take this too personally.”
But if you’re not careful, cohesion can take you down a path toward groupthink, when people become more concerned about politics and about maintaining their relationships and reputations than about speaking their minds and being honest. So most leaders try to combat this by assigning devil’s advocates. I know that there’s a majority preference in the room, so I’m going to assign one person to be the opposite.
Devil’s advocates, according to the research, don’t work very well most of the time. Charlan Nemeth at Berkeley has been studying this for over four decades. What she shows is, devil’s advocates make two mistakes. One is, they tend to give lip service to an idea but they don’t really believe in it, so they don’t sell it. Secondly, when devil’s advocates speak, people know they are just playing a role. I don’t need to take you seriously. “Okay, I’ve pretended to advocate for this position, and now we can go back to the majority preference.”
Instead of assigning a devil’s advocate, what we all need to do is unearth a devil’s advocate: genuine dissenters, people who actually hold the minority opinion. We need to find those people. We need to invite them into the conversation, and give them a voice.
Author: Adam Grant
Source: “Knowledge@Wharton”
Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork
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