Group Decision Making

Group Decision Making

    As leaders and managers, we frequently encounter problems that may be bigger than us and require more than us as individuals to solve.  We must look forward and determine if these situations would be better to call in a team of people to attempt to solve the problem.  While this is more common at certain levels of management than others, these strategies can be applied in many different areas with as large or as small of a team as you wish to use to conduct them.

    There are some intrinsic benefits as well as disadvantages to using groups to approach problem solving and decision making.  We need to keep in mind some generalizations about employing a group to tackle issues.

Pros and Cons to Using a Group

    A group may be great in that it allows us a larger amount of knowledge overall.  We can tap into multiple different perspectives on issues, stimulate one another, and engage in meaningful discussion while building relationships.  Using a group usually gives us better understanding of the decision in the end because of the exploratory process during the exchange of communication during the group meeting.  I would agree that there is also a deeper commitment to the solution of the problem so long as a real consensus results from the conclusion.  For the members of a group working on the problem, there usually exists a feeling of one-ness or belonging that brings members of the group together.

    On the opposite side of the coin, there are some disadvantages to using a group to problem solve or make decisions.  Groups take time to put together, and even more time to come to an agreement.  The time it takes for a group to come to a conclusion is usually exponentially longer than it would take an individual to make a decision.  For this reason, we need to make sure that we select the correct situation to employ a group.  Groupthink is a term we use to describe when all members of a group agree with each other regardless of their personal beliefs.  Groupthink can undermine the ability of a group to do what it set out to do.  Another common disadvantage of employing a group is that a few tend to frequently dominate or intimidate the discussion which prevents others from really being heard.

    We should also explore the tendency for a group to engage in goal displacement, where the initial goal of the group meeting is replaced by another goal, which may be as simple as winning an argument that arose during the meeting between two coworkers.  We need to avoid such things as this as well as satisficing, or, settling for a sub-optimal decision and not allowing the group to produce the most optimum result.

Analyzing the Cons

    As we can see there are a lot of cons to creating a group forum to take on a problem or issue.  What this means is that when we decide to employ a group to engage a problem, we need to do so strategically and take advantage of possible benefits.  The benefits listed above for using a group need to be maximized, and the group chosen needs to be chosen with exploiting those benefits in mind.  We must exploit the benefit of having a larger pool of knowledge by choosing group members that each contribute something unique to the group.

    We must minimize the cons when we begin our journey into using a group by 

understanding that groups can be less efficient because they take more time to come to a decision than a single person would.  We need to realize that the size of the group will play a direct role in the quality of the decisions made by the group, as well as the communication contributed by each member.  We cannot allow overconfidence to appear as a burden on our group, with the members going into the meeting thinking that they need to contribute less because, after all, a group is working on it that could afford them an opportunity to slack.

Considering the Group Approach

    A group approach should be considered when it can clearly increase the quality of the outcome or decision.  We must honestly ask ourselves when we encounter a decision, “are we able to make a quality decision without the help of others?”  If there is no quality perk, then why wouldn’t we just make the decision ourselves?  We also need to take acceptance of the decision into consideration.  Often a decision is more widely accepted if more than one person is involved in its conception, and people may feel like jumping on board if they know that a group of people took time to come together to reach it.

    There is also a developmental factor that should be considered when we are thinking about applying a group approach to solving a problem or making a decision.  We need to ask ourselves if there is opportunity for the development of the organization or the individuals of the group.  We should take some time on this part of considering the group approach, because often the development of the leaders of an organization may be more of a benefit of the group forums than the conclusion or the reason for meeting in the first place.  This affords us a multi-shot strategy for organizational improvement in a lot of cases.

The Take Away

    I really enjoy the discussion and comradery involved in a group setting, and I enjoy being a part of group meetings.  I think it is beneficial to team members and leaders alike to feel like they are considered when an important decision is being made.  I think too little focus is put on the development of the team, organization, and individuals when we allow a foster of group thinking to be created.  Too often we focus on the cons to using a group and for that reason we avoid using one.  While I think it may be silly to employ a group to make every little decision, we need to have a consistent group dialogue tackling some important decisions along many different fronts.  There should be common forums where groups meet to make decisions that may be outside of the box, and that is fine, because this still takes advantage of the developmental benefits of allowing a group to engage in the decision making and problem-solving process.