The Dangers of Collaboration
by Andrew Downing
Collaboration is the latest workplace trend. More than ever, leaders are utilizing open office floorplans, hiring for fit, analyzing synergies, and assigning team projects. These are great strategies for promoting cooperation in the workplace, but leaders must beware of three hidden dangers.
1) Groupthink occurs when people working together must reach a majority agreement to form a plan of action. Organizations do not have enough resources to pursue every idea. Therefore, if 10 people with 10 different ideas work together on a project, deciding which path to undertake requires them to dismiss 9 potentialities. This is especially dangerous when plans are still in the incubation phase and they do not know which one will be better in the long run. The process reduces innovation and creativity by producing one safe idea, instead of 10 different creative options.
Furthermore, group work favors outgoing and boisterous individuals that speak up and advocate for themselves. Their ideas are louder but not necessarily better. This limits the impact of quieter individuals that may have important input.
Ultimately, working in groups requires coming to a consensus, effectively squashing or alienating unpopular opinions. This forces many people to "go along with the group" and creates an illusion that any notion they come up with is unquestionably correct (especially since there seems to be a consensus).
2) Conformism derives from our need for companionship and community, which makes us vulnerable to the influence of others when we want to fit in. In fact, our desire to belong often overrules our personal aspirations and influences our choices. We choose to conform to the group because it's easy. Nobody wants to be a social pariah, and that fear of being excluded turns us into "yes men" and "yes women."
The subtle group pressure may not change our views but easily leads to consent. Rather than face social rejection, we stand idle and watch the group make wrong decisions.
3) Confirmation Bias takes place when a group seeks out and favors information that confirms their beliefs. It's what happens when we argue in favor of our ideas, instead of genuinely researching opposing views to disqualify them objectively. We are all guilty of this, especially when working in groups where everyone is relying on the same sources of information.
These dangers are not easy to avoid. Ideally, we could all work in a small, tight-knit group under supreme leadership, where every team member feels secure enough to give dissenting opinions and every voice is heard, but that's not plausible. The next best option would be using Red Teams, an underutilized management tool, where small teams are specifically assigned to search for counter-evidence and suggest opposing theories(*). The last and most practical defense against groupthink, conformism, and confirmation bias is awareness. Leaders that are aware of these psychological phenomena and consciously look for them are more likely to combat the ill effects. Finally, we must acknowledge that while group work can be very beneficial, allowing time for individuals to contemplate problems on their own should always be part of the creative process.
*Red-teaming (originally from military origins) “ is defined as a structured, iterative process executed by trained, educated, and practiced team members that provide commanders an independent capability to continuously challenge plans, operations, concepts, organizations, and capabilities.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_team)
This is a team responsible for testing theories and questioning ideas. For example, in a business, management might assign a team to ask managers tough questions about the proposed budget and come up with reasons why they could be wrong.