Groupthink: Seeking Agreement and Effective Leadership

Groupthink: Seek Agreement and Effective Leadership

Reasons for groupthink include being out of touch, lack of order and resources, and being overruled. Symptoms of groupthink include omnipotence, closed-mindedness, and pressure toward uniformity.

Situational Leadership

Situational leadership suggests that there is no specific best style, but rather the best style is the one adapted to the situation at hand. One way of situational leadership is the leader's flexibility in adapting their behaviors to the demands of the situation. Another way is the leader's ability to read a situation and select the appropriate behaviors for that specific circumstance. An example of situational leadership is Hersey and Blanchard's model, which focuses on the leader's ability to adapt to the group's maturity level. It starts with the Directing phase (guidance), coaching phase (play role model), supporting phase (compliments), and delegating phase (assign responsibility).

Functional Leadership

Functional leadership consists of several members performing many of the duties and responsibilities of a leader. It involves various group members who rise to an occasion and perform needed leadership functions.

Problem Solving Qualities

• Variety
• Simplicity
• Usefulness

Decision Consensus vs Voting

Decision consensus is unanimous agreement among group members concerning a particular decision. Voting, on the other hand, imposes the rule of the majority. Unlike consensus, voting forces a decision on some participants, which may result in some people remaining uncommitted to the decision. Voting can be a great solution for groups that can't reach a consensus decision or in the case of a large group number.

Bargaining Tactics

Bargaining tactics depend on the situation, but there are general guidelines to follow. These include maintaining a high level of enthusiasm, relying on a variety of information, acknowledging the equality of bargaining parties, and using effective critical thinking, evidence, reasoning, and analysis.

Content Goals and Relational Goals

Content goals involve the apparent issues of obvious reasons for dispute, such as competition for finite resources, decision making, and rights. Relational goals define each party's importance to the other, the emotional distance they wish to maintain, the influence they are willing to grant the other, or the rights. Failure to communicate differing goals leads to conflict. Conflicts may not be resolved until relational goals are managed.

Inclination to argue or a fondness for arguing is called argumentativeness.