The Psychology of Groupthink and the Dangerous Desire for Consensus

Consensus decision-making sits just on the edge of groupthink, and it's the best way to keep the best brain power ... away from the team.

While groupthink can generate consensus, it is by definition a negative phenomenon that results in uninformed thinking and flawed decision-making.

As of October 2024, Larry Page is worth about $156 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index making him the fifth richest person in the world, according to Forbes. And if you think his wealth has nothing to do with you, think again. He co-founded Google in 1998 after inventing PageRank, Google’s search ranking algorithm in 1996. By 2002, The American Dialect Society named Google, transitive verb, “the most useful” word of the year. The Oxford English Dictionary minted it in June 2006.

Today, his "brain child" has reached its apotheosis as it slips into the vernacular as a verb dominating an entire category of the digital experience.

Just Google it.

When he stepped back in as CEO of Google in 2011, one of the first things he did was send out a company- wide email and that email contained an edict that would impact how every single meeting would be conducted:

• Every meeting must have one clear decision maker. If there's no decision maker -- or no decision to be made -- the meeting shouldn't happen. 

• No more than 10 people should attend. 

• Every person should give input, otherwise they shouldn't be there. 

• No decision should ever wait for a meeting. If a meeting absolutely has to happen before a decision should be made, then the meeting should be scheduled immediately.

  
  

Page’s goal: Eliminate the existing culture of consensus.

Wait… what’s wrong with consensus decision making?

For a while, consensus decision making was a thing, and lots of companies touted it as integral to their healthy democratic culture. It can’t be a bad thing that a group discusses and debates a particular course of action until every member agrees, or can at least live with one final. Can it?

After all, this approach aligns with the ideals that we embrace like democracy and inclusion. If done right and everyone participates, it can result in a well-informed decision with collective buy-in.

All true. But, we’re learning from research on cognitive bias that consensus decision making sits just this side of groupthink. Groupthink decisions rarely have successful outcomes.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, groupthink is “a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.”

First coined in 1972 by social psychologist, Irving L. Janis, groupthink refers to a

psychological phenomenon that happens when people in a group commit to decisions

they don’t necessarily agree with in order to avoid creating emotional tension or conflict with their colleagues. The risk is that in the decision-making process, there is no room for alternative viewpoints, criticism, or facts. The group becomes convinced of its own correctness, regardless of the facts. “Are we all in agreement here?”

In developing the concept, Janis was inspired by the “newspeak” of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

“The term refers to a deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments as a result of group pressures for consensus.”

When people are so committed to reach consensus that they put harmony and cohesion above the critical evaluation and analysis of the outcome, they stifle their thoughts, refrain from asking the hard questions and avoid exposing potential pitfalls. This often leads to irrational or problematic decisions.

Groupthink can transform a harmonious team of bright, creative, independent thinkers into a group of “smilers and nodders” keeping their very best thinking to themselves.

Janis’s initial examples focused on high-level military errors:

• The lack of preparedness for Pearl Harbor, based in large part around misconceptions about Japanese military power.

• The Bay of Pigs invasion, where Kennedy administration officials thought naively that they’d be able to conceal U.S. involvement in a surprise attack on Cuba.

• The Vietnam War, where Johnson’s cabinet repeatedly doubled down on military involvement without a solid rationale and in the face of evidence that it would not succeed.

  
  

Of course, military mistakes aren’t the only example of groupthink.

• In the 1990s, McDonald’s spent millions marketing the Arch Deluxe as a "gourmet" burger for adults. However, it failed to attract the intended audience, who didn’t associate McDonald’s with upscale dining.

• In the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, individual actors within banks knew their firms were overleveraged or that investment instruments weren’t sound. However, they didn’t want to rock the boat, so even those who knew better stayed silent.

• Bud Light's 2015 "Up for Whatever" campaign got slammed for printing the message on its bottles, Bud Light is “the perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary.”

• Journalists and commentators, increasingly congregating in insular groups online, heavily predicted the 2016 election would go to Hillary Clinton. Many were caught off-guard by the dynamics fueling Trump’s victory.

  
  
  
  

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Groupthink is involved in some of the most grievous errors made by groups of smart people who nonetheless fail to engage in reflective decision-making. How many times have you reflected back in the post-mortem about a poor decision your team made, and you wished someone – anyone– would have had the insight, courage, or the moxie to stand up and ask the kinds of questions that might have revealed the defects that no one seemed to notice?

But, hey... at least everyone got along, right?

Alfred P. Sloan, the longtime president, chairman, and CEO of General Motors from the 1920s to the 1950s was highly skeptical when his teams achieved consensus too quickly. In fact, without disagreement, Sloan felt that people lacked the understanding to make a decision.

“If we are all in agreement on the decision — then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding  of what the decision is all about.” – Alfred Sloan

Slipping into groupthink oftentimes happens without our awareness and goes undetected long after the meeting is over. But, once you know what it looks like and feels like, it will become so crystal clear, you'll wonder why you never saw it before.

Here are three simple ways to prevent groupthink from sabotaging your team.

1. Intentionally seek out input from people with diverse points of view. This prevents like-minded thinking and is one of the virtues of group member diversity and inclusion.

2. Assign people to play “devil’s advocates.” Appoint some individuals in the decision-making group to conduct a critical evaluation of any potential decision—asking the tough questions.

3. Minimize the leader's influence. Some teams are more focused on pleasing the leader than the task at hand. If the leader speaks last it implies he or she is interested in hearing others' ideas.

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