Book Review: "The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player" by John C. Maxwell

Book Review: The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player by John C. Maxwell

    It is no secret that Mr. John C. Maxwell is one of my favorite leadership authors.  I have previous reviews on other books that I have read that are authored by him.  I intend to read many more and review each.  This time around I chose to read “The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player”.  I began reading this book when I came across a four-part collection by John C. Maxwell and crawled through this one.

    I chose to read “The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player” mainly because I had set out on a journey to learn as much as I could about being a team builder.  One of my earlier mentors took pride in calling himself a team-builder and I intended to follow in his footsteps.  I believe that team building, and leadership go hand and hand.  I recognize John C. Maxwell for recognizing and capitalizing on this, as well as being a great teacher of the inherent connectivity.

The Layout

    John C. Maxwell attacks the layout of this work in a way that makes me happy.  This book is formatted specifically for the reader that wants to complete a book in less than a month while reading a short chapter each day.  The introduction is a few chapters long followed by seventeen straight forward qualities that get right to the point and do not contain much fluff. 

    In the meat of the text, where Mr. Maxwell is visiting and explain each of the qualities of a team player one by one, one per chapter, he sub-formats the book in a very pleasing patterned way.  You will find a brief story that feels like an exciting history lesson (oxymoron?), all of which are well chosen and well explained, followed by a series of formatted writing on the quality following that story.  I am really intrigued by how the pattern respects itself and follows suit in every chapter, which really pleases my inner obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Formatting the Chapters

    The first of the subheadings is “Fleshing it Out”.  During this section John further explains the quality in discussion and then follows that explanation with clear steps on how to progress towards mastery of the quality.  He does a good job at describing what the quality is, what it entails doing, and how to do it.  I am thoroughly impressed with how well he dives into the detail without using a lot of fluff to create long sittings per chapter.  I enjoyed each of the sections the most and found myself walking away from each sitting after having read this section feeling very enlightened with clear direction on what I should be doing to further develop this quality in myself.

    The second section within each chapter is a section for reflection.  It is literally called “Reflecting on It”.  John poses a question and walks through some inner dialogue to drive home understanding of what needs to happen to fertilize the growth of this quality.  This section is followed by “Bringing it Home” where there are more bullet points to further illustrate how to apply the techniques of the quality directly to ourselves.  The layout of the bullet points makes reading immaculately pleasing and tidy.  Due to the organization of this writing, I rarely felt as if I was lost in the text.

    The last section of each chapter is titled “The Daily Take-away”.  Here the author finalizes the ideas that he introduced in the previous areas of the chapter and uses various techniques to tie them together for application.  The way he builds on the idea from start to finish with a minimal amount of content but left me with very full ideas is impressive.

Pro’s and Con’s

    I always have time to point out pro’s to John C. Maxwell’s writing, as I felt I have above.  I will take some time in this section to explore what he could have done to making reading this even a better experience. 

    The volume of the book itself is relatively small.  It concluded at 150 pages in, and the formatting of the pages was in such a way that kind of minimized content on each page.  Lots of spacing and captioning quotes reduced that 150 pages down by about 15 percent.  It was clear that it was intentionally formatted to deliver a lot of information very directly in a little package.  While I liked that, I may have liked it so much that I wanted more.  I found that even though I stretched the book out, like many good books, once I got going, I began binge reading multiple chapters at a time.  I never had to mark the book and take a break outside of the chapters, because they were so short and direct.

    John C. Maxwell can wrap me up in his story telling.  I have listened to some of his audio books that were narrated by him.  Every time I read one of his texts, I can hear him telling that story in my head.  This fellow has a real soothing voice, and just the thought of this gets me hooked every time.  I believe that some of his supportive material outside of the direct tips and strategies sometimes included additional information and fluff to make the strategies stretch throughout the book.  In most occasions I believe authors do this too much in order to stretch books out much further than they should be stretched, however, I wish in this case that he would have included a little more wordage.

 

    Finally, I would have liked to read about more direct applications of these qualities that do not involve a grand history story.  For many of the chapters John uses a famous piece of history to illustrate the importance of why a certain quality is included in his list of seventeen.  I wished that there were less fame involved in the stories and more personal application.

My Rating

    As far as business and leadership texts are concerned, I would give this a 4.5 out of 5.  It is pleasing to read, especially if you love organization.  The information is rather direct, the bits of history augment the writing, and it is true.  It is clear when you read this that this isn’t some sales pitch or phony claim.  Every quality you review and study in detail rings that eureka bell in your head and it becomes easy to tie it into the big picture of leadership.

Organizational Change: Lewin's Model of Change

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Lewin’s Model of Change - Organizational Change in Leadership

    Change is a necessary occurrence for organizations to continually grow.  Change is very important in leadership because it is the leadership that drives the change.  A social psychologist named Kurt Lewin developed a model for change that I am particularly fond of.  I give credit to Lewin’s Model of Change in helping me grow in my own organization as well as helping me tackle problems and achieve goals as I have grown.  I still today think of how to apply Lewin’s Model of Change to situations in my organization and life that require change to happen.

    I intend to further elaborate on the stages of Lewin’s Model of Change at a future date, because so much can be said about the technique used to apply them.  I really enjoy breaking down his ideology of change because it is extremely applicable to situations where the change is required because of stagnation due to culture.

Overview of Lewin’s Model

     To summarize, Kurt Lewin proposed that change should encompass three steps.  A step of unfreezing, a step of actual changing, and then a step of re-freezing.  We can generally understand this by thinking about what it is that we need to change and what change is.  To need change that means we must have some established practices that seem to be the norm that are undesirable.  The norm may not even be undesirable, rather, we may want to do things differently to achieve a different result.  Often, we are met with much resistance.  The core of Lewin’s Model focuses on breaking this resistance.

    To successfully apply Lewin’s Model of Change, we must understand the series of events that need to happen for us to effectively change some normal practices within our organization.  First, we must identify what it is that we want to change, and then unlearn those norms.  After we have “un-frozen” the normal practices, we can then begin to introduce the new norms that we want.  Once we have introduced the new normal, it becomes our job to further normalize this, and freeze this into permanency.

My First Application - an Anecdote

    During what I would call one of the most important interviews of my life, I had the opportunity to sit in front of two of my mentors and try to convince them that I was the best candidate for a job.  During this time a very key questions in the interview came up, as my department and organization required someone to help drive change, as many changes were required to succeed in the coming years.  I did not yet know the terms or the direct strategy that Kurt Lewin proposed, however, I used the word “normalize” and it stuck with my interviewers.

    I believe that we intrinsically understand what Kurt Lewin lays out for us, and that we know that to drive change to a situation where there has been a reinforced culture of doing things, we must first un-learn the autonomous repetition, introduce the new material, and then set in place a program to establish the new material to become autonomous as the old pre-change material was. 

    My mentor held me to Lewin’s final step in his model for change and quoted me following my promotion.  He has said to me many times since then, “Normalize Josh, normalize.”  As I further study topics of organizational management and come across strategies such as these that I sought to apply in the past because of what seemed like common-sensical knowledge, I am really pleased that I have been given the chance to grow and apply what I have learned in life.

Step 1: Un-freezing

    This stage is the precursor to carrying out real change.  It is best to think of this like making frozen food malleable again via the thawing process.  There is no sense in trying to shape frozen hamburger, rather, first we thaw it out so that we can shape it how we like.  The same is true for teams in an organization.  If our team’s thoughts are fixed and they are autonomously carrying out procedures based on an old norm that we want to change, first we must prepare them for change.

    Lewin advises that we do this by visiting and re-visiting the need for change until the individuals itself recognize the usefulness of the change.  Allow the team to see why change is needed and allow them time to explore the why themselves.  To release a locked set of ideals and prepare that set of ideals for molding, we need to properly prepare our team as individuals for a coming change and allow them to perceive the need for it.

    Unlearning normalized behaviors take time and attention.  We as leaders need to stay attentive to the level of fluidity that our teams are exhibiting by staying present and available for communication.  Special attention is placed on the act of unlearning because we do not develop an autonomous sense of functionality overnight, and as such we cannot unlearn the autonomous behaviors that we may have been performing for years overnight either.  Sometimes the best tool to unlearn behaviors is to release fragments of the change early and allow a preview of what is to come.

    During this period of executing a change, we need to pay attention to those that will be resistant and focus some of our efforts.  Dig deep when trying to convince the most resistant team members and use all the tools available to you.  The most beneficial tools to have during this phase is undoubtedly positive relationships with rapport as well as the foundational influence that comes along with leadership.

    A lot of the reason why resistant team members will follow you into change that they do not particularly like or agree with is rooted in their trust in you as a leader.  Bring them on board early, explain the why, give examples, and listen to feedback.  The most damaging thing that a leader can do at this point is declare the change just because followed by shutting down any types of feedback or criticisms to the change.  Just because we listen to feedback and criticism doesn’t mean that we are going to change the organization’s game plan, however, it does result in a more widely accepted attempt at executing the change desired.

    A lot of time can be wrapped up in this phase of change.  It is impossible to tell exactly how long it will take to properly prepare an organization or team for any change, however, it is recommended that we set goals and push to stick to timelines.  There is nothing wrong with adjusting along the way so long as the adjustments aren’t ultimately detrimental to the end game.  This is supported by a large feedback loop that should extend from the floor to the upper management level where we use a channel to communicate positive and negative feedback regarding the preparedness for the coming change.

Step 2: The Change

    Once we have spent a good deal of time unlearning behaviors and preparing individuals for change the task is set to officiate the change.  This is the phase where we deliver the information and the procedures, as well as the new expectations and guidelines.  It will be evident here if we have rushed the change as there is no proverbial dog to eat your homework when things turn upside down, and believe me, during change things often turn upside down.

    The further things go astray, the more you will see resistance begin to pop up.  These patches of resistance will be strongest in those who were resistant from the beginning, but the goal here is to communicate expectations, accept all feedback and encourage others to work with you on discovering the various properties of change that was foreseen and unforeseen, and finally to give feedback yourself to superiors so that they are able to do their job in executing the change.

    Even in the most unfrozen of situations, it will seem evident that “we were just not ready for the change.”  This is kind of a fallacy to fluidity in organizations, and the larger the organization, the more apparent this fallacy.  This is typically a perception related to a type of cognitive dissonance, and this is exactly where my organization was when I suggested that we push forward to achieve a state of normalcy.  It is at this point where we see the true drivers of change as well as the ones who want to hop back on the bus to do things the old way.

    My organization has pushed through so much change in the past two years that it seems we have an “old way” to do everything, as a matter of fact, just about everything that we do has an “old way” that seniority will refer to from time to time, even though we are well into the re-freezing stage.

Step 3: Re-freezing

    The final step in Lewin’s Model of Change has to do with the very idea that I proposed during my interview.  So far, we have taken an autonomous function of an organization, prepared to change it, changed it, and now we are tasked with making the change the new autonomous function.  It is important that we recognize this step in executing the change and begin to move in order to successfully complete it.  It is important that we don’t stagnate during phase two, which is synonymous with just avoiding phase three, as then it will become normal to have a duality in autonomously carrying out organizational procedures, which can be more detrimental than avoiding the change in the first place.

    To re-freeze is to create a culture of normality in executing functions brought about by the change, and to then make these autonomous actions by all members of the team or organization.  This is done by time, reinforcement, feedback, and refining.  To re-establish culture is a tall task, and often we procrastinate by returning to the “old way” of functionality.  The drivers of change will be the ones constantly attentive to course correction and identifying problems and working towards finding solutions rather than avoidance.

    To jump start this part of the process, I suggest identifying some of the strongest influencers and allow them to be drivers of change with you.  Play to the strengths of some of your quick learners and invest some time in explaining some of the roots of the change in more detail.  Task these individuals with a clear goal of disseminating this information to others.  When looking for these associates, look for adaptable and influential team members that you have a strong relationship with.

    This is the step in Lewin’s Model of Change that we should get lost in and lose track of time.  Often you only realize that you have begun to make progress on this step once the progress is already made and you are reflecting on the past.  If you have succeeded in re-freezing after a change, you should be able to clearly identify some fruits of your change and can reinforce the re-freezing by interacting with team members of the organization.

The Take Away

    Every organization runs into stagnation and requires an execution of change.  How we approach this need to change will determine whether we are successful in achieving our goals that relate to the root cause of the change.  So many failures occur because of misguided approach.  We can avoid failure and bolster our odds for success by proper planning and using our leadership resources in the best possible ways.  Following Lewin’s Model of Change doesn’t guarantee that our change will occur without resistance, or that our change will be beneficial in the end, however, it does give us a road map to follow in order to roll out new organizational functions that we believe will benefit the organization in the end. 

    This model of change is the means for leadership to use in order to come to a concluding point in time where we can further assess its effectiveness.  As leaders, it is our obligation to best serve our organization and our team by bridging the two together and being a facilitator of change deemed necessary.  I believe by following structured systems that we can introduce and reinforce change for the betterment of our organization and our teams.

Four Ways to Show Thanksgiving in Leadership

Four Ways to Show Thanksgiving in Leadership

    Showing thanksgiving as a leader is a very important task to do.  It is important that our teams realize that we share the successes as well as the failures.  I am talking about more than just performance appraisals and feedback.  I am talking about the showing of gratitude by leaders to their subordinates. 

    It is far too easy for subordinates to feel like cogs in a machine due to the everyday swing of operations.  It is important as leaders that we instill a sense of appreciation in our team, after all, they are the ones doing the work.  As leaders, we need to explore the various reasons why to show thanksgiving and then the ways to convey gratitude to our team.

Why Show Gratitude?

    To some people this may seem silly, and hopefully you are one of them.  Showing gratitude is a very important part of maintaining healthy relationships within a team.  Your team needs to know that you appreciate them, and the benefits of them understanding this are many.  A team that feels thanksgiving from their leader or management are more likely to perform, respond to pressure to perform, trust their management more, and have overall healthier relationships with their management team.  Teams who feel that their leadership is thankful for their work are also happier to be a part of a team, which directly boosts day to day morale.  There is something to be said about how individual confidence is maximized when team members believe that their superiors are thankful for their service, and confident team members boost the overall performance of the team.

Four Ways to Show Thanksgiving in Leadership

1. Immediate Follow-Ups

    The most applicable and used technique of showing thankfulness as a leader is certainly the follow-up.  When I refer to follow-up, I am talking about delegating a task, and then following up to assess whether that task was completed adequately.  When you delegate as a leader and follow up to find that the task was successfully completed, an important relationship building tool is to then follow up with the individual that the task was delegated to and let them know that you followed up.  Expressing thankfulness for the successful completion of the task yields multiple benefits.

    The first benefit is one that impacts your span of influence as a manager.  If you delegate a task to an individual and follow up, that communicates that you care about the task and you are willing to see if it will be completed.  It also communicates that the task that you delegated was a chunk of important authority that deserved a part of your attention, and it was not just some mindless drivel that you blindly sent someone off to do in order to keep them busy.  The end game to this is that when you delegate in the future, this individual as well as other individuals uninvolved will be more than willing to carry the authority that you give to them with the delegation, and strive to successfully carry out the task.  The showing of gratitude at the finality of this is the final stamp that seals this exchange.  The delivery of the gratitude can be as simple as a “Thank you”, or “Good job.”

2. Huddle Meeting Topics

    Every day my team and I typically have a start-up and final huddle meeting.  By design during both huddle meetings, on my agenda is a short time set aside to recognize excellence, positive performance, or goals achieved.  It is important that we show thankfulness in this type of forum in front of our team as-a-whole.  By doing this, we completely remove the potential label of us being closed-souled slave-drivers and boost our chances of being perceived by our team as thankful leaders of a successful team.

    Taking time to recognize others and show our thankfulness for their work will create an atmosphere for the positive relationships that are required of a fully functional team and will create great relationships between everyone.  It is important when doing group recognition to identify the correct behaviors to recognize, and publicly thank those who are excelling.  This will create an atmosphere of competition among the team to strive to achieve this type of recognition while supplying those who do excel with the delight of public acknowledgement.

    Despite many people showing bashfulness or unwillingness to accept public displays of thanks and gratitude, I believe the benefits are clear regardless.  No matter the degree of the individual rejecting the public acknowledgement, the benefits of acknowledgement still exist.

3. Performance Appraisal

    A performance appraisal is a regular discussion between a leader and subordinate where the leader outlines how the individual has been performing.  Even in the event of a performance appraisal that contains criticisms and coaching for improved performance, it is still important to show thankfulness.  As leaders we should adopt a thankful attitude to those who are willing to follow us, and even if for no other reason, we should take this opportunity for thanking the individual for being a part of our team.  Depending on the flavor of the performance appraisal, we may include this in the open, close, or both.  We may also center the performance appraisal around our gratitude for having the team member a continuing part of our team in the case of high performing team members.  In any case, we should take a bit of time during our performance appraisals to let our team members know how much we appreciate them.

    Often a performance appraisal is an intimate time between a manager and an employee.  These experiences are memorable and usually either painful or extremely delightful.  A good manager is able to take a performance appraisal that would otherwise be painful and turn it into a situation that both parties can walk away from feeling enlightened and not confused.  Expressing thankfulness and gratitude during these events is one way that we can have a positive impact on the situation in multiple ways.  We can deepen the relationship with our employees as well as create a positive atmosphere for the performance appraisal.

4. Human Conversation

    All too often as leaders we are seen by our team as just another cog in the machine of an organization.  We are thought of just as managers and not as humans, and managers can’t be thankful, right?  Sometimes we need to appeal to our team as fellow humans and reveal that we have human emotions and feelings.  I believe we can do this by engaging in a normal human exchange of words, and then once we are here, we are able to display gratitude.  This will be in a different forum than the other suggestions, and it will probably be more well received, because we are communicating as people, and not as businessmen or businesswomen.  Successfully interjecting thanks into a normal human conversation with members of our team will allow us to deliver a personally received message of thanks that is able to impact our team members on a deeper level than a professional thanks.

The Take Away

    As leaders, it is important that we value our team members as individual humans that follow us in order to complete goals that we subscribe to.  The very act of having those willing to genuinely follow you is a compliment.  We should be thankful for this opportunity, and while we are unable to hide this if it is the case, it is also impossible to hide it if it is not the case.  I challenge every leader in the world to communicate a message of thankfulness and gratitude to their team during this holiday season.  I also challenge anyone who believes that this isn’t tied to your goals to try it and assess your situation after you create a culture of gratitude among your team.  I believe you, like myself, will have concrete proof in the development of your relationships as well as the performance of your team clearly apparent as a result of your show of gratitude.

2 Key Questions a Leader Should Ask Themselves Before Leading

2 Key Questions a Leader Should Ask Themselves Before Leading

    Sometimes we reach a point in our group, team, or organization where we want to identify an opportunity to step up and lead.  Sometimes it may not be formal or permanent.  It may be a passing thought, or a notion to help the current situation progress along for a short time.  In any case, potential leadership is very thought provoking.  Earlier in my career I would say that it reminds me of going out on a date for the first time, awkward and forced.  As time has passed, I would say that it becomes natural and easy, sometimes making what would be an awkward situation one more bearable for all involved.

    I joined a collegiate organization some time ago where I was required to complete multiple steps before induction.  There were maybe a dozen steps to complete.  Towards the end of this period of induction, I was randomly paired with a group of people.  Among ourselves we had to develop a team complete with assigned jobs and self-prepared meetings.  I feel that this was in a lot of ways a test, because in our first scheduled meeting, we all showed up having no idea what to do.  While my group members and I sat around a table staring at each other and talking it became clear that there was a lack of leadership.  A few members had left early, some other broke off and began talking about life in general, and some were scoffing about how poorly ran the organization was.

     We were all in the dark.  We had no clue what to do or what we were even meeting for aside from us understanding that it was a requirement for induction.  Through this first painful meeting, I had gotten only one thing, someone had to make the next one less painful, assuming anyone even returned.  I decided to take the position of facilitator and prepare for the next meeting, hoping that if nothing else we would have something to do besides gossip about politics.

     Sometimes it takes being placed in an awkward situation with others before it is clear who the leader may be, and sometimes it will be surprising to see who that person is.  Whether it is a blindly assembled group, or a department in an organization, there should be only a few unorganized gatherings before it becomes clear who the leader is.  Here we look at some key questions to ask ourselves to determine if we have identified an opportunity to lead.

    

1.  Do we have the functional or technical knowledge required to lead?

    Having the functional knowledge to lead a group is a key question to ask yourself.  It is not a black and white barrier that should direct whether you pursue a leadership role.  It should, however, give you the direction that you should take if you do decide to pursue that leadership role.  If you conclude that you do not have a lot of functional knowledge of the group that you want to lead, then we must understand this if we decide to push forward.

    Function or technical knowledge is the boots-on-the-floor know how of getting a job done and demonstrating successful action against the task.  A leader that has a load of technical knowledge and the skills related to successfully obtaining the goals will approach leading a team a bit differently than one who has little technical knowledge.  To this leader I would suggest a teaching and mentoring strategy.  A lot can be gained, and relationships can be developed by a leader who has knowledge to distribute among a group of peers.

    A lack of functional or technical knowledge does not mean that we should avoid pursuing leadership.  It should be a factor in your decision though, as opting to lead without having a broad span of knowledge of the tasks at hand does make the job more difficult.  To the leader without technical knowledge, I would advise taking a learn together approach, and never shy away from the opportunity to learn from a team member.  There is great value in allowing a team member the opportunity to teach you something.

    In my case, I chose the latter approach.  I knew that I had the ability to publicly speak, as well as research and present information that I had acquired, so I contacted my group and let them know as long as no one opposed it that I would have something prepared for us to review at our next meeting.  After scheduling the day with everyone, I was nervous about what may happen.

   

   

2.  Do we have proper relationships established with our team?

    One of the most difficult situations that a leader can face is being thrust into a new team with the expectation of leading them.  Success isn’t guaranteed, goals are not understood, and the people can sometimes be strangers.  It is much more favorable to lead a team that you have already had the opportunity to develop relationships with.  Developing relationships is one of the key tools of a leader.  It is arguably one of the most important things that a leader can do, and the flavor of these relationships will often determine the level of success that a leader will experience.

    To a leader that has had the opportunity to develop proper relationships with his team, I would suggest that he search those relationships and make certain that they are facilitating good communication as well as mutual respect.  If these two qualities of a relationship aren’t present, then the leader should be doing things to foster the growth of them.  Without these qualities in the relationships, success will be very difficult.  If good communication and mutual respect are present, the ability to lead will be readily available and from here it is simply undertaking the task.

    After being thrust into an environment with strangers, and attending a dry pointless meeting, I knew that we had to turn it around.  It seemed clear that we were all good communicators that had adequate mutual respect; however, our little organization just required some leadership.  In this informal situation, it was as simple as standing up and doing it.  I didn’t believe it should be a forceful or delegatory thing, rather, I first communicated that I had done some research on how our group should be put together and suggested that if no one else had any material, that I be allowed to present what I had learned.

     After playing a presentation that I had found on my chapter’s website, I outlined what I thought the meeting should include and led the discussion.  I asked questions and listened to answers.  As we continued and time passed, we all became more familiar with each other and felt exactly what it was that this challenge was about.  This wasn’t some formal take-charge-and-conquer test, rather, it was a test of our ability to come together as a team and hold each other accountable to being team members.

 
The Take Away

    I believe these are two key questions we should ask ourselves before we decide to venture into the idea of leadership in any situation.  Regardless of our direction of thought, or where we end up after pondering all the information, I believe that the task of asking ourselves the questions better prepares us to lead.  We can further analyze and break this down, however the idea itself is intended to spark the thinking that a potential leader should be doing before undertaking the task.

    In some instances, we may decide that leadership in the current situation isn’t for us, or that there is someone better suited.  To that I would say, even a leader knows when to follow.  A good leader knows when to be led.  It should not be taken as a failure when it becomes apparent that there is someone more qualified to lead a team than ourselves, rather, we should still fulfill our obligation to be team members and continue to strive to achieve the organizations goals, however big or small.

    It is important as leaders that we continue to think about these things as we travel through life and come across different situations that require different things of us.  It is important that leaders identify situations where we believe that our service as a leader will affect the outcome of the group for the better, and to allow ourselves to be a special part of the group, for the better of the group.  There is no more fulfilling thing to be than a servant leader, and that will be a topic of future discussion.

   

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.