Group Think
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[00:00:00] Andrew Hibel: Hey listeners. I know you'll love this exclusive offer from our friends at TopResume. For a limited time, you'll get 25% off any resume writing package. These packages match you with an industry expert resume writer to craft a resume built to pass the AI applicant filters and impress people on the other side.

Use code highered25 at topresume.com/resume-writing to immediately improve your number one tool in getting that next great higher ed job. Welcome to The HigherEdJobs Podcast. I'm Andy Hibel the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

[00:00:35] Kelly Cherwin: And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy.

Today, we're fortunate to be speaking with Justin Zackal one of our regular contributors to HigherEdJobs. In addition to being a well-respected writer for us, Justin is also a communication specialist at Slippery Rock University and has more than 12 years experience in higher education communications and marketing.

Thank you for joining us today, Justin.

[00:00:56] Justin Zackal: Thank you. And I love that HigherEdJobs has a [00:01:00] podcast now. And I always say that sometimes, you know, I might not have two minutes to read an article, but I always seem to find time to have 20 minutes or a half hour to listen to a podcast. Whether I'm folding laundry, mowing the lawn or shoveling snow, it's a great format to share a lot of ideas.

[00:01:15] Andrew Hibel: That's a great place to start and see for folks who are listening out there. Will you tweet us @higheredjobs or drop us an email at podcast@higheredjobs.com. We'd love to know what you're doing while listening to the podcast. And we'd love to report back to you and give folks who are struggling to have some time to listen to the podcast some ideas of how to do that.

[00:01:36] Kelly Cherwin: Justin, you mentioned we might not always have time to read articles. So actually today we're going to be talking about one of your most recent articles. Um, it is called "Working Toward Productive Conflict and Away from Groupthink." So before we dive into talking about, you know, some strategies and tips and techniques and all the wonderful information you described in the article, I think would be good for our listeners to kind of talk a little bit [00:02:00] more about what the concepts are. When we hear the word conflict, oftentimes I think of something that is negative or bad. So can you talk about the differences between productive conflict and the opposite, which is unhealthy or unproductive conflict?

[00:02:12] Justin Zackal: So, productive conflict, I mean, you want to have dialectical conversations and not, you're just getting into having opposing ideas where you're just focusing on, um, imposing your opinion on somebody to try to win an argument.

You want to try to reach a solution that's, uh, agreeable and advantageous for both parties involved. And, you know, this sounds maybe a little bit like a game business game theory, but in an organizational setting, uh, when you, when you have a department meeting, you know, you want to be able to hash out ideas and go against the, maybe what would be the assumptions of the group and find ideas that are synthesized from an antithesis and a thesis argument.

That's where these, these great solutions happen by talking through them in [00:03:00] conversations. And that's what I really mean by productive conflict and unproductive conflict would be when conversations are arguing over frivolous matters, resorting to sarcasm or abusive language that could be a harmful for any department organization, but you know, productive is when they really see these rich ideas come from, maybe opposing opinions.

[00:03:24] Kelly Cherwin: Thank you, Justin. I don't know if there's anything more you want to explain on why healthy conflict is important in academia?

[00:03:31] Justin Zackal: Well, I would just say also that in higher education, you know, we're supposed to be known as these factories or store houses of knowledge and, uh, that's how ideas and knowledge is created through these dialectical conversations.

And, uh, they're not just, they just don't come out of thin air. They come out of having confronting opposing ideas and a lot of, you know, scientists are trying to prove themselves wrong and that's how they do that by experimenting and trying things out. And that's where you [00:04:00] get this productive output from conflict.

[00:04:03] Kelly Cherwin: I just want to elaborate a bit more on, on groupthink. In your article, you made reference to a psychologist, Irving Janis, who first used the term groupthink back in '72. And he observed how intelligent groups of people often all having similar backgrounds made poor decisions from not considering opinions of outside groups.

So, I know you kind of referenced in the department, you might be hashing out ideas and how important it is to not just conform and go along with what everyone is thinking. But then also you go on to say, that groupthink is not necessarily a bad thing. It can bring out some good ideas. So can you kind of elaborate on when groupthink could be used in a constructive manner in the workplace?

[00:04:42] Justin Zackal: I think when you have cohesiveness within a group, uh, that can also lend itself to conformity. But having a group that shares the same values, that can be a bad thing cause you make a lot of assumptions, but when those values are aligned together around the [00:05:00] mission of the organization, now, that's also to say that there's not one way to do something.

Okay. So you all share those values and that's the way you interpret groupthink, groupthink in most senses is a pejorative term, but if you interpret it the way of sharing values and the path to a productive output from groupthink would be consensus around the mission of the organization.

[00:05:29] Andrew Hibel: I think what's interesting with that is the idea that a group decision is finding a set of shared values that govern an institution like a faith based institution that you referred to in the article, or even a set of criteria or events that define success to any sort of program that of a department.

Those seem like great things to find a set of, if you will, groupthink or shared feelings that [00:06:00] this is what we value, or this is how we're going to find success, because it gives us an ability to measure the productivity and the direction for any individual decision that may come along. It seems difficult though, whether it's, uh, the mission of the, of the group or what defines success, groupthink would be when a leader basically has an idea and everybody goes along with it because they think exactly like that leader.

[00:06:30] Justin Zackal: Yeah. And that's the conditions of groupthink that Irving Janis presented in, in 1972 and a number of authors have referenced his work, including where I became familiar with groupthink, from Adam Grant, the Wharton School organizational psychologist, who's written the book The Originals. He had a whole chapter about groupthink and he referenced Janis and his original study, referenced, President John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs and Invasion. He had an insular [00:07:00] cabinet that never challenged his misguided instincts about that invasion.

And that's one of the symptoms of groupthink is when you have a group that is structured in a way where nobody sees a need to speak up because you all share those same values, but also it could be the character of the leader that doesn't provide the psychological safety for the people with dissenting views to speak up because they might be, uh, they feel they might be punished socially or within the organization if they, uh, they challenge an authority figure.

[00:07:33] Andrew Hibel: Or in Kennedy's case, he might not even have a seat at the table, even though you're in the cabinet like the Vice-President didn't in that instance, where the Vice-President's opinion didn't even matter to Kennedy because he didn't have a seat at the table for those sorts of decisions, which from the article, having groupthink that also excludes people who would appear to be decision makers from even having a seat at the table is a, another risk from [00:08:00] what I understood.

It's interesting to me, like, it's legendary how much Johnson was used as a prop, and then just discarded in that instance, Kennedy could care less what he thought, maybe taking a step back, let's look at the symptoms and the conditions of groupthink, and let's lay those out for the listeners to kind of have it a more solid foundation before we further expand on the idea of groupthink.

[00:08:25] Justin Zackal: When most people think of groupthink they think of an homogeneous group and this gets into diversity. So, you don't have...you have people in a group that share the similar background, values and they are not representing people that are not a part of the group. And you have this conformity just based on, um, everyone thinking alike.

There's no diversity of thought. So they may not see a reason to speak up, to challenge a dissenting view because they all agree. Okay. And this is what Irving Janis refers to as, high cohesiveness. [00:09:00] Okay, but you also have another condition of groupthink, uh, which is more structural in nature. And this is when you have a leader that's not impartial and a leader that forces their own opinion on the group without allowing for those dissenting views to be heard or to have those dialectical conversations.

Uh, and this is where we get into, you know, psychological safety within a group. Uh, you know, somebody doesn't feel like...they want to speak up, but they feel like they can't. And the third condition or symptom of groupthink would be more in a situational context. I think of this now, especially during the pandemic and a lot of departments are stretched thin a lot of staffs are short. Groups feel like they're stressed, you know, there's burnout.

There's no time or resources or energy to challenge decisions. There they are just more passive and it just resigned themselves to [00:10:00] go along with the group. They lose the desire to speak up. It's not that they, they can't speak up, but they just don't want to speak up. So those are like the three major conditions for when groupthink presents itself.

And I think as a, as a leader of an organization or department, you want to be able to provide an environment where your subordinates have psychological safety, they're willing to and motivated to speak up, and all of these views are, or are considered and accounted for, and you have those rich conversations among your coworkers.

[00:10:34] Kelly Cherwin: One of the things I love about your writing, Justin, is you really provide some actionable advice, some tips, and you did that in, in this article as well. So after you describe what kind of, what the issues are, I was wondering if you could actually provide some advice on how to improve this functional conflict in the workplace.

[00:10:54] Justin Zackal: When I approached this topic from the context of higher education, I was challenged by, uh, by thinking [00:11:00] that people in higher education today, are they more susceptible to groupthink than maybe other industries. And, uh, you get to thinking about academic departments. Okay. You know, you have these, um, very specialized disciplines.

And the people, the faculty, uh, have similar values, similar, uh, credentialing and backgrounds, you know, not everybody has the means to earn a PhD. And you think that that would be another symptom of groupthink. But I think the academic nature of these departments where they're trained to challenge the status quo, uh, as, as I mentioned, uh, scientists are always trying to prove themselves wrong.

And I just think that groupthink is less of an issue for, um, higher education on the faculty side. Now you may say, oh, well I have a dysfunctional department and you should see the groupthink that goes on. But yeah, there's, there's always going to be [00:12:00] exceptions, but generally speaking in compared to maybe other organizations, I would say that higher education is not as susceptible. And you have things like academic freedom and shared governance that are more prominent in our industry compared to others. And also you have the, the, the trope of the, uh, eccentric professor, you know, it seems like every department has that professor who's, uh, resisting convention and is a challenging authority, but, uh, I think for the most part...

Uh, Robin Henninger, who I quoted in my piece, she said that there are egos in all workplaces, but faculty because of their specialties and expertise bring ego to the table, which, which sometimes prevents groupthink we're bold enough to say I don't agree with something, or I think we should look at this differently.

So I think that in academic departments, you might have less of a susceptible to groupthink. Now in the administrative staff side, I think it's just as likely to have groupthink present itself compared to other industries.

[00:12:58] Kelly Cherwin: I'm glad you brought up that quote. [00:13:00] I think we can all agree that organizational culture matters and being engaged and valued within that culture is important. So Justin, you talked about Grant, um, and you referenced Grant and he, he said, people shouldn't be punished for dissenting views, nor should they be expected to conform to the culture. Rather they should be empowered to contribute to the culture. And I strongly believe that a cultural fit in higher ed is important.

And it's definitely important for someone who is a job seeker. So do you have any advice for a job seeker who is in an interview, how they could potentially evaluate what that culture may be to see if are embracing the productive conflict.

[00:13:36] Justin Zackal: Yeah. I think that cultural fit sometimes is a bad word. A more appropriate term, I think is cultural contribution.

And this is using Adam Grant's term. Uh, whereas cultural fit sounds like you're trying to conform to the norms and the organization. You want to be able to find a ways that you can uniquely contribute to that culture and [00:14:00] to that institution.

[00:14:01] Andrew Hibel: I think, and I really liked that difference between fit and culture and you're not joining an affinity group. You're not looking for a culture that you're going to be able to work amongst big Beatles fans like yourself. What you're looking for is a chance to perform the work that you do, that you love doing, and you do well. And you're being set up for success to be able to do that in the best environment possible. In football, if you're a passing quarterback that just stays in the pocket, the worst place for you to go is to go play on a team that likes to have a lot of quarterback motion and a lot of quarterback running. So if you're, you're looking at a team with a, a fit where you need to work within that team and you need the team to operate with productive conflict.

That is an important evaluator of whether or not you're going to succeed in that position. And maybe that at the end of the day fit is the shorthand that a lot of folks use for that, but fit isn't really like, oh, I can fit in here. It's, let's call [00:15:00] this for what it is. What are my chances for success at this institution in this role?

Is the culture being set up to work for me or against me and Justin kind of off of that, like the idea that there's unproductive conflict, how much is tolerable, if you're a job seeker in that instance.

[00:15:18] Justin Zackal: What do you mean by how much is, is...

[00:15:19] Andrew Hibel: I think basically saying if you see some unproductive conflict, like I want to have a lot of unproductive conflict and whether or not you should use Starbucks or Dunkin donuts coffee, I don't want to see that on whether or not we should be funding, the type of research I'd like to have.

Oh, we don't, we don't fund quantitative based research. We only fund qualitative based research, but I'm a quantitative researcher, I want productive conflict around that to get a better process on that debate, but if you're talking about unproductive conflict, I can tolerate that as you're arguing about that, which coffee should be in the break room.

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[00:16:13] Kelly Cherwin: Like we talked earlier, Janis, or whoever said, if someone is afraid to speak up, then that's personally, that's not the type of an organization I would want to be in.

If I see the leadership team is kind of, you know, forcing everyone to go along with what they're thinking that wouldn't be a good fit for me. So as a job seeker, how do I kind of vet to see if they, they are valuing functional conflict. I keep saying functional conflict, but sorry, my in my class, we talked about functional and dysfunctional, so productive versus unproductive.

Yeah.

[00:16:43] Justin Zackal: When you're having conversations on a job interview or even informal conversations with people within an institution, you want to be able to detect language that is more absolute, like this is, this is the way we do things around here. There's a clear distinction between [00:17:00] right and wrong. And there's not an accepting of another way to reach a different solution.

A lot of institutions talk about, you know, oh, we're student centered and we're putting the student first, but there's a number of ways you can do that. And if you're talking to leaders who are, this is the way that we serve our students. Well, there's a number of ways you can arrive at that. And I think that a lot of departments might be very protective of the ground that they gained.

Whereas they might not be accepting of somebody coming in and finding a different path and gaining new ground, but still reaching the same destination.

[00:17:41] Andrew Hibel: I think this is a different question for you, Justin, and a great place to end. What can someone do to combat groupthink?

[00:17:49] Justin Zackal: I think that the best way to approach this is to not get caught up on the egos in the room or the type of leader that you have.

I think you should always [00:18:00] frame your work around the mission of the institution. And then if you have something to stand on, like the reason that you are going to provide a dissenting opinion on something, you have to question the leader or a coworker, if your mission of your institution is student success.

How does this particular decision lead to student success? You don't want to get into a more argumentative, conflicting situation whenever you're working with others, you want to put the focus on the problem and not the people.

[00:18:34] Andrew Hibel: Are you experiencing groupthink at your institution? How are you trying to work through it.

Tweet us at @higheredjobs or drop us an email at podcast@higheredjobs.com. We want to hear what you think. Justin, if folks are trying to find you and have questions for you, where can they find you out on the internet?

[00:18:50] Justin Zackal: Well, I welcome everyone to find me on Twitter @JustinZackal that's J U S T I N Z A C K A L.

People [00:19:00] are welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn, or you can find me on Twitter. I'll be happy to connect with. You just mentioned that you listened to the podcast. Whenever you send me a connection. Uh, it'd be great to connect and to share more ideas and hopefully have some productive conflict.

[00:19:15] Kelly Cherwin: And I want to put a plug in for all of Justin's great articles on HigherEdJobs. So search for Justin's articles on our site.

[00:19:21] Andrew Hibel: Thank you so very much, Justin, for spending time with us and sharing, I learned a lot about groupthink and I'm sure a lot of our listeners did as well. We appreciate your time. Thanks for listening.