Chairing Meetings – How to Prevent Group Think
Group Think is the cause of many, many bad decisions. It happens when the group prioritizes agreement and harmony over examining tricky issues and uncomfortable opinions.
And groupthink can lead to all-out disasters. Do, when you’re chairing a meeting – especially a decision-making meeting – you need to be able to prevent group think. So, in this lesson, we’ll look at a range of strategies you can use.
Watching this Video is worth 3 Management Courses CPD Points*.
(See below for more details)
This video is part of course module number 2.3.2
Program 2: The Manager as Communicator
Course 3: Meetings
Section 2: Chairing Meetings
Primary videos that precede this video include:
– Planning Your Meeting https://youtu.be/u0hqoWIecNU
– Meetings as Conversations https://youtu.be/42kngpo0MPE
– Meeting Discipline https://youtu.be/NWLKP4Lk3BA
– Hosting the Meeting https://youtu.be/MyyoRz4fKP8
– Housekeeping https://youtu.be/U3PfBOBeqBY
– Managing the Meeting https://youtu.be/cRap-SJ8tpQ
– How to Deal with Challenging Participants https://youtu.be/BX6xoc3qg0Y
– What to Do When Your Meeting Goes Wrong https://youtu.be/PuikZ7Z9hds
Primary videos that follow this video include:
– How to Close Your Meeting https://youtu.be/S0V2-NsLFSs
– Meeting Minutes and Follow-up https://youtu.be/97j9Nq8UuGk
LESSON NOTES
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General strategies that will help you prevent Group Think when you are chairing meetings:
1. Air information before opinions
2. Avoid powerful people speaking first
3. Appoint Devil’s advocate role
4. Have structured PMI (plus-minus-interesting)discussion
5. …or use Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method (see below for link to the book)
6. Do a strength of feeling/support survey
7. Ask for alternatives
8. Investigate variant positions and tackle difficult issues
RECOMMENDED EXERCISE
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1. Spend some time reviewing this video and your notes. Make a cheat-sheet of strategies you can use for your meetings and paste it into your meeting notebook – or whatever you take to your meetings. (2 MC CPD Points)
2. Reflect on meetings where you have seen Group Think take hold. What would have been helpful strategies for getting them back on track? (2 MC CPD Points)
3. At your next two meetings, if you sense the possibility of Group Think, deliberately apply one or to of the strategies you have learned. After the meeting, reflect on what happened and how effective those strategies were. (2×2 MC CPD Points)
DOWNLOADS
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Free Resources
– CPD Tools – https://gum.co/MC-CPD
Paid resources
– Management Courses Onboarding Kit – https://gum.co/MC-ObK ($3)
RECOMMENDED READING
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– Running Meetings (HBR) https://geni.us/uTtzzH
– Meetings Suck https://geni.us/PnqAf
– Bad Meetings Happen to Good People https://geni.us/ehWHWW
– Six Thinking Hats https://geni.us/d8uq3
Management Courses Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Points
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You can record your Management Courses CPD points on our free, downloadable CPD record log.
Download it here: https://gum.co/MC-CPD
Each video has two levels of MC CPD points. For this video:
– If you simply watched the video, record 3 MC CPD points
– If you also carried out all of the recommended exercises, score a total of 11 MC CPD points
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Note:
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