Leading a Cohesive Team Past Groupthink

So many examples of poor decisions can be traced back to groupthink. From the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the Bay of Pigs and the Challenger disaster—each of those infamous moments in history could have been avoided if special attention was devoted to preventing groupthink. Much of the research on the topic was developed by Irving Janis, who defined groupthink as “…a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”