How to Ensure All Perspectives Are Heard
1. Encourage Dissenting Opinions. The problem with group decisions is that even when team members have doubts, they often soft-pedal their objections or even silence themselves entirely for fear of being seen as an annoying buzzkill or a non-team player. The solution is to change the group’s social norms, creating a social context in which opposing viewpoints are welcomed and rewarded. To do that, leaders need to demonstrate that they truly want to hear opinions different from their own and emphasize that the goal of discussion is not group harmony, but sound decisions.
2. Gather Opinions Anonomously. The Delphi Method, originally developed for military and diplomatic analysis of cold war scenarios, is a decision-making process in which team members submit their thoughts anonymously. This confers two critical benefits. First, since members’ submissions are private and anonymous, it removes social pressure to conform. Second, submissions are read out by a facilitator, ensuring that equal weight is given to all voices — not just the loudest or most vocal.
3. Assign a Devil’s Advocate. Another way to combat groupthink is to assign a devil’s advocate, a team member whose job is to question assumptions, demand evidence, cross-examine, and poke holes in arguments. Since the devil’s advocate is actually rewarded for rejecting the group’s dominant position, it’s a good way to combat social pressure to conform. A variation on the devil’s advocate is the Red Team — a subgroup whose mission is to criticize the primary team’s plan. Red Teams can sometimes work better than lone devil’s advocates, since having multiple people on the contrarian team provides social proof of the validity of opposing viewpoints. Red Teams are used extensively in the military before combat missions, as well as in law firms, which often run internal mock trials in which one team of attorneys is tasked with helping the primary team prepare for trial by presenting opposing counsel’s case as devastatingly as possible.