What is groupthink and how can teams avoid it?

• A. Groupthink is the pressure to conform leading to poor decisions; to avoid, encourage dissent, appoint a devil's advocate, and use structured decision processes.
• B. Groupthink is productive consensus; avoid dissent.
• C. Groupthink is rare and has no impact.
• D. Groupthink is only a driver in small teams.

Answer: (A)

Groupthink happens when a team puts too much emphasis on harmony and quickly snaps to a consensus without enough critical evaluation. The pressure to conform makes members suppress doubts, overlook alternative options, and rationalize poor choices, so decisions end up biased and flawed. You’ll often see signals like everyone acting as if there’s complete agreement, doubts being kept to oneself, and protective insiders blocking dissent.

The best answer captures both the problem and practical remedies. Encouraging dissent so people feel safe to voice concerns, appointing a devil’s advocate to deliberately challenge ideas, and using structured decision processes that require explicit criteria and evaluation of options directly counter the conformity pull. These steps promote rigorous analysis, bring diverse viewpoints into the discussion, and create accountability, all of which help prevent a rosy but shallow consensus from guiding important choices.

Other options mischaracterize what’s happening. Thinking groupthink is productive consensus and that dissent should be avoided ignores how critical questioning improves decisions. Claiming it’s rare and has no impact underestimates how often it surfaces and the harm it can cause. Saying it only affects small teams wrongly limits its relevance; groupthink can arise in any team where cohesion and pressure to conform dominate objective evaluation.