Team Meetings: Side Stepping Intellectual Cow Pies

At least one group of researchers, Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, and Jundt (2005), recommends that teams function better if the leaders are rotated. My own feeling is that it really depends on the team’s purpose. The purpose will define whether it is best to have one leader; rotate leaders based on expertise; or rotate leaders on a timeline. One of the great things about this is if an organization has an executive development strategy in place this gives the up and coming executive a means to increase her visibility as a leader to others. This in turn can help credibility as she may later be assigned a position within a department represented by one of the team members.

There is yet another sane reason behind Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, and Jundt recommendation. If one person is leading the group then the group is more subject to the influence of that one person. This is especially if that one person has power. By power I am thinking of executive power, expert power (that is the person is extremely knowledgeable), or influential power (people trust or fear a person). The influence of a leader can take derail the team. I remember being with friends and thinking this is a stupid idea, but the person leading the group possessed too much influence. So we ended up bulleting down the road like we were on a luge driven by a mad man. Obviously I survived peer pressure where the group was willing to allow teenage desperado to drive a car 70 to 100 miles an hour on a 35 mile hour backwoods road. We were one small missed turn from a very negative outcome.

So how does an event I just described happen? When people believe or accept a perception of an individual they may ignore the likelihood of adverse outcomes or unforeseen conditions. My cousins and friends ignored the fact that this guy really was a convict and one that had little regard for his or anyone else’s life. If they choose to look at what they knew they would have known he was the last person any of use ought to allow behind the wheel. A great book was written about our tendency to do this called, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The foregoing, a negative black swan (one where the unforeseen is not good) can be stumbled into by ignoring data or selecting a method of analysis that will support presuppositions.

Ever talk to an idiot, in the old meaning, a person who sees things only one way. No matter what you present to such a person it will be discounted. I remember engaging in a conversation with a person into government and wealthy people conspiracies. It is a type of lunacy. Reality means little to a person sold on a narrow perspective grounded on a presupposition. This person’s theory revolved around fast food. The premise was the rich were trying to make a better future for each other by getting people in the middle and lower economic class hooked on junk food. The rosier future was to be arrived at by a high mortality rate among junk food consumers. This theory ignores several facts. If people are dying they need to be dying somewhere – hospitals. Second, it is unlike they will die out right, but burden the medical system with heart patients. Third, manipulating society is near impossible. How come? There are so many variables and sources of those variables that it is way too easy to miss something crucial to the plan’s success. There are too many variable to know about let alone control. Fourth it ignores the fact that not all food that is bad for people is served at fast food joints. Aristocracy eats calorie dense food high in fats and sugars too. Every time I would present a rational reason refuting the person’s theory his eyes would glaze over and more drivel would spew out. People if not monitored can lock into a single idea and reject other ideas that may be more rational. It is something we are all subject to. It is easier to do in groups.

The caveat here is: whether it is one leader or five there must be a conscious effort by the group to avoid forming an opinion before all the confirming or disconfirming data or information is in. It is bad reasoning to start with an opinion and see if you can prove it unless you are toying with an idea and work as hard to disprove the idea as to prove it.

I am tentatively writing about team goals in my next post.

Ilgen, D. R., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M., & Jundt, D. (2005). Teams In Organizations: From Input-Process-Output Models to IMOI Models. Annual Review of Psychology, 56(1), 517-543. Retrieved May 10, 2006 from Business Source Premier.