How to Get Longer Discussions (and Why You Want Them)

My frustration with airport security has risen to the point where I shudder at the mere thought of flying. I have never been a frequent flyer, with 20 flights the most I took in a single year. But now I take as few as possible. My biggest complaints are irrationality and inconsistency in the U.S. security system. For years they banned nail clippers, but not ball point pens. As a martial artist I could defend myself well with a ball point pen, but I have no idea how to hurt someone with a nail clipper. The policy was irrational, yet they kept it for years. And anyone who has flown through multiple airports knows the rules are not consistent. As I noticed flying between Silicon Valley and Seattle, and comic Paula Poundstone pointed out on a radio program, screeners at one airport insist you put your shoes on the conveyor belt and at the next airport they say to use a container. At each place they speak with equal vehemence, as if you were stupid for not knowing their local rule. Throw in the fact that safe airports in more dangerous places like Israel do not use high-tech, high-cost, highly invasive techniques, and I simply don't understand the American approach.

This rant has only a minor connection to this week's study, but I feel better.

One of the gripes about "decision-by-committee" is the time required for discussions. However, there is research evidence that the longer discussions go (up to a point), the better the average quality of the group's decisions. The early parts of discussions tend to cover information everybody already knows, say Guihyun Park and Richard DeShon, psychology researchers at Michigan State Univ. Only when that has played out are more novel ideas and previously unshared information likely to spill onto the table. Consistent with this fact, discussions in which minority opinions are expressed and considered also lead to better decisions. This environment prevents the dangers of groupthink, and "encourages teams to develop multiple perspectives on issues…" Park and DeShon write in a study article in the Journal of Applied Psychology. "In addition, when minority opinions are considered, the holders of the minority opinion perceive greater control in the decision process, resulting in increased satisfaction and greater willingness to remain a part of the team."

After reviewing earlier studies, they conclude the "existing literature clearly demonstrates the importance of incorporating minority opinions into the team decision-making process." Park and DeShon looked into some factors that might encourage that behavior.

They recruited 171 undergraduate students into 57 three-person teams. These teams performed an airport-screening task developed by a leading teamwork researcher in cooperation with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (thus triggering my rant). The team viewed luggage pictures taken by TSA X-ray machines and had to decide whether each bag appeared to have a weapon and should be searched. First the team members wrote down their own opinions without talking, also rating how confident they were in the opinion on a five-point scale. Then members shared their thoughts and reached consensus on what to do, taking as much time as they wanted. Their discussions were videotaped, and researchers rated how often people made task-related comments and how engaged they seemed to be (discussion quantity and quality). At various points during the exercise, the members were asked to record individually how much the team as a whole seemed to want to learn and how satisfied each was with the team.

Performance was easy to measure. Teams discussed 20 pictures one at a time. If the team correctly cleared a bag that in fact had no weapon or decided to search a bag that was found to have a weapon, it got 10 points. Otherwise, it got 0 points. How well the team listened to minority opinions was measured by the tape viewers answering this question: When one person had a different opinion initially, how often did the team shift to that person's decision?

Here is how the factors correlated:

1. A team's interest in learning and minority member confidence were linked to the levels and quality of discussion.
2. Higher and better discussions were linked to higher willingness to adopt the minority position.
3. This minority influence raised team scores and members' satisfaction with the team.

In other words, I want to stress, the person in the minority was often right.

The team members had individually come to the same opinion about three out of five times. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the remaining decisions were roughly split between those where the initial majority view became the final decision and those where the minority view won out. But some teams were far more open to discussion and minority influence than others.

The typical suggestion for increasing minority "voice" on teams is to ask someone to take on the Devil's Advocate role. "However," Park and DeShon note, "this technique can cause stress for team members, especially those who are selected as the devil's advocate, and can create unnecessary friction among team members, which may decrease their satisfaction." Though their study does not prove cause-and-effect, we can say the findings hint at two other methods supported by other studies. One is to encourage the team to learn, by letting it make mistakes and pushing it to come up with solid facts to back its decisions. Another is to allow plenty of time for discussion, the very thing many people complain about in decisions-by-committee.

I believe those complaints do not derive from the time itself but how the time is used. Keep the discussion on topic; use group decision-making methods; praise minority opinions for anything you can find praiseworthy; and stop the discussion only after new ideas or facts have come out. People don't mind meetings when they feel their time is well used, and that time is a key to getting the best results from the decisions made.

Action Item: The next time your team appears ready to make a mistake in your opinion, speak up and demand facts to support the decision. If the team doesn't change course, ask yourself: Does this decision violate a law, ethics, written company policy, or client directives? If not, help the team make the mistake. You will build credibility, and the team will learn, whether you were right or not.

Source: Park, G., and R. DeShon (2010), "A Multilevel Model of Minority Opinion Expression and Team Decision-Making Effectiveness," Journal of Applied Psychology 95(5):824.