91. Group Decision-Making Can Be Faulty
Walk into any office building in the world and you’ll find the conference rooms filled with groups of people meeting and making decisions. Every day, thousands of decisions in businesses and organizations are made by groups large and small. Unfortunately, research shows that group decision-making has some serious flaws.
The Danger of Group-Think
Andreas Mojzisch and Stefan Schulz-Hardt (2010) presented people with information on prospective job candidates. Everyone received and reviewed the information on their own, not together in a face-to-face group. One set of participants received information on the preferences of the other people in the group before they began the review of the material, and another set of participants did not receive information on the preferences of the group before their review. Everyone then received the same information on the candidates. To make the best decision, a participant would have had to review all the information given to him or her.
The researchers found that people who received information on the group’s preferences before reviewing the candidate information did not review the candidate information fully and therefore did not make the best decisions. In a memory test they did not remember the most relevant information. The researchers concluded that when a group of people starts a discussion by sharing their initial preferences, they spend less time and less attention on the information available outside the group’s preferences. And they therefore make a less than optimal decision.
Mojzisch and Schulz-Hardt did a follow-up study where they changed the situation so that the group was together face-to-face. In this study, each group member had different information about the potential job candidates. They could only reach the best decision if all the group members shared their unique information. Again, if the group started by talking about their initial preferences, they paid less attention to the relevant information during the discussion and made the wrong decision.
90 percent of group discussions start off on the wrong foot
90 percent of group discussions start with group members talking about their initial impressions. The research is clear that this is a poor idea.
But Two People Can Be Better Than One
The wide receiver catches the football right at the corner of the end zone. Is it a touchdown or not? Two referees saw the play from two different angles. Are they more likely to make a correct decision if they talk about it or if they decide individually? Research by Bahador Bahrami shows that “two heads are better than one” if they talk together and if they are both competent in their knowledge and skills.
Bahrami (2010) found that pairs do better than individuals at making decisions as long as they freely discuss their disagreements not only about what they saw, but also about how confident they are about what they saw. If they aren’t allowed to freely discuss and they just give their decision, then the pair does not make better decisions than an individual.
How to Facilitate Good Decision-Making during your Presentation
Given what we know about the problems with group decision-making, here are some things you might consider if your presentation involves people making a decision:
• Consider giving your audience information ahead of the presentation so that they have time to review it in depth. Summarize all the relevant points and background detail in writing, and email it ahead. It’s important that you include what it is you want them to do with the information—for example, “Please read the attached handout. We will be discussing it at the XYZ presentation, and it’s important that you have thought through the information before we meet.”
• If you are going to ask your audience to make decisions during the presentation, let them know that ahead of time. For example, include that fact when you send out the advance handout: “We will be asking that you make a decision on this question during the meeting.”
• Build into your presentation a place for people to state their decision, as well as their confidence in the decision. Rather than just having a show of hands, have people fill out a short form where they note their decision and choose from a rating scale how confident they are about the decision.
• If making a decision is part of your presentation, make sure that you have built in enough time for people to discuss and decide. You should leave at least one-third of the overall presentation time for discussion and decision-making.