Avoid Compound Agony
By all accounts, 2003 promises to be a difficult year. There is a reasonable likelihood that plenty of organisations will face a challenge this year either through the unfolding of economic events or through some less foreseeable crisis such as a hostile takeover approach.
Unfortunately, human psychology can act to impair our coping with such challenges. A very interesting article by two psychologists (Kruglanski and Shah) published last September describes how people's need for certainty rises in conditions of stress. In turn, this need leads people to prefer to be in a group that has clear and uncontested views. The pressure for homogeneity within the group increases and people holding deviant opinions are more likely to be rejected. Rather than being open to a range of ideas and solutions, groups tend to close their minds and close ranks around a single predominant approach.
This phenomenon has implications for a company or department that is under pressure. The likely natural reaction is to focus single-mindedly on the dominant strategy, rejecting all else. This approach is perfect if the strategy is working but disastrous if it is not. Paradoxically, the failing strategy will increase the stress on the group who are likely to react by throwing out any dissenting interpreter of what is going on and the best way to proceed.
How can Human Assets Help?
It is the HR Director's responsibility to try to introduce openness to alternative viewpoints by colleagues on the management board. Likewise, it is the responsibility of leaders of teams to keep the team listening to alternative ideas. As consultants, our role is to help devise and implement a strategy whereby this might happen. In particular, we can use our expertise as psychologists to help you to ensure that the board or other management team under stress continues to hear more than one valid viewpoint.
Specifically we can help in the following ways:
Selection
Choosing people for management teams, the Board and particularly CEOs who are relatively open-minded and with a low personal need for closure. Thankfully, the cult of the CEO as a massive ego-figure is waning and with it the tendency to have CEOs who come close to bullying people into agreement.
Retention
Helping you attract and retain a diverse team of talented people. It is important to be an employer of choice. Whatever the economic backdrop, the best people will always be in demand and able to move on. Paradoxically, one way of retaining such people will be for them to know that their views will be heard rather than pushed away by a dogmatic management group.
Team workshops
Helping lay down and implement the rules by which groups operate and make decisions. We investigate the functioning of teams and help them find better ways of operating, including being open to diverse ideas.
Reference
Kruglanski, A. W., Shah, J.Y., Pierro, A. & Mannetti, L. (2002). When similarity breeds content: Need for closure and the allure of homogenous and self-resembling groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 3, 648-662.