what process involves influencing group problem solving and decision making

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Group Problem Solving Process

Organizational challenges are many times disruptive to productivity. Group problem solving is the process of bringing together stakeholders who through their analytical decision making abilities can influence the outcome of the problem. The use of groups in problem solving is encouraged as groups tend to evaluate diverse solutions and action plans. The core objectives of the group are identifying the problem and developing solutions. This five-step systematic group problem solving process provides a defined strategy for a teamwork approach to generating creative and workable resolutions.

Process Description

Have you ever tried to get a group of people to agree on one answer to a problem? It's nearly impossible. However, there are positive approaches to this issue that anyone can employ with some minimal training and review. This project outlines a one-hour group problem solving technique that you can use with your organization. It helps clarify issues and provides an outline of actionable solutions.

Group Problem Solving Process Outline

1. define the problem.

Provide history relevant to the problem. Make a comparison: how are things now versus the way you would like them to be? How long has the problem existed? How frequently does it occur? Who is affected by the problem?

2. Determine Causes

Look for the cause of the gap between the present (what's now) and the desired (future) state or resolution.

3. Develop Alternative Approaches

Brainstorm. (Write exactly what is said. Capturing specific words can be powerful.) Make a list of as many possible solutions as you can. Do NOT judge correctness or feasibility here. Just list everything.

4. Assess the Consequences

Ask what possible results may come from each alternative. Who is affected? Who pays? Are there uncontrollable challenges? 

5. Develop Action Plans

Identify what you want success to look like. Use the Action Planning Worksheet to choose feasible alternatives that are acceptable to the group. Note: This is where most of the work is done!

Questioning Approach

Below are some additional, specific questions that you may use to help guide the process. As you move through each section, allow your group to take sufficient time to think critically before moving on.

Begin this portion of the exercise by asking people to write individually on an index card what they think the problem is. This may seem redundant or simplistic for some seemingly obvious problems (e.g., budget shortfall). However, individual responses may point to confounding issues, related problems, or causative items.

After writing individually, ask everyone to share. (If it's a very sensitive issue, collect the cards, shuffle the cards, and then ask one person to read them.)

• How are things now versus the way you would like them to be?
• How long has the problem existed?
• How frequently does it occur?
• Who is affected by the problem?
• Why does this problem exist?
• What needs to be changed in both the immediate future and for the long term?

3. Develop Alternative Approaches: What is feasible?

• Based on the outlined causes, what first step could we take to address the issue?
• What else could we do?
• Can the problem be handled by internal resources? Do we need outside/expert assistance?
• Are personnel and funds available?
• Does sufficient data exist to make a plan?
• Can the needed data be gathered within the time available?
• Does the issue involve large costs or major consequences for the organization?
• Who or what will be affected by this solution?
• What are the possible side effects . . . immediate and long-run?
• What would be the likely consequences of this solution?
• What would be the reaction of [citizens in the community/employees/patrons/customers]?
• Who would complain?
• Who would be glad? Why?
• Use the Action Planning Worksheet to choose feasible alternatives that are acceptable to the group.
• What would be accepted as evidence of its success?

Conclusions and Recommendations

The step-by-step process outlined in this fact sheet can help lead you to a successful outcome for even the most complicated group problems. Results are especially effective when using a neutral, skilled facilitator. A facilitator can come from within the group but runs the risk of inserting influence and suggestion. The best-case scenario is a facilitator who understands the group, understands the problem, and has no direct stake in the solution. The role of the facilitator is to assist the group in performing more effectively (Keltner, 1989).

Drawing out group members to generate potential solutions is central to problem solving, just as long as it's managed and facilitated well. There should be no criticism of ideas, and novel or seemingly unusual ideas should be encouraged. Involving all group members in the process is critical if everyone is to buy into the final solution. The best approach to making this work smoothly is to establish formal rules for positive participation.

When a large group is involved in the decision making, the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) may be used in conjunction with this outlined process. The NGT is a weighted ranking method that allows a group to generate and prioritize issues. The procedure encourages balanced participation and creates a quantitative output.

With any problem solving process, defining the problem may be the most important, but likely the most difficult step. This forces the group to collectively recognize the scope of the problem and need to devise a solution. And yet, if the group is facilitated through the process of solving a problem and is successful in developing an action plan, but does not implement the plan, all efforts are for naught.

Bolton, Elizabeth. 2009.  IFAS Leadership Development: Problem Solving in Groups . IFAS Extension. University of Florida. FCS9064.

Keltner, S. 1989.  Facilitation: Catalyst for group problem solving . Management Communication Quarterly, 3, 1. Sage Publications.

Rebori, Marlene K. 1997.  Effective Problem-Solving Techniques for Groups.  Cooperative Extension. University of Nevada. Fact Sheet 97-26.

Scholl, Richard W. 2003.  Group Decision Making and Problem Solving . Charles T. Schmidt, Jr. Labor Research Center. University of Rhode Island.

Adapted from Conone, R., Brown, D., and Willis, R. (no date). Understanding the Process, CDFS-13. Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet. No longer available online.

Additional Resources: Seven Steps to Problem Solving. pacwrc.pitt.edu/Curriculum/521Strength-BasedSolution-FocusedSupervision/Handouts/HO%206%207%20Key%20S_F%20Strategies.pdf

CFAES provides research and related educational programs to clientele on a nondiscriminatory basis. For more information, visit cfaesdiversity.osu.edu. For an accessible format of this publication, visit cfaes.osu.edu/accessibility.

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Article contents

Group decision-making.

• R. Scott Tindale R. Scott Tindale Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago
•  and  Jeremy R. Winget Jeremy R. Winget Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.262
• Published online: 26 March 2019

Group decisions are ubiquitous in everyday life. Even when decisions are made individually, decision-makers often receive advice or suggestions from others. Thus, decisions are often social in nature and involve multiple group members. The literature on group decision-making is conceptualized as falling along two dimensions: how much interaction or information exchange is allowed among the group members, and how the final decision is made. On one end, group decisions can be made simply by aggregating member preferences or judgments without any interaction among members, with members having no control or say in the final judgment. One the other end, groups’ decisions can involve extensive member interaction and information exchanges, and the final decision is reached by group consensus. In between these two endpoints, various other strategies are also possible, including prediction markets, Delphi groups, and judge–advisor systems. Research has shown that each dimension has different implications for decision quality and process depending on the decision task and context. Research exploring these two dimension has also helped to illuminate those aspects of group decision-making that can lead to better-quality decisions.

• group decision-making
• group performance
• information exchange
• decision strategies
• social influence

Introduction

Human existence involves an ever-expanding array of choices and decisions. We are constantly deciding what, when, where, and how to enact various aspects of our behavioral repertoire. Although such decisions often are seen as individual endeavors, many, if not most decisions, involve a social or collective component. People often talk to friends or family members before making major purchases or deciding on a new job, and in the internet age almost any product available is associated with customer reviews and ratings as to its quality and worth. Companies launch new products and choose advertising strategies based on consumer surveys or focus groups. In addition, most organizations have executive committees or corporate boards that discuss and debate available options before decisions are made. Thus, rather than being an individual affair, we would argue that decision-making is often group-oriented, with many decisions made by, in, or with assistance from, groups. Over the past few decades, judgment and decision-making research has begun to focus more on the social components of decision contexts and have led to both new theoretical developments and interesting research findings (Kerr & Tindale, 2004 ).

The fact that groups are involved in many decision contexts is both good (usually) and quite natural. By now, a very large literature exists demonstrating the “Wisdom of Crowds” (Surowiecki, 2004 ), or at least the typical performance advantage of groups over individuals (Kerr & Tindale, 2004 ; Larrick & Soll, 2006 ). For many task domains, the performance of a randomly selected individual provides a lower limit to group performance and, in most domains, groups consistently exceed this limit (Davis, 1969 ; Steiner, 1972 ). Groups, as compared to individuals working alone, are better able to reach correct solutions to problems (Laughlin, 1980 ; 1999 ), make more accurate hiring decisions (Tindale, 1989 ), receive better negotiation outcomes (Morgan & Tindale, 2002 ), provide more accurate forecasts (Kerr & Tindale, 2011 ), generate more creative ideas (Paulus & Nijstad, 2003 ), receive higher scores on academic tests (Michaelson, Watson, & Black, 1989 ), and recall information more accurately (Hinsz, 1990 ). Thus, decisions made by groups tend to lead to better outcomes by a number of criteria.

A number of authors have argued that the social nature of decisions stems from evolutionary adaptations to social living (e.g., Kameda & Tindale, 2006 ). Our ancestral groups not only served to protect their members from predators, but also increased the availability of resources through shared efforts and better decision-making. Hastie and Kameda ( 2005 ) simulated hunting-location choices among hunter-gatherer tribes using a series of potential decision rules. They found that a simple majority/ plurality rule (choose the hunting location with the greatest amount of support among the tribal hunters) performed exceptionally well while requiring few cognitive resources. Majority/ plurality rules consistently outperformed best-member rules, showing that group decisions tended to be better than even the most accurate tribal member.

However, there is also evidence that the superiority of groups is not a given (Janis, 1982 ; Kerr, MacCoun, & Kramer, 1996 ; Simmons, Nelson, Galak, & Frederick, 2011 ). In many cases, groups have been shown to make disastrous decisions with deadly consequences (e.g., the Challenger explosion, Bay of Pigs incident, instances of ethnic cleansing, etc.; Nijstad, 2009 ). Until recently, the theories used to explain the good decisions and actions of groups have differed from those used to explain the poor decisions and actions. However, recent attempts to identify the basic principles underlying group decision- making have begun to show that both good and bad decisions by groups may stem from the same underlying processes (Kerr & Tindale, 2004 ; Tindale, Smith, Dykema-Engblade, & Kluwe, 2012 ). In other words, basic group decision-making processes will often lead to good decisions, but in some decision contexts they can exacerbate individual-level biases and lead to decisions less accurate than those of a randomly selected individual.

Collective decisions can be made in various different ways following a number of different procedures. Two dimensions along which these different procedures can vary involve the degree of interaction/ information exchange among the group members and the way in which the final decision or judgment is actually achieved. For example, the CEO of an organization may individually poll a sample of his/her employees about some organizational issue and use the information to help him/her distinguish among various options. In such a situation, the members of the collective may not even know that others are involved, and the final decision may have nothing to do with their collective preferences. Many government officials are chosen via elections where citizens vote for the person of their choice. There may be little interaction or information exchange among the voters, but their collective choice will define the final outcome. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a corporate board may spend many hours discussing business decisions by exchanging information and opinions until a particular option gains enough support among the members to be considered the consensus choice. Research involving both dimensions has served both a prescriptive and descriptive function. Models of group decision-making can be used to describe how groups should make decisions as well as how they actually do make decisions. Both types of research have proven useful for understanding group decision processes and performance.

The description of the theory and research on group decision-making will begin with groups whose members do not interact to any great degree and move toward those with both greater interaction and decision control. The review will show that a number of basic processes underlie virtually all group decision contexts, but also demonstrate where different processes arise and how they may influence the types of decisions groups make. A substantial amount of this work will use individual decision-makers as the standard of comparison, allowing us to show where using groups will enhance decision performance as well as situations where decision performance will be diminished. Finally, ways to design and teach groups how to make better decisions is discussed.

Simple Aggregation

Although group decision-making is often conceptualized as a set of individuals discussing and reaching consensus on some course of action, many group decisions are not made that way. Often, members’ preferences are simply aggregated by one member (or a person outside the group) and the aggregate is used as the group’s position or choice. Elections or surveys are often used to guide decision-making in larger organizations where face-to-face interaction among all the members would be impossible or prohibitive. Usually such systems are justified based on fairness or equal representation of groups, but most of the research to date has shown that such systems can also be quite good at producing accurate judgments (Ariely et al., 2000 ; Armstrong, 2001 ; Hastie & Kameda, 2005 ; Larrick & Soll, 2006 ). This accuracy, relative to judgments made by individuals, Surowiecki’s ( 2004 ) “wisdom of crowds,” has been replicated many times in a number of diverse problem domains (Larrick & Soll, 2006 ; Surowiecki, 2004 ). Ariely et al. ( 2000 ) showed that, assuming pairwise conditional independence and random individual error distributions (although this assumption is rarely satisfied in many decision contexts), the average of J probability estimates ( J = the number of estimators) will always be better than any of the component individual estimates. In addition, as J increases, the average will tend toward perfect calibration diagnosticity (accurate representation of the true state of affairs), even when information provided to the various estimators is less than optimal. In addition, Johnson et al. ( 2001 ) empirically showed the accuracy advantage of the average probability estimate to be robust over a number of conditions, even when individual estimates were not independent. Recent work on forecasting has shown that a simple average of multiple independent forecasts will perform better than individual experts and often perform as well as more sophisticated aggregation techniques (Armstrong, 2001 ).

Larrick and Soll ( 2006 ) have explained the advantage of simple averages over individual judgments using the concept of “bracketing.” Assuming that the group member judgments are independent, different members will make somewhat different estimates with some of the estimates above the “true score” and others below it. Thus, the estimates “bracket” the true score. When this is true, it can be shown mathematically that the average of the multiple estimates will always be more accurate than the average individual judge. If the true score is well bracketed by the multiple estimates (near the median or average), the aggregate accuracy will be far superior to the typical individual judge. However, even if the true score is closer to one of the tails of the distribution, the average will still outperform the typical individual, though not to the same degree. Larrick and Soll ( 2006 ) also show that even when the true score is not bracketed by the estimates, the group (average) will do no worse than the typical individual judge.

Although the simple average is the most often used aggregation technique, there are others that also have been used to provide group-level responses. A number of authors have argued for medians as a viable, if not preferred, alternative to the mean (Black, 1958 ; Hora, Fransen, Hawkins, & Susel, 2012 ; Kerr & Tindale, 2011 ). In many circumstances, means and medians will be very similar, especially when large groups are used. However, when group size is small, medians are less sensitive to extreme member estimates and may provide a more accurate representation of the central tendency of the group. When decision problems involve discrete alternatives, aggregation systems often use the mode (majority/ plurality) to define the group response. There is considerable evidence that majority/ plurality rules do quite well in a number of decision situations and often perform better than a random individual baseline (Hastie & Kameda, 2005 ; Kerr & Tindale, 2004 ). In addition, Sorkin, West, and Robinson ( 1998 ) have shown that majority models come very close to optimal performance when group member expertise is not knowable.

Although central-tendency aggregation models have been shown to do quite well in various situations (Larrick & Soll, 2006 ), a number of researchers have attempted to improve aggregate forecasts by modifying the aggregation procedure or the weights given to individual members (Aspinall, 2010 ; Budescu & Chen, 2014 ; Lee, Zhang, & Shi, 2011 ). Some attempts have been made to use Bayesian models to aggregate multiple forecasts, though it is often difficult to define the appropriate prior probabilities and likelihood functions (see Budescu, 2006 ). Others have proposed weighting the opinions of more expert members higher than those with less expertise (Aspinall, 2010 ). However, regression to the mean and measurement error can lead to overweighting of supposed experts in future aggregations. Recently, Budescu and Chen ( 2014 ) formulated a method for improving group forecasts by eliminating group members whose forecasts detract from the group performance. They had group members make probabilistic forecasts for a variety of events and then assessed whether the group’s forecast was better or worse when each group member was included in (or removed from) the aggregate. By only including those members whose forecasts showed a positive influence on accuracy, they consistently improved the accuracy of the group forecasts relative to the simple average and other less effective weighting schemes, and the improvements persisted for future judgments not used to define the inclusion criteria (see also Mellers et al., 2014 ).

Aggregation With Limited Information Exchange

Although simple aggregation tends to produce fairly accurate decisions, there is little chance for members to share information or defend their positions. In addition, group members often remain unaware of others’ positions and the final group product. Although there is evidence that, often, little is gained by member exchanges (Armstrong, 2006 ; Lorenz, Rauhutb, Schweitzera, & Helbing, 2011 ), it is difficult for members with particular insights or important information to have influence without some type of interchange among group members (Kerr & Tindale, 2011 ). Obviously, full group deliberation (a topic discussed later) would allow members to share and defend their position. However, there is evidence that the most influential members in freely interacting groups are not always the most accurate or correct, because influence is driven by status or confidence (Littlepage et al., 1997 ). Thus, various approaches are compromise procedures where some information exchange is allowed, but pressures toward conformity and incidental influence are minimized.

Probably the most famous of these procedures is the Delphi Technique (Dalkey, 1969 ; Rowe & Wright, 1999 , 2001 ). This technique has been used in idea-generation and forecasting most often, but it has also been adapted to other situations (Rohrbaugh, 1979 ). The procedure starts by having a group of (typically) experts make a series of estimates, rankings, idea lists, and so on, on some topic of interest to the group or facilitator. The facilitator then compiles the list of member responses and summarizes them in a meaningful way (mean rank or probability estimate, list of ideas with generation frequencies, etc.). The summaries are given back to the group members and they are allowed to revise their initial estimates. The group members are typically anonymous and the summaries do not specify which ideas or ratings came from each member. This procedure allows information from the group to be shared among the group members but avoids conformity pressure or undue influence by high-status members. The procedure can be repeated as many times as seems warranted but is usually ended when few if any revisions are recorded. The final outcome can range from a frequency distribution of ideas to a choice for the most preferred outcome or the central tendency (mean or median) estimate. A number of related techniques (e.g., Nominal Group Technique, Van de Ven & Delbecq, 1971 ) use similar procedures but vary in terms of how much information is shared and whether group members can communicate directly. Overall, the purpose of these procedures is to allow for some information exchange while holding in check potential distortions due to social influence. Research on the Delphi technique has tended to show positive outcomes. Delphi groups do better than single individuals and do at least as well as, if not better than, face-to-face groups (Rorhbaugh, 1979 ). They have also been found to work well in forecasting situations (Rowe & Wright, 1999 , 2001 ).

A more recent technique is the use of prediction markets (cf. Wolfers & Zitzewitz, 2004 ). Much like financial markets, prediction markets use buyers’ willingness to invest in alternative events (e.g., Obama will win vs. McCain will win in the 2008 US presidential election) as a gauge of their likelihood. They typically do not prohibit direct communication among forecasters/ investors/bettors, but in usual practice there is little such communication (if any). However, since the value placed on the assets is typically set in an open market of buyers and sellers, those already in (or out) of the markets can be informed and swayed by various market indicators (e.g., movements in prices, trading volume, volatility), and thus mutual social influence can occur through such channels. The simple “initial forecasts–group aggregation–final forecast” sequence does not really apply to this method very well; it is a much more dynamic and continuous aggregation process, where bids and offers can be made, accepted, and rejected by multiple parties, and the collective expectations of the “group” can continue to change right up to the occurrence of the event in question (e.g., an election). Except for those with ulterior motives (e.g., to manipulate the market, or to use the market as a form of insurance), investments in such markets are likely to reflect the investors’ honest judgments about the relative likelihood of events. Members can use current market values to adjust their thinking and learn from the behavior of other members. However, such investment choices are not accompanied by any explanation or justification. Indeed, such investors may even have incentives to withhold vital information that would make other investors’ choices more accurate (e.g., that might inflate the price of a “stock” one wants to accumulate). Thus, in terms of opportunities for mutual education and persuasion, prediction markets fall somewhere between statistical aggregation methods (which allow none) and face-to-face groups (which allow many).

Vroom and Yetton ( 1973 ) argued that one of the ways managers make decisions is through consultation; the decision is made by the manager but only after getting advice from important members of the team or organization. Sniezek and Buckley ( 1995 ) referred to this mode of social decision-making as the “Judge–Advisor” systems (JAS) approach. The judge is responsible for the final decision but he/she seeks out suggestions from various advisors. Such systems have recently received a fair amount of research attention (see Banaccio & Dalal, 2006 for a review). Based on the research discussed above, unless the judge had far more expertise than an advisor, the judge should weight the advice equal to their own opinion. Although receiving advice usually does improve judges’ decisions relative to when they receive no advice, a vast amount of research has shown that judges tend to weight their own opinions more than twice as much as the advice they receive (Larrick, Mannes, & Soll, 2012 ). This has been referred to as “egocentric advice discounting” (Yaniv, 2004 ; Yaniv & Kleinberger, 2000 ). This effect has been found to be extremely robust and has been replicated in a large number of decision situations with different types of judges and advisors (Banaccio & Dalal, 2006 ).

Judges do take the expertise of the advisors into account when re-evaluating their position. Thus judges discount less when the advisors are known experts or their past advice has proved to be accurate (Goldsmith & Fitch, 1997 ). Judges are also more likely to use advice when making judgments in unfamiliar domains (Harvey & Fischer, 1997 ), and they learn to discount poor advice to a greater degree than good advice (Yaniv & Kleinberger, 2000 ). However, judges are not always accurate in their appraisals of an advisor’s expertise. Sniezek and Van Swol ( 2001 ) have shown that one of the best predictors of a judge’s use of advice is advisor confidence, which is poorly correlated with advisor accuracy. Discounting has been found to be less for advice that is solicited by the judge than for advice simply provided (Gibbons, Sniezek, & Dalal, 2003 ). In addition, judges discount less when the task is complex (Schrah, Dalal, & Sniezek, 2006 ), when there are financial incentives for being accurate (Sniezek & Van Swol, 2001 ), and when they trust the advisor (Van Swol & Sniezek, 2005 ). However, discounting is present in virtually all JAS situations and it almost always reduces decision accuracy.

A number of different explanations for the egocentric discounting effect have been proposed. One of the earliest explanations was based on anchoring and adjustment (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974 ). Harvey and Fischer ( 1997 ) argued that the judge’s initial estimate served as an anchor and judges simply did not adjust enough once provided with the advice. However, studies have shown the discounting effect even when no initial evaluation is present upon which to anchor (Banaccio & Dalal, 2006 ). Yaniv ( 2004 ) has argued that the effect is due to the information advantage judges have about their own estimates. Judges should know why they chose their initial position, yet may know very little about why advisors gave the advice they did. Yaniv and Choshen-Hillel ( 2012 ) showed that forcing judges to choose initial positions based on virtually no information drastically reduced the discounting effect. However, Soll and Larrick ( 2009 ) found almost no effect of varying the amount of information judges had about the advisors’ reasons for their choices. Krueger ( 2003 ) has argued that the effect is simply another instance of a general egocentric bias that has shown up in many domains of judgment. The bias leads people to focus their attention on certain aspects of the self and they typically perceive themselves as more capable than others on average. Larrick, Mannes, and Soll ( 2012 ; see also Soll & Mannes, 2011 ) also argue that judges’ positions are owned by them and become part of the self, thus making them difficult to give up. The egocentric discounting bias is similar to phenomena found with actual interacting groups who have reached a consensus judgment. When individual members are asked to state their private positions after group discussion, these final judgments tend to adjust back toward their initial positions (Kameda, Tindale, & Davis, 2003 ).

Fully Interacting Groups

Most of the research on group decision-making has focused on groups where the members meet together face-to-face and discuss the particular decision problem until they reach consensus. Early research in this area tended to focus on member preferences as the major feature predicting group decision outcomes (Davis, 1973 ; Kameda, Tindale, & Davis, 2003 ). More recent research has focused on how groups process information (Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997 ) and the degree to which available information is used by the group (Brodbeck, Kerschreiter, Mojzisch, Frey, D., & Shulz-Hardt, 2007 ; Lu, Yuan, & McLeod, 2012 ). More recently still, the motivational aspects of groups and group members have begun to receive attention (De Dreu, Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg, 2008 ).

Kameda, Tindale, and Davis ( 2003 ; see also, Tindale & Kameda, 2000 ) have proposed that the concept of “social sharedness” underlies many of the common findings associated with group consensus. Social sharedness is the idea that task-relevant cognitions (broadly defined) that the members of a group have in common, or share, exert a greater influence on the group than do similar constructs that are not shared among the members. The cognitions that are shared can vary from preferences for decision alternatives or information about the alternatives to heuristic information-processing strategies that the members cannot even articulate. However, the greater the degree of sharedness for a particular task relevant cognition, the greater the likelihood that it will influence the group decision. In general, social sharedness is often adaptive and probably evolved as a useful aspect of living in groups (Kameda & Tindale, 2004 ). However, a shift in context in which the shared cognition is inappropriate to the current situation can lead groups to make poor decisions. We will attempt to elucidate how social sharedness functions in groups’ decision-making contexts and how/when it helps vs. hinders group decision accuracy.

Group Consensus as Combining Preferences

Early work on group decision-making tended to focus on the distribution of initial member preferences and how such preferences get combined into a group, or collective, response (Davis, 1969 , 1973 ; Steiner, 1972 ). This is known as the “combinatorial approach” to group decision-making (Davis, 1982 ). One of the most widely used frameworks under this approach has been social decision scheme (SDS) theory (Davis, 1973 ). SDS theory assumes that a set of discrete decision alternatives are known by the group members and that each member favors a particular alternative at the beginning of deliberation. It then attempts to describe the group consensus process using a matrix of conditional probabilities mapping different member preference distributions to different consensus choices made by the group. For example, in a six-person group choosing between two decision alternatives (e.g., guilty vs. not guilty in a jury), there are seven ways in which the group members might initially array themselves across the alternatives: six voting guilty and none not guilty, five voting guilty and one not guilty, . . . none voting guilty and six not guilty. Given a population of potential group members in which some proportion favors one alternative over the other (e.g., 40 % favor guilty and 60 % favor not guilty), the likelihood of each initial preference distribution is estimable. The SDS matrix then maps each initial preference distribution to a distribution of group outcomes based on theory or a set of assumptions concerning the consensus process by which members’ initial preferences are reconciled. The SDS matrix can be used to prescribe what a group would do given certain theoretical assumptions, or it can describe what groups actually did in studies on group decision-making.

One of the key findings from the group decision-making literature using this framework is that majority/ plurality models do a fairly good job of representing the data from many group decision-making studies (Kerr & Tindale, 2004 ; Kameda, Tindale, & Davis, 2003 ). Although some contexts are better described by higher order majorities (e.g., criminal mock juries are well described by two to three majority models), in most types of decisions the position with the largest support faction tends to be chosen by the group. Kameda et al. ( 2003 ) have argued that majority/ plurality models reflect social sharedness at the preference level. One of the key aspects of majority/ plurality processes is that they tend to amplify in the group distribution those response tendencies that are prevalent at the individual level. Thus, in situations where the outcome of a decision can be defined as good or bad (or at least better or worse) by some criteria, a majority/ plurality process could lead groups to make better decisions than the average individual when individuals tended toward the “good” response alternative. However, exactly the same process could lead groups to make worse decisions than the average individual when individual preferences tended in that direction. Since the basic majority/ plurality process pushes the group in the direction initially favored by most of its members, it can lead to either good or poor decisions, depending on how members initially lean.

Fortunately, it appears that majority/ plurality processes tend to work quite well in many natural decision settings involving groups (Hastie & Kameda, 2005 ; Sorkin, Hays, & West, 2001 ; Sorkin, West, & Robinson, 1998 ). Hastie and Kameda ( 2005 ) compared a variety of different ways groups could choose to move forward in an uncertain environment with many different response options. Overall, they found that a simple majority/ plurality process (i.e., going with the alternative with the greater degree of support) was more accurate than any other decision rule with similar computational complexity. Majority models did even better than best-member models (going with the alternative preferred by the person whose choices have been most accurate in the past) and performed similarly to models that required much greater levels of computation (e.g., weighted averaging models based on past performance). Hastie and Kameda argued that the generally high levels of accuracy combined with the low computational load may explain why majority processes are so pervasive in social aggregates.

Majority/ plurality models are well defined when decision alternatives are discrete and groups are asked to choose one of the possible alternatives. However, many group decision tasks require groups to reach consensus on a point along a continuum (e.g., amount of money to invest or an estimation of the likelihood of some event) where it is unlikely that members’ specific positions will overlap. Thus, majority/ plurality models of group choice are not appropriate for groups making ratings or estimations (Stasser & Dietz-Uhler, 2001 ). Although a variety of models can be (and have been) applied to these types of situations (see Grofman & Owen, 1986 ; Hinsz, 1999 for examples), we will focus mainly on three that have received a reasonable amount of empirical support.

One of the most basic models of group judgment is a simple arithmetic average. Assuming each group member starts discussion with a well-defined preference point, and assuming each member is equally influential, the mean of the initial distribution seems a reasonable compromise. It is also possible that means or other central tendency points serve as focal points (Schelling, 1960 ) and provide a salient resolution point for resolving preference differences. A number of studies have found that a simple averaging model provides a decent approximation of final group outcomes (Gigone & Hastie, 1993 ), especially when groups are making multiple judgments in a limited timeframe.

Another model that has fared well empirically is the median model (Black, 1958 ; Crott et al., 1991 ; Davis et al., 1997 ; Laughlin, 2011 ). Black’s ( 1958 ) work on social choice models showed that median positions form equilibria under certain circumstances, and thus were likely to be stable group choice outcomes. His Median Voter Theorem posited that when member preference curves are single peaked (i.e., each member has a single best point along the response continuum and a member’s evaluation of other points on the continuum are relatively lower as a function of their distance from that best point), the median of the members’ initial preferences is the most stable outcome (see Laughlin, 2011 for a more thorough discussion of social choice models generally). Crott et al. ( 1991 ) showed that a median model could explain choice shifts and provided a very good fit to group consensus data on choice dilemma items. Davis et al. ( 1997 ) also found a median model to provide a good fit to damage award judgments by mock civil juries. Davis ( 1996 ) also derived a group consensus model for continuous response dimensions called the Social Judgment Schemes (SJS) model. The model assumes that the amount of influence a particular group member has on the final group response is an inverse exponential function of the sum of the distances from that member’s position to all other members’ positions. Thus, members who are most similar to other members on the response dimension have greater influence on the final group response than do members whose preferences are less similar to other members overall (see Davis, 1996 ; Kameda, Tindale, & Davis, 2003 for a more formal discussion of the model).

Group Consensus Through Information Processing

A major theme and dominant paradigm underlying much of the work on group decision-making and performance over the past 25 years had its start with a paper by Stasser and Titus ( 1985 ). Using a paradigm called the “hidden profile,” Stasser and Titus showed that information that was initially shared by all of the group members was much more likely to be brought up during group discussion and was much more influential in the final group decision than was information held by only one member. By giving all the positive information about an inferior alternative to all members, and dividing the greater amount of positive information about a superior alternative among the group members so that each member only has part of it, Stasser and Titus showed that groups rarely shared enough of the unshared information to allow the group to realize that their initial consensus alternative was not as good as one of the others they could choose. When all of the information was shared by all members, groups easily found the superior alternative. The “shared information” or “common knowledge” effect (Gigone & Hastie, 1993 ; Stasser & Titus, 1985 , 1987 ), as it came to be called, has been replicated hundreds of times, and the hidden profile paradigm has dominated group decision-making research ever since (see Brodbeck, Kerschreiter, Mojzisch, Frey, & Shulz-Hardt, 2007 for review).

Probably the main reason the initial finding had such a profound impact on the field was that different information provided by different group members was seen as one of the key features of group processes that allowed groups to outperform individuals (Davis, 1969 ; Vinokur & Burnstein, 1974 ). Although there is now a fair amount of evidence that groups do in fact perform better if their members share their unique information (Brodbeck et al., 2007 ), it is also quite clear that groups do not do this naturally in many settings (Stasser, 1999 ). The fact that shared, as opposed to unshared, information plays a much larger role in most group-decision settings definitely changed the way most researchers thought about groups and led to many studies attempting to better understand the phenomenon and discover ways to increase information sharing in groups.

Most of the current research findings have been nicely encapsulated by Brodbeck et al. ( 2007 ) in their Information Asymmetries Model of group decision-making. The model categorizes the various conditions that lead to poor information processing in groups into three basic categories. The first category, negotiation focus, encompasses the various issues surrounding initial member preferences. If groups view the decision-making task mainly as a negotiation, members negotiating which alternative should be chosen tend to focus on alternatives and not on the information underlying them. The second category, discussion bias, encompasses those aspects of group discussion that tend to favor shared vs. unshared information (e.g., items shared by many members are more likely to be discussed). The third category, evaluation bias, encompasses the various positive perceptions associated with shared information (e.g., shared information is more valid, sharing shared information leads to positive evaluations by other group members). All three categories are good descriptions of typical group decision-making and can lead to biased group decisions and inhibit cross-fertilization of ideas and individual member learning (Brodbeck et al., 2007 ).

A key aspect of Brodbeck and colleagues’ model is that the various aspects of information processing in typical groups only lead to negative outcomes when information is distributed asymmetrically across group members, as when a hidden profile is present. Although such situations do occur and groups can make disastrous decisions under such circumstances (Janis, 1982 ; Messick, 2006 ), they are not typical of most group decision environments. In situations where members have independently gained their information through experience, the shared information they have is probably highly valid and more useful than unique information or beliefs held by only one member. Thus, the fact that members share preferences and information in many group decision contexts is probably adaptive and has generally served human survival well (Hastie & Kameda, 2005 ; Kameda & Tindale, 2006 ). In addition, groups are often (but not always) sensitive to cues in the environment that indicate that information is not symmetrically distributed (Brauner, Judd, & Jacquelin, 2001 ; Stewart & Stasser, 1998 ). Although minorities often are not very influential in groups, if minority members have at their disposal critical information that others do not have and that implies the initial group consensus may be wrong, other group members will pay attention to them. And, as discussed later, minority members who favor superior alternatives in environments where the superiority can be demonstrated can be very persuasive and lead majorities to switch their preferences (Laughlin & Ellis, 1986 ).

Given the pervasiveness of the shared information effect, a fair amount of research has focused on how to increase the likelihood that all relevant information is brought up during group discussion. One partial remedy is to make sure that groups have a record of all of the information present during group discussion (Sheffey et al., 1989 ). There is some recent evidence that group support systems can aid in this regard by allowing greater access to such information (Haseman & Ramamurthy, 2004 ). As noted earlier, groups that share an accuracy, or problem-solving orientation to the decision problem bring up more unique information and perform better than groups with a consensus orientation (Postmes et al., 2001 ; Stewart & Stasser, 1995 ; more on this topic will be discussed later under shared group motivation). Setting up a norm of information sharing, or having a leader who encourages and stimulates information exchange throughout the process, have shown promise in terms of greater information sharing and better performance (Larson, Foster-Fishman, & Franz, 1998 ). Also, instructing group members to avoid forming initial impressions or preferences, and not allowing such preferences if present to be shared early in the discussion, has also been shown to be helpful (Larson et al., 1998 ; Mojzisch et al., 2010 ). Setting up a transactive memory system (Wegner, 1987 ) where certain group members are responsible for certain types of information also has been shown to help groups process more information (Stasser, Vaughan, & Stewart, 2000 ). Groups that structure their tasks such that information is exchanged completely before any discussion of preferences or final decisions also tend to perform better (Brodbeck et al., 2002 ). The main things that seem to be important are a focus on information rather than preferences, memory aids or reduced information load per group member, and a focus on accuracy over consensus (Brodbeck et al., 2007 ).

Specific pieces of information (and preferences) are not the only types of cognitions that group members can share (Resnick, Levine, & Teasley, 1991 ; Tindale & Kameda, 2000 ). Laughlin ( 1980 , 2011 ) has argued that one of the reasons that groups are better problem-solvers than individuals is that group members often share a conceptual system that allows them to realize when a proposed solution is correct within that system. This shared conceptual system, or background knowledge, is what allows a minority member with a correct answer to influence a larger incorrect faction to change its preference to the correct alternative. Such situations are well described by SDS models called “Truth Wins” and “Truth Supported Wins” (Laughlin, 1980 ). Truth Wins predicts that any group that has at least one member with the correct answer will be able to solve the problem correctly (Laughlin, 1980 ). Truth Supported Wins argues that at least two members of the group must have the correct answer in order for the group to solve the problem correctly (Laughlin, 1980 ). For groups with more than four members, both models predict minority influence for minorities with the correct answer. Laughlin and Ellis ( 1986 ) proposed that such minority influence processes are likely to occur for demonstrable or “intellective” tasks (those that have a demonstrably correct solution) and that the shared conceptual system is a key component of demonstrability. For “judgmental” tasks (those without a demonstrably correct solution), majority/ plurality processes are more likely to occur.

Tindale, Smith, Thomas, Filkins, and Sheffey ( 1996 ) argued that the shared conceptual system underlying demonstrability is one instance of what they referred to as “shared task representations.” They defined a shared task representation as “any task/ situation relevant concept, norm, perspective, or cognitive process that is shared by most or all of the group members” (Tindale et al., 1996 , p. 84). “Task/ situation relevant” means that the representation must have implications for the choice alternatives involved, and the degree to which a shared representation affects group decision processes and outcomes will vary as a function of its relevance. Its influence will also vary by the degree to which it is shared among the group members—the greater the degree of sharedness (the more members who share it), the greater its influence. If no shared task representation exists, or if multiple conflicting representations are present, groups will tend to follow a symmetric majority/ plurality process. However, when a shared task representation does exist, the group decision process will tend to become asymmetric in favor of alternatives that fit within or are supported by the representation. Under such conditions, majorities/ pluralities favoring an alternative consistent with the shared representation are more powerful than are identically sized majorities/ pluralities favoring alternatives that are not consistent with or supported by the representation. In addition, minorities favoring an alternative consistent with the shared representation can sometimes be more influential than majorities favoring an alternative inconsistent with the shared representation.

Although Laughlin’s work ( 1980 ; Laughlin & Ellis, 1986 ) is probably the strongest example of the effects of shared representations, a number of other potent examples exist. For example, much of the work on mock-jury decision-making (MacCoun & Kerr, 1988 ; Tindale, Nadler, Krebel, & Davis, 2001 ) has shown that “not guilty” is an easier verdict to defend than “guilty.” In other words, majorities favoring guilty are less successful than are majorities favoring not guilty. In addition, juries that are evenly divided between guilty and not guilty, and even some juries with a sizable minority favoring not guilty, reach a not guilty verdict much of the time (MacCoun & Kerr, 1988 ). MacCoun and Kerr showed that this asymmetry toward not guilty only occurs when juries are provided with a “reasonable doubt” verdict criterion. Tindale et al. ( 1996 ) argued that the reasonable doubt criterion serves as a shared task representation that tells jurors that they should look for and pay attention to reasonable doubts, and if they exist, they should vote not guilty. It is possible that the extreme punitive damage awards reported by Sunstein et al. ( 2002 ) may have been a function the shared sense of outrage jurors felt for those cases. More recent research has shown that religion can also work as a shared task representation. Smith, Dykema-Engblade, Walker, Niven, and McGrough ( 2000 ) showed that minorities against the death penalty were persuasive in altering majority positions on the issue when they framed their arguments in terms of religion (“Thou shalt not kill”), whereas other types of arguments were effective. The shared religious orientations of the group members provided a context within which religious arguments could be very effective even though they conflicted with the majority’s initial preference. Tindale ( 1993 ) has shown that shared intuitive decision biases can also work as shared task representations and can lead to groups exacerbating such biases.

Shared Motivations in Groups

Motivation in groups has been a topic of interest in social psychology since its earliest days as a field of inquiry (Triplett, 1898 ). Many studies have focused on how groups affect the amount of effort expended by their members, and both motivation gains and losses have been demonstrated (Kerr & Tindale, 2004 ; Weber & Hertel, 2007 ). Motivation has also been an important topic in group as well as individual decision-making, and until recently the basic motivational assumption was hedonism. Many models of collective decision-making use basic game theoretic, or utility maximization, principles to explain how members both choose initial preferences and move toward consensus (Kahn & Rapoport, 1984 ). Thus, much of the early work on group decision-making tended to treat individual group members as players in a utility-maximization game (Budescu, Erev, & Zwick, 1999 ). Game theory approaches are quite prevalent and also quite useful for understanding social behavior (Kameda & Tindale, 2006 ), but other motives more associated with the group level of analysis have also been found to be important (Levine & Kerr, 2007 ). In addition, many of these motivations were discovered because social behavior did not follow game theoretic expectations (Dawes, van de Kragt, & Orbell, 1988 ).

Probably the most heavily researched of these more recent motives in groups involves the ingroup bias (Hogg, 2018 ). There is now substantial evidence that when group members think about themselves as a group (thus they share a social identity), they begin to behave in ways that protect the group from harm or enhance its overall welfare. Many of the implications of this bias are positive for the group, but there are situations where it prevents groups from making good decisions. For example, groups are more likely than individuals to lie about preferences and resources in a negotiation setting (Stawiski, Tindale, & Dykema-Engblade, 2009 ). Probably the most prominent example where protecting or enhancing the group’s welfare leads to less than optimal decisions is the inter-individual—intergroup discontinuity effect (Wildschut et al., 2003 ). This effect was initially demonstrated by McCallum et al. ( 1985 ) who compared individuals to groups when playing a Prisoner’s Dilemma game. The Prisoner’s Dilemma game is a mixed-motive game where the dominant or individually rational response is not to cooperate with the other player. However, when both players make the non-cooperative choice, they both do poorly. The only collectively rational choice is for both players to cooperate, which leads to the greatest collective payoff and to moderate positive gains for each player. When two individuals play the game and are allowed to discuss the game before making choices, they both end up cooperating better than 80 % of the time. However, when two groups play the game and each group must choose between cooperation and non-cooperation, groups quite often choose not to cooperate. Over multiple plays of the game, groups end up locked in the mutual non-cooperation payoff and earn far worse payoffs compared to the inter-individual situation. This effect has been replicated many times using different types of mixed-motive game structures and different sized groups (see Wildschut et al., 2003 for a review).

Research has shown that both fear and greed come into play when groups play these types of games (Wildschut et al., 2003 ). Groups, more than individuals, tend to be fearful of being taken advantage of by the other group. However, even when playing the game against a single individual, groups still are more likely to choose non-cooperation, thinking they can take advantage of the more cooperative individual (Morgan & Tindale, 2002 ). Thus, groups both protect themselves by choosing non-cooperation, but also attempt to insure that they do as well or better than the other player. Interestingly, there is little evidence that the effect stems from wanting to hurt the outgroup. Recent studies by Halevy et al. ( 2008 ) show that in games that include a choice that only aids the ingroup and has no effect on the outgroup or other player, groups virtually always choose this option over options that only hurt the outgroup or that both aid the ingroup and hurt the outgroup.

De Dreu, Nijstad, and Van Knippenberg ( 2008 ) developed a model of group judgment and decision-making based on the combination of epistemic and social motives. Called the “motivated information processing in groups” model (MIP-G), the model argues that information processing in groups is better understood by incorporating two somewhat orthogonal motives; high vs. low epistemic motivation, and pro-social vs. pro-self motivation. Earlier work on negotiation had shown that negotiators that share both high epistemic motivation and a pro-social orientation were better able to find mutually beneficial tradeoffs and reach better integrative agreements as compared to negotiators with any other combination of motives (De Dreu, 2010 ). Recent research now shows that the same appears to hold true for groups working cooperatively to solve a problem or make a decision. According to the model, high epistemic motivation involves a goal to be accurate or correct which should lead to deeper and more thorough information search and analysis (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996 ). Work on the information sharing effects has consistently demonstrated that instilling a goal of accuracy or defining the task in terms of solving a problem both increase information sharing (Postmes et al., 2001 ; Stewart & Stasser, 1995 ). Members high in prosocial motivation help to insure that all types of information held by each member are likely to be disseminated, rather than just information supporting the position held by an individual member. Recent research showing that members focusing on preferences rather than information tends to impede information sharing is quite consistent with this assertion (Mojzisch & Schulz-Hardt, 2010 ). The model predicts that group information processing will only approach optimal levels when group members are high on both epistemic motivation and pro-social orientation. This is because that is the only combination which produces both systematic and thorough processing of information in an unbiased manner. The model does a good job of explaining a number of well replicated findings and has fared well in the few direct attempts to test it (Bechtoldt, De Dreu, Nijstad, & Choi, 2010 ; De Dreu, 2007 ).

Summary and Conclusions

Overall, research supports the notion that groups are typically good decision-makers. However, it has also shown that they are rarely optimal and can make rather poor decisions under certain circumstances. Fortunately, research has also begun to identify a number of factors that can be used to either train or design groups leading to better decision quality. First, groups tend to be most accurate when their members hold diverse perspectives. Recent research has shown that increasing diversity even beyond the level obtained from a random representative sample will improve the accuracy of group estimates (Davis-Stober, Budescu, Dana, & Broomell, 2014 ). When group interaction is involved, the members must also be open to diverse opinions and be willing to express positions when they differ from those of other group members (Homan, van Knippenberg, van Kleef, & De Dreu, 2007 ). Groups will also be wiser when they are composed of wiser members (Budescu & Chen, 2014 ; Laughlin, 2011 ; Mellers et al., 2014 ). Thus, insuring that groups have members of high expertise or ability on the requisite task is important. In addition, group members should be highly motivated for the group to make accurate decisions (De Dreu et al., 2008 ). Although groups can often be wise without member interactions, allowing members to exchange information and ideas tends to do little harm and can allow groups to take advantage of particularly good ideas uniquely held by few members (Kerr & Tindale, 2011 ; Laughlin, 2011 ; Mellers et al., 2014 ). Group interaction only tends to create problems for groups in situations where they are likely to be less than wise (Kerr & Tindale, 2004 ). When group members all share a biased representation of the decision environment, group discussion tends to exacerbate such biases (Tindale et al., 1996 ). Groups also can be unwise when they make decisions that have direct implications for the well-being of the group (Morgan & Tindale, 2002 ; Stawiski et al., 2009 ). Thus, groups will be wiser to the degree that there are no incentives for members other than being as accurate as possible. Finally, groups are wiser when their members exchange all of the available information rather than just focusing on information they all share (Brodbeck et al., 2007 ). Thus, if training and design procedures can increase diversity of perspectives, help identify expertise, allow for open and thorough exchanges of information and ideas, identify or reduce shared biases, and increase motivation for accuracy, then they will help groups to take full advantage of their wisdom.

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8 Steps in the Decision-Making Process

• 04 Feb 2020

Strong decision-making skills are essential for newly appointed and seasoned managers alike. The ability to navigate complex challenges and develop a plan can not only lead to more effective team management but drive key organizational change initiatives and objectives.

Despite decision-making’s importance in business, a recent survey by McKinsey shows that just 20 percent of professionals believe their organizations excel at it. Survey respondents noted that, on average, they spend 37 percent of their time making decisions, but more than half of it’s used ineffectively.

For managers, it’s critical to ensure effective decisions are made for their organizations’ success. Every managerial decision must be accompanied by research and data , collaboration, and alternative solutions.

Few managers, however, reap the benefits of making more thoughtful choices due to undeveloped decision-making models.

Access your free e-book today.

Why Is Making Decisions Important?

According to Harvard Business School Professor Leonard Schlesinger, who’s featured in the online course Management Essentials , most managers view decision-making as a single event, rather than a process. This can lead to managers overestimating their abilities to influence outcomes and closing themselves off from alternative perspectives and diverse ways of thinking.

“The reality is, it’s very rare to find a single point in time where ‘a decision of significance’ is made and things go forward from there,” Schlesinger says. “Embedded in this work is the notion that what we’re really talking about is a process. The role of the manager in managing that process is actually quite straightforward, yet, at the same time, extraordinarily complex.”

If you want to further your business knowledge and be more effective in your role, it’s critical to become a strong decision-maker. Here are eight steps in the decision-making process you can employ to become a better manager and have greater influence in your organization.

Steps in the Decision-Making Process

1. frame the decision.

Pinpointing the issue is the first step to initiating the decision-making process. Ensure the problem is carefully analyzed, clearly defined, and everyone involved in the outcome agrees on what needs to be solved. This process will give your team peace of mind that each key decision is based on extensive research and collaboration.

Schlesinger says this initial action can be challenging for managers because an ill-formed question can result in a process that produces the wrong decision.

“The real issue for a manager at the start is to make sure they are actively working to shape the question they’re trying to address and the decision they’re trying to have made,” Schlesinger says. “That’s not a trivial task.”

2. Structure Your Team

Managers must assemble the right people to navigate the decision-making process.

“The issue of who’s going to be involved in helping you to make that decision is one of the most central issues you face,” Schlesinger says. “The primary issue being the membership of the collection of individuals or group that you’re bringing together to make that decision.”

As you build your team, Schlesinger advises mapping the technical, political, and cultural underpinnings of the decision that needs to be made and gathering colleagues with an array of skills and experience levels to help you make an informed decision. .

“You want some newcomers who are going to provide a different point of view and perspective on the issue you’re dealing with,” he says. “At the same time, you want people who have profound knowledge and deep experience with the problem.”

It’s key to assign decision tasks to colleagues and invite perspectives that uncover blindspots or roadblocks. Schlesinger notes that attempting to arrive at the “right answer” without a team that will ultimately support and execute it is a “recipe for failure.”

3. Consider the Timeframe

This act of mapping the issue’s intricacies should involve taking the decision’s urgency into account. Business problems with significant implications sometimes allow for lengthier decision-making processes, whereas other challenges call for more accelerated timelines.

“As a manager, you need to shape the decision-making process in terms of both of those dimensions: The criticality of what it is you’re trying to decide and, more importantly, how quickly it needs to get decided given the urgency,” Schlesinger says. “The final question is, how much time you’re going to provide yourself and the group to invest in both problem diagnosis and decisions.”

4. Establish Your Approach

In the early stages of the decision-making process, it’s critical to set ground rules and assign roles to team members. Doing so can help ensure everyone understands how they contribute to problem-solving and agrees on how a solution will be reached.

“It’s really important to get clarity upfront around the roles people are going to play and the ways in which decisions are going to get made,” Schlesinger says. “Often, managers leave that to chance, so people self-assign themselves to roles in ways that you don’t necessarily want, and the decision-making process defers to consensus, which is likely to lead to a lower evaluation of the problem and a less creative solution.”

5. Encourage Discussion and Debate

One of the issues of leading a group that defaults to consensus is that it can shut out contrarian points of view and deter inventive problem-solving. Because of this potential pitfall, Schlesinger notes, you should designate roles that focus on poking holes in arguments and fostering debate.

“What we’re talking about is establishing a process of devil’s advocacy, either in an individual or a subgroup role,” he says. “That’s much more likely to lead to a deeper critical evaluation and generate a substantial number of alternatives.”

Schlesinger adds that this action can take time and potentially disrupt group harmony, so it’s vital for managers to guide the inner workings of the process from the outset to ensure effective collaboration and guarantee more quality decisions will be made.

“What we need to do is establish norms in the group that enable us to be open to a broader array of data and decision-making processes,” he says. “If that doesn’t happen upfront, but in the process without a conversation, it’s generally a source of consternation and some measure of frustration.”

Related: 3 Group Decision-Making Techniques for Success

6. Navigate Group Dynamics

In addition to creating a dynamic in which candor and debate are encouraged, there are other challenges you need to navigate as you manage your team throughout the decision-making process.

One is ensuring the size of the group is appropriate for the problem and allows for an efficient workflow.

“In getting all the people together that have relevant data and represent various political and cultural constituencies, each incremental member adds to the complexity of the decision-making process and the amount of time it takes to get a decision made and implemented,” Schlesinger says.

Another task, he notes, is identifying which parts of the process can be completed without face-to-face interaction.

“There’s no question that pieces of the decision-making process can be deferred to paper, email, or some app,” Schlesinger says. “But, at the end of the day, given that so much of decision-making requires high-quality human interaction, you need to defer some part of the process for ill-structured and difficult tasks to a face-to-face meeting.”

7. Ensure the Pieces Are in Place for Implementation

Throughout your team’s efforts to arrive at a decision, you must ensure you facilitate a process that encompasses:

• Shared goals that were presented upfront
• Alternative options that have been given rigorous thought and fair consideration
• Sound methods for exploring decisions’ consequences

According to Schlesinger, these components profoundly influence the quality of the solution that’s ultimately identified and the types of decisions that’ll be made in the future.

“In the general manager’s job, the quality of the decision is only one part of the equation,” he says. “All of this is oriented toward trying to make sure that once a decision is made, we have the right groupings and the right support to implement.”

8. Achieve Closure and Alignment

Achieving closure in the decision-making process requires arriving at a solution that sufficiently aligns members of your group and garners enough support to implement it.

As with the other phases of decision-making, clear communication ensures your team understands and commits to the plan.

In a video interview for the online course Management Essentials , Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria says it’s essential to explain the rationale behind the decision to your employees.

“If it’s a decision that you have to make, say, ‘I know there were some of you who thought differently, but let me tell you why we went this way,’” Nohria says. “This is so the people on the other side feel heard and recognize the concerns they raised are things you’ve tried to incorporate into the decision and, as implementation proceeds, if those concerns become real, then they’ll be attended to.”

How to Improve Your Decision-Making

An in-depth understanding of the decision-making process is vital for all managers. Whether you’re an aspiring manager aiming to move up at your organization or a seasoned executive who wants to boost your job performance, honing your approach to decision-making can improve your managerial skills and equip you with the tools to advance your career.

Do you want to become a more effective decision-maker? Explore Management Essentials —one of our online leadership and management courses —to learn how you can influence the context and environment in which decisions get made.

This article was update on July 15, 2022. It was originally published on February 4, 2020.

About the Author

16.4 Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups

Click below to play an audio file of this section of the chapter sponsored by the Women for OSU Partnering to Impact grant.

https://open.library.okstate.edu/app/uploads/sites/154/2021/05/SPCH-2713_Ch-16.4b-Nia-Sier.mp3

https://open.library.okstate.edu/app/uploads/sites/154/2021/05/SPCH-2713_Ch-16.4c-Nia-Sier.mp3

“Alone we are smart. Together, we are brilliant.” -Steven Anderson

Although the steps of problem solving and decision making that we will discuss next may seem obvious, we often don’t think to or choose not to use them. Instead, we start working on a problem and later realize we are lost and have to backtrack. I’m sure we’ve all reached a point in a project or task and had the “OK, now what?” moment. I’ve recently taken up some carpentry projects as a functional hobby, and I have developed a great respect for the importance of advanced planning. It’s frustrating to get to a crucial point in building or fixing something only to realize that you have to unscrew a support board that you already screwed in, have to drive back to the hardware store to get something that you didn’t think to get earlier, or have to completely start over. In this section, we will discuss the group problem-solving process, methods of decision making, and influences on these processes.

Group Problem Solving

The problem-solving process involves thoughts, discussions, actions, and decisions that occur from the first consideration of a problematic situation to the goal. The problems that groups face are varied, but some common problems include budgeting funds, raising funds, planning events, addressing customer or citizen complaints, creating or adapting products or services to fit needs, supporting members, and raising awareness about issues or causes.

Problems of all sorts have three common components (Adams & Galanes, 2009):

• An undesirable situation. When conditions are desirable, there isn’t a problem.
• A desired situation. Even though it may only be a vague idea, there is a drive to better the undesirable situation. The vague idea may develop into a more precise goal that can be achieved, although solutions are not yet generated.
• Obstacles between undesirable and desirable situation. These are things that stand in the way between the current situation and the group’s goal of addressing it. This component of a problem requires the most work, and it is the part where decision making occurs. Some examples of obstacles include limited funding, resources, personnel, time, or information. Obstacles can also take the form of people who are working against the group, including people resistant to change or people who disagree.

Discussion of these three elements of a problem helps the group tailor its problem-solving process, as each problem will vary. While these three general elements are present in each problem, the group should also address specific characteristics of the problem. Five common and important characteristics to consider are task difficulty, number of possible solutions, group member interest in problem, group member familiarity with problem, and the need for solution acceptance (Adams & Galanes, 2009).

• Task difficulty. Difficult tasks are also typically more complex. Groups should be prepared to spend time researching and discussing a difficult and complex task in order to develop a shared foundational knowledge. This typically requires individual work outside of the group and frequent group meetings to share information.
• Number of possible solutions. There are usually multiple ways to solve a problem or complete a task, but some problems have more potential solutions than others. Figuring out how to prepare a beach house for an approaching hurricane is fairly complex and difficult, but there are still a limited number of things to do—for example, taping and boarding up windows; turning off water, electricity, and gas; trimming trees; and securing loose outside objects. Other problems may be more creatively based. For example, designing a new restaurant may entail using some standard solutions but could also entail many different types of innovation with layout and design.
• Group member interest in problem. When group members are interested in the problem, they will be more engaged with the problem-solving process and invested in finding a quality solution. Groups with high interest in and knowledge about the problem may want more freedom to develop and implement solutions, while groups with low interest may prefer a leader who provides structure and direction.
• Group familiarity with problem. Some groups encounter a problem regularly, while other problems are more unique or unexpected. A family who has lived in hurricane alley for decades probably has a better idea of how to prepare its house for a hurricane than does a family that just recently moved from the Midwest. Many groups that rely on funding have to revisit a budget every year, and in recent years, groups have had to get more creative with budgets as funding has been cut in nearly every sector. When group members aren’t familiar with a problem, they will need to do background research on what similar groups have done and may also need to bring in outside experts.
• Need for solution acceptance. In this step, groups must consider how many people the decision will affect and how much “buy-in” from others the group needs in order for their solution to be successfully implemented. Some small groups have many stakeholders on whom the success of a solution depends. Other groups are answerable only to themselves. When a small group is planning on building a new park in a crowded neighborhood or implementing a new policy in a large business, it can be very difficult to develop solutions that will be accepted by all. In such cases, groups will want to poll those who will be affected by the solution and may want to do a pilot implementation to see how people react. Imposing an excellent solution that doesn’t have buy-in from stakeholders can still lead to failure.

Group Problem-Solving Process

There are several variations of similar problem-solving models based on US American scholar John Dewey’s reflective thinking process (Bormann & Bormann, 1988). As you read through the steps in the process, think about how you can apply what we learned regarding the general and specific elements of problems. Some of the following steps are straightforward, and they are things we would logically do when faced with a problem. However, taking a deliberate and systematic approach to problem solving has been shown to benefit group functioning and performance. A deliberate approach is especially beneficial for groups that do not have an established history of working together and will only be able to meet occasionally. Although a group should attend to each step of the process, group leaders or other group members who facilitate problem solving should be cautious not to dogmatically follow each element of the process or force a group along. Such a lack of flexibility could limit group member input and negatively affect the group’s cohesion and climate.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Define the problem by considering the three elements shared by every problem: the current undesirable situation, the goal or more desirable situation, and obstacles in the way (Adams & Galanes, 2009). At this stage, group members share what they know about the current situation, without proposing solutions or evaluating the information. Here are some good questions to ask during this stage: What is the current difficulty? How did we come to know that the difficulty exists? Who/what is involved? Why is it meaningful/urgent/important? What have the effects been so far? What, if any, elements of the difficulty require clarification? At the end of this stage, the group should be able to compose a single sentence that summarizes the problem called a problem statement . Avoid wording in the problem statement or question that hints at potential solutions. A small group formed to investigate ethical violations of city officials could use the following problem statement: “Our state does not currently have a mechanism for citizens to report suspected ethical violations by city officials.”

Step 2: Analyze the Problem

During this step a group should analyze the problem and the group’s relationship to the problem. Whereas the first step involved exploring the “what” related to the problem, this step focuses on the “why.” At this stage, group members can discuss the potential causes of the difficulty. Group members may also want to begin setting out an agenda or timeline for the group’s problem-solving process, looking forward to the other steps. To fully analyze the problem, the group can discuss the five common problem variables discussed before. Here are two examples of questions that the group formed to address ethics violations might ask: Why doesn’t our city have an ethics reporting mechanism? Do cities of similar size have such a mechanism? Once the problem has been analyzed, the group can pose a problem question that will guide the group as it generates possible solutions. “How can citizens report suspected ethical violations of city officials and how will such reports be processed and addressed?” As you can see, the problem question is more complex than the problem statement, since the group has moved on to more in-depth discussion of the problem during step 2.

Step 3: Generate Possible Solutions

During this step, group members generate possible solutions to the problem. Again, solutions should not be evaluated at this point, only proposed and clarified. The question should be what could we do to address this problem, not what should we do to address it. It is perfectly OK for a group member to question another person’s idea by asking something like “What do you mean?” or “Could you explain your reasoning more?” Discussions at this stage may reveal a need to return to previous steps to better define or more fully analyze a problem. Since many problems are multifaceted, it is necessary for group members to generate solutions for each part of the problem separately, making sure to have multiple solutions for each part. Stopping the solution-generating process prematurely can lead to groupthink. For the problem question previously posed, the group would need to generate solutions for all three parts of the problem included in the question. Possible solutions for the first part of the problem (How can citizens report ethical violations?) may include “online reporting system, e-mail, in-person, anonymously, on-the-record,” and so on. Possible solutions for the second part of the problem (How will reports be processed?) may include “daily by a newly appointed ethics officer, weekly by a nonpartisan nongovernment employee,” and so on. Possible solutions for the third part of the problem (How will reports be addressed?) may include “by a newly appointed ethics commission, by the accused’s supervisor, by the city manager,” and so on.

Step 4: Evaluate Solutions

During this step, solutions can be critically evaluated based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed based on more obvious differences in relevance and/or merit, the group should analyze each solution based on its potential effects—especially negative effects. Groups that are required to report the rationale for their decision or whose decisions may be subject to public scrutiny would be wise to make a set list of criteria for evaluating each solution. Additionally, solutions can be evaluated based on how well they fit with the group’s charge and the abilities of the group. To do this, group members may ask, “Does this solution live up to the original purpose or mission of the group?” and “Can the solution actually be implemented with our current resources and connections?” and “How will this solution be supported, funded, enforced, and assessed?” Secondary tensions and substantive conflict, two concepts discussed earlier, emerge during this step of problem solving, and group members will need to employ effective critical thinking and listening skills.

Decision making is part of the larger process of problem solving and it plays a prominent role in this step. While there are several fairly similar models for problem solving, there are many varied decision-making techniques that groups can use. For example, to narrow the list of proposed solutions, group members may decide by majority vote, by weighing the pros and cons, or by discussing them until a consensus is reached. Once the final decision is reached, the group leader or facilitator should confirm that the group is in agreement. It may be beneficial to let the group break for a while or even to delay the final decision until a later meeting to allow people time to evaluate it outside of the group context.

Step 5: Implement and Assess the Solution

Implementing the solution requires some advanced planning, and it should not be rushed unless the group is operating under strict time restraints or delay may lead to some kind of harm. Although some solutions can be implemented immediately, others may take days, months, or years. As was noted earlier, it may be beneficial for groups to poll those who will be affected by the solution as to their opinion of it or even to do a pilot test to observe the effectiveness of the solution and how people react to it. Before implementation, groups should also determine how and when they would assess the effectiveness of the solution by asking, “How will we know if the solution is working or not?” Since solution assessment will vary based on whether or not the group is disbanded, groups should also consider the following questions: If the group disbands after implementation, who will be responsible for assessing the solution? If the solution fails, will the same group reconvene or will a new group be formed?

Certain elements of the solution may need to be delegated out to various people inside and outside the group. Group members may also be assigned to implement a particular part of the solution based on their role in the decision making or because it connects to their area of expertise. Likewise, group members may be tasked with publicizing the solution or “selling” it to a particular group of stakeholders. Last, the group should consider its future. In some cases, the group will get to decide if it will stay together and continue working on other tasks or if it will disband. In other cases, outside forces determine the group’s fate.

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” -Ken Blanchard

Decision making in groups.

We all engage in personal decision making daily, and we all know that some decisions are more difficult than others. When we make decisions in groups, we face some challenges that we do not face in our personal decision making, but we also stand to benefit from some advantages of group decision making (Napier & Gershenfeld, 2004). Group decision making can appear fair and democratic but really only be a gesture that covers up the fact that certain group members or the group leader have already decided. Group decision making also takes more time than individual decisions and can be burdensome if some group members do not do their assigned work, divert the group with self-centered or unproductive role behaviors, or miss meetings. Conversely, though, group decisions are often more informed, since all group members develop a shared understanding of a problem through discussion and debate. The shared understanding may also be more complex and deep than what an individual would develop, because the group members are exposed to a variety of viewpoints that can broaden their own perspectives. Group decisions also benefit from synergy, one of the key advantages of group communication that we discussed earlier. Most groups do not use a specific method of decision making, perhaps thinking that they’ll work things out as they go. This can lead to unequal participation, social loafing, premature decisions, prolonged discussion, and a host of other negative consequences. So in this section we will learn some practices that will prepare us for good decision making and some specific techniques we can use to help us reach a final decision.

Brainstorming before Decision Making

Before groups can make a decision, they need to generate possible solutions to their problem. The most commonly used method is brainstorming, although most people don’t follow the recommended steps of brainstorming. As you’ll recall, brainstorming refers to the quick generation of ideas free of evaluation. The originator of the term brainstorming said the following four rules must be followed for the technique to be effective (Osborn, 1959):

• Evaluation of ideas is forbidden.
• Wild and crazy ideas are encouraged.
• Quantity of ideas, not quality, is the goal.
• New combinations of ideas presented are encouraged.

To make brainstorming more of a decision-making method rather than an idea-generating method, group communication scholars have suggested additional steps that precede and follow brainstorming (Cragan & Wright, 1991).

• Do a warm-up brainstorming session. Some people are more apprehensive about publicly communicating their ideas than others are, and a warm-up session can help ease apprehension and prime group members for task-related idea generation. The warm-up can be initiated by anyone in the group and should only go on for a few minutes. To get things started, a person could ask, “If our group formed a band, what would we be called?” or “What other purposes could a mailbox serve?” In the previous examples, the first warm up gets the group’s more abstract creative juices flowing, while the second focuses more on practical and concrete ideas.
• Do the actual brainstorming session. This session shouldn’t last more than thirty minutes and should follow the four rules of brainstorming mentioned previously. To ensure that the fourth rule is realized, the facilitator could encourage people to piggyback off each other’s ideas.
• Eliminate duplicate ideas. After the brainstorming session is over, group members can eliminate (without evaluating) ideas that are the same or very similar.
• Clarify, organize, and evaluate ideas. Before evaluation, see if any ideas need clarification. Then try to theme or group ideas together in some orderly fashion. Since “wild and crazy” ideas are encouraged, some suggestions may need clarification. If it becomes clear that there isn’t really a foundation to an idea and that it is too vague or abstract and can’t be clarified, it may be eliminated. As a caution though, it may be wise to not throw out off-the-wall ideas that are hard to categorize and to instead put them in a miscellaneous or “wild and crazy” category.

Discussion before Decision Making

The nominal group technique guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members (Delbecq & Ven de Ven, 1971). This method is useful because the procedure involves all group members systematically, which fixes the problem of uneven participation during discussions. Since everyone contributes to the discussion, this method can also help reduce instances of social loafing. To use the nominal group technique, do the following:

• Silently and individually list ideas.
• Create a master list of ideas.
• Clarify ideas as needed.
• Take a secret vote to rank group members’ acceptance of ideas.

During the first step, have group members work quietly, in the same space, to write down every idea they have to address the task or problem they face. This shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. Whoever is facilitating the discussion should remind group members to use brainstorming techniques, which means they shouldn’t evaluate ideas as they are generated. Ask group members to remain silent once they’ve finished their list so they do not distract others.

During the second step, the facilitator goes around the group in a consistent order asking each person to share one idea at a time. As the idea is shared, the facilitator records it on a master list that everyone can see. Keep track of how many times each idea comes up, as that could be an idea that warrants more discussion. Continue this process until all the ideas have been shared. As a note to facilitators, some group members may begin to edit their list or self-censor when asked to provide one of their ideas. To limit a person’s apprehension with sharing his or her ideas and to ensure that each idea is shared, I have asked group members to exchange lists with someone else so they can share ideas from the list they receive without fear of being personally judged.

During step three, the facilitator should note that group members can now ask for clarification on ideas on the master list. Do not let this discussion stray into evaluation of ideas. To help avoid an unnecessarily long discussion, it may be useful to go from one person to the next to ask which ideas need clarifying and then go to the originator(s) of the idea in question for clarification.

During the fourth step, members use a voting ballot to rank the acceptability of the ideas on the master list. If the list is long, you may ask group members to rank only their top five or so choices. The facilitator then takes up the secret ballots and reviews them in a random order, noting the rankings of each idea. Ideally, the highest ranked idea can then be discussed and decided on. The nominal group technique does not carry a group all the way through to the point of decision; rather, it sets the group up for a roundtable discussion or use of some other method to evaluate the merits of the top ideas.

Specific Decision-Making Techniques

Some decision-making techniques involve determining a course of action based on the level of agreement among the group members. These methods include majority, expert, authority, and consensus rule. Table 16.1 “Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques” reviews the pros and cons of each of these methods.

Majority rule is a commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before a decision is made. A show-of-hands vote, a paper ballot, or an electronic voting system can determine the majority choice. Many decision-making bodies, including the US House of Representatives, Senate, and Supreme Court, use majority rule to make decisions, which shows that it is often associated with democratic decision making, since each person gets one vote and each vote counts equally. Of course, other individuals and mediated messages can influence a person’s vote, but since the voting power is spread out over all group members, it is not easy for one person or party to take control of the decision-making process. In some cases—for example, to override a presidential veto or to amend the constitution—a super majority of two-thirds may be required to make a decision.

Minority rule is a decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members. When a designated expert makes a decision by minority rule, there may be buy-in from others in the group, especially if the members of the group didn’t have relevant knowledge or expertise. When a designated authority makes decisions, buy-in will vary based on group members’ level of respect for the authority. For example, decisions made by an elected authority may be more accepted by those who elected him or her than by those who didn’t. As with majority rule, this technique can be time saving. Unlike majority rule, one person or party can have control over the decision-making process. This type of decision making is more similar to that used by monarchs and dictators. An obvious negative consequence of this method is that the needs or wants of one person can override the needs and wants of the majority. A minority deciding for the majority has led to negative consequences throughout history. The white Afrikaner minority that ruled South Africa for decades instituted apartheid, which was a system of racial segregation that disenfranchised and oppressed the majority population. The quality of the decision and its fairness really depends on the designated expert or authority.

Consensus rule is a decision-making technique in which all members of the group must agree on the same decision. On rare occasions, a decision may be ideal for all group members, which can lead to unanimous agreement without further debate and discussion. Although this can be positive, be cautious that this isn’t a sign of groupthink. More typically, consensus is reached only after lengthy discussion. On the plus side, consensus often leads to high-quality decisions due to the time and effort it takes to get everyone in agreement. Group members are also more likely to be committed to the decision because of their investment in reaching it. On the negative side, the ultimate decision is often one that all group members can live with but not one that’s ideal for all members. Additionally, the process of arriving at consensus also includes conflict, as people debate ideas and negotiate the interpersonal tensions that may result.

Influences on Decision Making

Many factors influence the decision-making process. For example, how might a group’s independence or access to resources affect the decisions they make? What potential advantages and disadvantages come with decisions made by groups that are more or less similar in terms of personality and cultural identities? In this section, we will explore how situational, personality, and cultural influences affect decision making in groups.

Situational Influences on Decision Making

A group’s situational context affects decision making. One key situational element is the degree of freedom that the group has to make its own decisions, secure its own resources, and initiate its own actions. Some groups have to go through multiple approval processes before they can do anything, while others are self-directed, self-governing, and self-sustaining. Another situational influence is uncertainty. In general, groups deal with more uncertainty in decision making than do individuals because of the increased number of variables that comes with adding more people to a situation. Individual group members can’t know what other group members are thinking, whether or not they are doing their work, and how committed they are to the group. So the size of a group is a powerful situational influence, as it adds to uncertainty and complicates communication.

Access to information also influences a group. First, the nature of the group’s task or problem affects its ability to get information. Group members can more easily make decisions about a problem when other groups have similarly experienced it. Even if the problem is complex and serious, the group can learn from other situations and apply what it learns. Second, the group must have access to flows of information. Access to archives, electronic databases, and individuals with relevant experience is necessary to obtain any relevant information about similar problems or to do research on a new or unique problem. In this regard, group members’ formal and information network connections also become important situational influences.

The origin and urgency of a problem are also situational factors that influence decision making. In terms of origin, problems usually occur in one of four ways:

• Something goes wrong. Group members must decide how to fix or stop something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that half of the building is contaminated with mold and must be closed down.
• Expectations change or increase. Group members must innovate more efficient or effective ways of doing something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that the district they are responsible for is being expanded.
• Something goes wrong and expectations change or increase. Group members must fix/stop and become more efficient/effective. Example—the firehouse crew has to close half the building and must start responding to more calls due to the expanding district.
• The problem existed from the beginning. Group members must go back to the origins of the situation and walk through and analyze the steps again to decide what can be done differently. Example—a firehouse crew has consistently had to work with minimal resources in terms of building space and firefighting tools.

In each of the cases, the need for a decision may be more or less urgent depending on how badly something is going wrong, how high the expectations have been raised, or the degree to which people are fed up with a broken system. Decisions must be made in situations ranging from crisis level to mundane.

Personality Influences on Decision Making

A long-studied typology of value orientations that affect decision making consists of the following types of decision maker: the economic, the aesthetic, the theoretical, the social, the political, and the religious (Spranger, 1928).

• The economic decision maker makes decisions based on what is practical and useful.
• The aesthetic decision maker makes decisions based on form and harmony, desiring a solution that is elegant and in sync with the surroundings.
• The theoretical decision maker wants to discover the truth through rationality.
• The social decision maker emphasizes the personal impact of a decision and sympathizes with those who may be affected by it.
• The political decision maker is interested in power and influence and views people and/or property as divided into groups that have different value.
• The religious decision maker seeks to identify with a larger purpose, works to unify others under that goal, and commits to a viewpoint, often denying one side and being dedicated to the other.

In the United States, economic, political, and theoretical decision making tend to be more prevalent decision-making orientations, which likely corresponds to the individualistic cultural orientation with its emphasis on competition and efficiency. But situational context, as we discussed before, can also influence our decision making.

The personalities of group members, especially leaders and other active members, affect the climate of the group. Group member personalities can be categorized based on where they fall on a continuum anchored by the following descriptors: dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional (Cragan & Wright, 1999). The more group members there are in any extreme of these categories, the more likely that the group climate will also shift to resemble those characteristics.

• Dominant versus submissive. Group members that are more dominant act more independently and directly, initiate conversations, take up more space, make more direct eye contact, seek leadership positions, and take control over decision-making processes. More submissive members are reserved, contribute to the group only when asked to, avoid eye contact, and leave their personal needs and thoughts unvoiced or give into the suggestions of others.
• Friendly versus unfriendly. Group members on the friendly side of the continuum find a balance between talking and listening, don’t try to win at the expense of other group members, are flexible but not weak, and value democratic decision making. Unfriendly group members are disagreeable, indifferent, withdrawn, and selfish, which leads them to either not invest in decision making or direct it in their own interest rather than in the interest of the group.
• Instrumental versus emotional. Instrumental group members are emotionally neutral, objective, analytical, task-oriented, and committed followers, which leads them to work hard and contribute to the group’s decision making as long as it is orderly and follows agreed-on rules. Emotional group members are creative, playful, independent, unpredictable, and expressive, which leads them to make rash decisions, resist group norms or decision-making structures, and switch often from relational to task focus.

Cultural Context and Decision Making

Just like neighborhoods, schools, and countries, small groups vary in terms of their degree of similarity and difference. Demographic changes in the United States and increases in technology that can bring different people together make it more likely that we will be interacting in more and more heterogeneous groups (Allen, 2011). Some small groups are more homogenous, meaning the members are more similar, and some are more heterogeneous, meaning the members are more different. Diversity and difference within groups has advantages and disadvantages. In terms of advantages, research finds that, in general, groups that are culturally heterogeneous have better overall performance than more homogenous groups (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999). Additionally, when group members have time to get to know each other and competently communicate across their differences, the advantages of diversity include better decision making due to different perspectives (Thomas, 1999). Unfortunately, groups often operate under time constraints and other pressures that make the possibility for intercultural dialogue and understanding difficult. The main disadvantage of heterogeneous groups is the possibility for conflict, but given that all groups experience conflict, this isn’t solely due to the presence of diversity. We will now look more specifically at how some of the cultural value orientations we’ve learned about already in this book can play out in groups with international diversity and how domestic diversity in terms of demographics can also influence group decision making.

International Diversity in Group Interactions

Cultural value orientations such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles all manifest on a continuum of communication behaviors and can influence group decision making. Group members from individualistic cultures are more likely to value task-oriented, efficient, and direct communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as dividing up tasks into individual projects before collaboration begins and then openly debating ideas during discussion and decision making. Additionally, people from cultures that value individualism are more likely to openly express dissent from a decision, essentially expressing their disagreement with the group. Group members from collectivistic cultures are more likely to value relationships over the task at hand. Because of this, they also tend to value conformity and face-saving (often indirect) communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as establishing norms that include periods of socializing to build relationships before task-oriented communication like negotiations begin or norms that limit public disagreement in favor of more indirect communication that doesn’t challenge the face of other group members or the group’s leader. In a group composed of people from a collectivistic culture, each member would likely play harmonizing roles, looking for signs of conflict and resolving them before they become public.

Power distance can also affect group interactions. Some cultures rank higher on power-distance scales, meaning they value hierarchy, make decisions based on status, and believe that people have a set place in society that is fairly unchangeable. Group members from high-power-distance cultures would likely appreciate a strong designated leader who exhibits a more directive leadership style and prefer groups in which members have clear and assigned roles. In a group that is homogenous in terms of having a high-power-distance orientation, members with higher status would be able to openly provide information, and those with lower status may not provide information unless a higher status member explicitly seeks it from them. Low-power-distance cultures do not place as much value and meaning on status and believe that all group members can participate in decision making. Group members from low-power-distance cultures would likely freely speak their mind during a group meeting and prefer a participative leadership style.

How much meaning is conveyed through the context surrounding verbal communication can also affect group communication. Some cultures have a high-context communication style in which much of the meaning in an interaction is conveyed through context such as nonverbal cues and silence. Group members from high-context cultures may avoid saying something directly, assuming that other group members will understand the intended meaning even if the message is indirect. So if someone disagrees with a proposed course of action, he or she may say, “Let’s discuss this tomorrow,” and mean, “I don’t think we should do this.” Such indirect communication is also a face-saving strategy that is common in collectivistic cultures. Other cultures have a low-context communication style that places more importance on the meaning conveyed through words than through context or nonverbal cues. Group members from low-context cultures often say what they mean and mean what they say. For example, if someone doesn’t like an idea, they might say, “I think we should consider more options. This one doesn’t seem like the best we can do.”

In any of these cases, an individual from one culture operating in a group with people of a different cultural orientation could adapt to the expectations of the host culture, especially if that person possesses a high degree of intercultural communication competence (ICC). Additionally, people with high ICC can also adapt to a group member with a different cultural orientation than the host culture. Even though these cultural orientations connect to values that affect our communication in fairly consistent ways, individuals may exhibit different communication behaviors depending on their own individual communication style and the situation.

Domestic Diversity and Group Communication

While it is becoming more likely that we will interact in small groups with international diversity, we are guaranteed to interact in groups that are diverse in terms of the cultural identities found within a single country or the subcultures found within a larger cultural group.

Gender stereotypes sometimes influence the roles that people play within a group. For example, the stereotype that women are more nurturing than men may lead group members (both male and female) to expect that women will play the role of supporters or harmonizers within the group. Since women have primarily performed secretarial work since the 1900s, it may also be expected that women will play the role of recorder. In both of these cases, stereotypical notions of gender place women in roles that are typically not as valued in group communication. The opposite is true for men. In terms of leadership, despite notable exceptions, research shows that men fill an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of leadership positions. We are socialized to see certain behaviors by men as indicative of leadership abilities, even though they may not be. For example, men are often perceived to contribute more to a group because they tend to speak first when asked a question or to fill a silence and are perceived to talk more about task-related matters than relationally oriented matters. Both of these tendencies create a perception that men are more engaged with the task. Men are also socialized to be more competitive and self-congratulatory, meaning that their communication may be seen as dedicated and their behaviors seen as powerful, and that when their work isn’t noticed they will be more likely to make it known to the group rather than take silent credit. Even though we know that the relational elements of a group are crucial for success, even in high-performance teams, that work is not as valued in our society as the task-related work.

Despite the fact that some communication patterns and behaviors related to our typical (and stereotypical) gender socialization affect how we interact in and form perceptions of others in groups, the differences in group communication that used to be attributed to gender in early group communication research seem to be diminishing. This is likely due to the changing organizational cultures from which much group work emerges, which have now had more than sixty years to adjust to women in the workplace. It is also due to a more nuanced understanding of gender-based research, which doesn’t take a stereotypical view from the beginning as many of the early male researchers did. Now, instead of biological sex being assumed as a factor that creates inherent communication differences, group communication scholars see that men and women both exhibit a range of behaviors that are more or less feminine or masculine. It is these gendered behaviors, and not a person’s gender, that seem to have more of an influence on perceptions of group communication. Interestingly, group interactions are still masculinist in that male and female group members prefer a more masculine communication style for task leaders and that both males and females in this role are more likely to adapt to a more masculine communication style. Conversely, men who take on social-emotional leadership behaviors adopt a more feminine communication style. In short, it seems that although masculine communication traits are more often associated with high status positions in groups, both men and women adapt to this expectation and are evaluated similarly (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999).

Other demographic categories are also influential in group communication and decision making. In general, group members have an easier time communicating when they are more similar than different in terms of race and age. This ease of communication can make group work more efficient, but the homogeneity may sacrifice some creativity. As we learned earlier, groups that are diverse (e.g., they have members of different races and generations) benefit from the diversity of perspectives in terms of the quality of decision making and creativity of output.

In terms of age, for the first time since industrialization began, it is common to have three generations of people (and sometimes four) working side by side in an organizational setting. Although four generations often worked together in early factories, they were segregated based on their age group, and a hierarchy existed with older workers at the top and younger workers at the bottom. Today, however, generations interact regularly, and it is not uncommon for an older person to have a leader or supervisor who is younger than him or her (Allen, 2011). The current generations in the US workplace and consequently in work-based groups include the following:

• The Silent Generation. Born between 1925 and 1942, currently in their mid-sixties to mid-eighties, this is the smallest generation in the workforce right now, as many have retired or left for other reasons. This generation includes people who were born during the Great Depression or the early part of World War II, many of whom later fought in the Korean War (Clarke, 1970).
• The Baby Boomers. Born between 1946 and 1964, currently in their late forties to mid-sixties, this is the largest generation in the workforce right now. Baby boomers are the most populous generation born in US history, and they are working longer than previous generations, which means they will remain the predominant force in organizations for ten to twenty more years.
• Generation X. Born between 1965 and 1981, currently in their early thirties to mid-forties, this generation was the first to see technology like cell phones and the Internet make its way into classrooms and our daily lives. Compared to previous generations, “Gen-Xers” are more diverse in terms of race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation and also have a greater appreciation for and understanding of diversity.
• Generation Y. Born between 1982 and 2000, “Millennials” as they are also called are currently in their late teens up to about thirty years old. This generation is not as likely to remember a time without technology such as computers and cell phones. They are just starting to enter into the workforce and have been greatly affected by the economic crisis of the late 2000s, experiencing significantly high unemployment rates.

The benefits and challenges that come with diversity of group members are important to consider. Since we will all work in diverse groups, we should be prepared to address potential challenges in order to reap the benefits. Diverse groups may be wise to coordinate social interactions outside of group time in order to find common ground that can help facilitate interaction and increase group cohesion. We should be sensitive but not let sensitivity create fear of “doing something wrong” that then prevents us from having meaningful interactions.

Adams, K., and Gloria G. Galanes, Communicating in Groups: Applications and Skills , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 220–21.

Allen, B. J., Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity , 2nd ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2011), 5.

Bormann, E. G., and Nancy C. Bormann, Effective Small Group Communication , 4th ed. (Santa Rosa, CA: Burgess CA, 1988), 112–13.

Clarke, G., “The Silent Generation Revisited,” Time, June 29, 1970, 46.

Cragan, J. F., and David W. Wright, Communication in Small Group Discussions: An Integrated Approach , 3rd ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1991), 77–78.

de Bono, E., Six Thinking Hats (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1985).

Delbecq, A. L., and Andrew H. Ven de Ven, “A Group Process Model for Problem Identification and Program Planning,” The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 7, no. 4 (1971): 466–92.

Haslett, B. B., and Jenn Ruebush, “What Differences Do Individual Differences in Groups Make?: The Effects of Individuals, Culture, and Group Composition,” in The Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research , ed. Lawrence R. Frey (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 133.

Napier, R. W., and Matti K. Gershenfeld, Groups: Theory and Experience , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 292.

Osborn, A. F., Applied Imagination (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959).

Spranger, E., Types of Men (New York: Steckert, 1928).

Stanton, C., “How to Deliver Group Presentations: The Unified Team Approach,” Six Minutes Speaking and Presentation Skills , November 3, 2009, accessed August 28, 2012, http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/group-presentations-unified-team-approach .

Thomas, D. C., “Cultural Diversity and Work Group Effectiveness: An Experimental Study,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 30, no. 2 (1999): 242–63.

This resource is available at no cost at https://open.library.okstate.edu/speech2713/

a single sentence that summarizes the problem a group is trying to solve

a question that guides the group as it generates possible solutions

guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members

a commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before a decision is made

a decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members

a decision-making technique in which all members of the group must agree on the same decision

Introduction to Speech Communication Copyright © 2021 by Individual authors retain copyright of their work. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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15.4 Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups

Melissa Ashman; Arley Cruthers; eCampusOntario; Ontario Business Faculty; and University of Minnesota

Learning Objectives

• Explain the five steps of the group problem-solving process.
• Describe the brainstorming and discussion that should take place before the group makes a decision.
• Compare and contrast the different decision-making techniques.
• Discuss the various influences on decision making.

Although the steps of problem solving and decision making that we will discuss next may seem obvious, we often don’t think to or choose not to use them. Instead, we start working on a problem and later realize we are lost and have to backtrack. In this section, we will discuss the group problem-solving process, methods of decision making, and influences on these processes.

Group Problem Solving

The problem-solving process involves thoughts, discussions, actions, and decisions that occur from the first consideration of a problematic situation to the goal. The problems that groups face are varied, but some common problems include budgeting funds, raising funds, planning events, addressing customer or citizen complaints, creating or adapting products or services to fit needs, supporting members, and raising awareness about issues or causes.

Problems have three common components (Adams & Galanes, 2009):

• An undesirable situation. When conditions are desirable, there isn’t a problem.
• A desired situation. Even though it may only be a vague idea, there is a drive to better the undesirable situation. The vague idea may develop into a more precise, achievable goal, but solutions are not yet generated.
• Obstacles between undesirable and desirable situation. These are things that stand in the way between the current situation and the group’s goal of addressing it. This component of a problem requires the most work, and it is the part where decision making occurs. Some examples of obstacles include limited funding, resources, personnel, time, or information. Obstacles can also take the form of people who are working against the group, including people resistant to change or people who disagree.

Discussion of these three elements of a problem helps the group tailor its problem-solving process, as each problem will vary. While these three general elements are present in each problem, the group should also address specific characteristics of the problem. Five common and important characteristics to consider are task difficulty, number of possible solutions, group member interest in problem, group member familiarity with problem, and the need for solution acceptance (Adams & Galanes, 2009).

• Number of possible solutions. There are usually multiple ways to solve a problem or complete a task, but some problems have more potential solutions than others. Figuring out how to prepare a beach house for an approaching hurricane is fairly complex and difficult, but there are still a limited number of things to do—for example, taping and boarding up windows; turning off water, electricity, and gas; trimming trees; and securing loose outside objects. Other problems may be more creatively based: designing a new restaurant may entail using some standard solutions but also innovations in the layout and design.
• Group member interest in problem. When group members are interested in the problem, they will be more engaged with the problem-solving process and invested in finding a quality solution. Groups with high interest in and knowledge about the problem may want more freedom to develop and implement solutions, while groups with low interest may prefer a leader who provides structure and direction.
• Group familiarity with problem. Some groups encounter a problem regularly, while other problems are more unique or unexpected. A family who has lived in hurricane alley for decades probably has a better idea of how to prepare its house for a hurricane than does a family that just recently moved from the Midwest. Many groups that rely on funding have to revisit a budget every year, and in recent years, groups have had to get more creative with budgets as funding has been cut in nearly every sector. When group members are not familiar with a problem, they need to do background research on what similar groups have done and may also need to bring in outside experts.
• Need for solution acceptance. In this step, groups must consider how many people the decision will affect and how much “buy-in” from others the group needs in order for their solution to be successfully implemented. Some small groups have many stakeholders on whom the success of a solution depends. Other groups are answerable only to themselves. When a small group is planning on building a new park in a crowded neighborhood or implementing a new policy in a large business, it can be very difficult to develop solutions that will be accepted by all. In such cases, groups will want to poll those who will be affected by the solution and may want to do a pilot implementation to see how people react. Imposing an excellent solution that doesn’t have buy-in from stakeholders can still lead to failure.

Group Problem-Solving Process

There are several variations of similar problem-solving models based on US American scholar John Dewey’s reflective thinking process (Bormann & Bormann, 1988). Some of the following steps are straightforward, and they are things we would logically do when faced with a problem. However, taking a deliberate and systematic approach to problem solving has been shown to benefit group functioning and performance. A deliberate approach is especially beneficial for groups that do not have an established history of working together and will only be able to meet occasionally. Although a group should attend to each step of the process, group leaders or other group members who facilitate problem solving should be cautious not to dogmatically follow each element of the process or force a group along. Lack of flexibility could limit others’ input and negatively affect the group’s cohesion and climate.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Define the problem by considering the three elements shared by every problem: the current undesirable situation, the goal or more desirable situation, and obstacles in the way (Adams & Galanes, 2009). At this stage, group members share what they know about the current situation, without proposing solutions or evaluating the information. Here are some good questions to ask during this stage: What is the current difficulty? How did we come to know that the difficulty exists? Who/what is involved? Why is it meaningful/urgent/important? What have the effects been so far? What, if any, elements of the difficulty require clarification? At the end of this stage, the group should be able to compose a single sentence that summarizes the problem — a problem statement . As you prepare this statement, avoid wording that hints at potential solutions. A small group formed to investigate ethical violations by city officials could use the following problem statement: “Our state does not currently have a mechanism for citizens to report suspected ethical violations by city officials.”

Step 2: Analyze the Problem

During this step, groups should analyze the problem and their relationship to the problem. Whereas the first step involved exploring the “what” related to the problem, this step focuses on the “why.” At this stage, group members can discuss the potential causes of the difficulty. Group members may also want to begin setting out an agenda or timeline for the group’s problem-solving process, looking forward to the other steps. To fully analyze the problem, the group can discuss the five common problem variables discussed before. Here are two examples of questions that the group formed to address ethics violations might ask: Why doesn’t our city have an ethics reporting mechanism? Do other cities of similar size have such a mechanism? Once the problem has been analyzed, the group can pose a problem question that will guide the group as it generates possible solutions. “How can citizens report suspected ethical violations by city officials and how will such reports be processed and addressed?” The problem question is more complex than the problem statement, since the group has moved on to more in-depth discussion of the problem during step 2.

Step 3: Generate Possible Solutions

During this step, group members generate possible solutions to the problem. Again, solutions should not be evaluated at this point, only proposed and clarified. The question should be what could we do to address this problem, not what should we do to address it. It is perfectly OK for a group member to question another’s idea by asking something like “What do you mean?” or “Could you explain your reasoning more?” Discussions at this stage may reveal a need to return to previous steps to better define or more fully analyze a problem. Since many problems are multifaceted, it is necessary for group members to generate solutions for each part of the problem separately, making sure to have multiple solutions for each part. Stopping the solution-generating process prematurely can lead to groupthink. For the problem question previously posed, the group would need to generate solutions for all three parts of the problem included in the question. Possible solutions for the first part of the problem (How can citizens report ethical violations?) may include “online reporting system, e-mail, in-person, anonymously, on-the-record,” and so on. Possible solutions for the second part of the problem (How will reports be processed?) may include “daily by a newly appointed ethics officer, weekly by a nonpartisan nongovernment employee,” and so on. Possible solutions for the third part of the problem (How will reports be addressed?) may include “by a newly appointed ethics commission, by the accused’s supervisor, by the city manager,” and so on.

Step 4: Evaluate Solutions

During this step, solutions can be critically evaluated based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed based on more obvious differences in relevance and/or merit, the group should analyze each solution based on its potential effects—especially negative effects. Groups that are required to report the rationale for their decision or whose decisions may be subject to public scrutiny would be wise to make a set list of criteria for evaluating each solution. Additionally, solutions can be evaluated based on how well they fit with the group’s charge and the abilities of the group. To do this, group members may ask, “Does this solution live up to the original purpose or mission of the group?” and “Can the solution actually be implemented with our current resources and connections?” and “How will this solution be supported, funded, enforced, and assessed?” Secondary tensions and substantive conflict, two concepts discussed earlier, emerge during this step of problem solving, and group members will need to employ effective critical thinking and listening skills.

Decision making is part of the larger process of problem solving and it plays a prominent role in this step. While there are several fairly similar models for problem solving, there are many varied decision-making techniques that groups can use. For example, to narrow the list of proposed solutions, group members may decide by majority vote, by weighing the pros and cons, or by discussing them until a consensus is reached. There are also more complex decision-making models like the “six hats method,” which we will discuss later. Once the final decision is reached, the group leader or facilitator should confirm that the group is in agreement. It may be beneficial to let the group break for a while or even to delay the final decision until a later meeting to allow people time to evaluate it outside of the group context.

Step 5: Implement and Assess the Solution

Implementing the solution requires some advanced planning, and it should not be rushed unless the group is operating under strict time restraints or delay may lead to some kind of harm. Although some solutions can be implemented immediately, others may take days, months, or years. As was noted earlier, it may be beneficial for groups to poll those who will be affected by the solution as to their opinion of it or even to do a pilot test to observe the effectiveness of the solution and how people react to it. Before implementation, groups should also determine how and when they would assess the effectiveness of the solution by asking, “How will we know if the solution is working or not?” Since solution assessment will vary based on whether or not the group is disbanded, groups should also consider the following questions: If the group disbands after implementation, who will assessing the solution? If the solution fails, will the group reconvene or will a new group be formed?

Certain elements of the solution may need to be delegated to various people inside and outside the group. Group members may also be assigned to implement a particular part of the solution based on their role in the decision making or because it connects to their area of expertise. Likewise, group members may be tasked with publicizing the solution or “selling” it to a particular group of stakeholders. Last, the group should consider its future. In some cases, the group will get to decide if it will stay together and continue working on other tasks or if it will disband. In other cases, outside forces determine the group’s fate.

Spotlight: “Getting Competent”

Problem Solving and Group Presentations

Giving a group presentation requires that individual group members and the group as a whole solve many problems and make many decisions. Although having more people involved in a presentation increases logistical difficulties and has the potential to create more conflict, a well-prepared and well-delivered group presentation can be more engaging and effective than a typical presentation. The main problems facing a group giving a presentation are (1) dividing responsibilities, (2) coordinating schedules and time management, and (3) working out the logistics of the presentation delivery.

In terms of dividing responsibilities, assigning individual work at the first meeting and then trying to fit it all together before the presentation (which is what many college students do when faced with a group project) is not the recommended method. Integrating content and visual aids created by several people into a seamless final product takes time and effort, and the person “stuck” with this job at the end usually develops some resentment toward the other group members. While it’s OK for group members to do work independently outside of group meetings, they should also spend time working together to help set up some standards for content and formatting expectations that will help make later integration of work easier. Taking the time to complete one part of the presentation together can help set those standards for later individual work. Discuss the roles that various group members will play openly, so there is no role confusion. There could be one point person for keeping track of the group’s progress and schedule, one point person for communication, one point person for content integration, one point person for visual aids, and so on. Each person shouldn’t do all that work on his/her own but help focus the group’s attention on his/her specific area during group meetings (Stanton, 2009).

Scheduling group meetings is one of the most challenging problems groups face, given people’s busy lives. From the beginning, it should be clearly communicated that the group needs to spend considerable time in face-to-face meetings, and group members should know that they may have to make an occasional sacrifice to attend. Especially important is the commitment to scheduling time to rehearse the presentation. Consider creating a contract of group guidelines that includes expectations for meeting attendance to increase group members’ commitment.

Group presentations require members to navigate many logistics of their presentation. While it may be easier for a group to assign each member to create a five-minute segment and then transition from one person to the next, this is not the most engaging method. Creating a master presentation and then assigning individual speakers creates a more fluid and dynamic presentation and allows everyone to become familiar with the content, which can help if a person doesn’t show up to present and during the question-and-answer section. Once the content of the presentation is complete, figure out introductions, transitions, visual aids, and the use of time and space (Stanton, 2012). In terms of introductions, figure out if one person will introduce all the speakers at the beginning, if speakers will introduce themselves at the beginning, or if introductions will occur as the presentation progresses. In terms of transitions, make sure each person has included in his/her speaking notes when presentation duties switch from one person to the next. Visual aids have the potential to cause hiccups in a group presentation if they are not fluidly integrated. Practicing with visual aids and having one person control them may help prevent this. Know how long your presentation is and know how you are going to use the space. Presenters should know how long the whole presentation should be and how long each of their segments should be so that everyone can share the responsibility of keeping time. Also consider the size and layout of the presentation space. You don’t want presenters huddled in a corner until it’s their turn to speak or trapped behind furniture when their turn comes.

Critical thinking questions:

• Of the three main problems facing group presenters, which do you think is the most challenging and why?
• Why do you think people tasked with a group presentation (especially students) prefer to divide the parts up and have members work on them independently before coming back together and integrating each part? What problems emerge from this method? In what ways might developing a master presentation and then assigning parts to different speakers be better than the more divided method? What are the drawbacks to the master presentation method?

Decision Making in Groups

We all engage in personal decision making daily, and we all know that some decisions are more difficult than others. When we make decisions in groups, we face some challenges that we do not face in our personal decision making, but we also stand to benefit from some advantages of group decision making (Napier & Gershenfeld, 2004). Group decision making can appear fair and democratic but really only be a gesture that covers up the fact that certain group members or the group leader have already decided. Group decision making also takes more time than individual decisions and can be burdensome if some group members do not do their assigned work, divert the group with self-centered or unproductive role behaviours, or miss meetings. Conversely, though, group decisions are often more informed, since all group members develop a shared understanding of a problem through discussion and debate. The shared understanding may also be more complex and deep than what an individual would develop, because the group members are exposed to a variety of viewpoints that can broaden their own perspectives. Group decisions also benefit from synergy, one of the key advantages of group communication that we discussed earlier. Most groups do not use a specific method of decision making, perhaps thinking that they’ll work things out as they go. This can lead to unequal participation, social loafing, premature decisions, prolonged discussion, and a host of other negative consequences. So in this section we will learn some practices that will prepare us for good decision making and some specific techniques we can use to help us reach a final decision.

Brainstorming before Decision Making

Before groups can make a decision, they need to generate possible solutions to their problem. The most commonly used method is brainstorming, although most people don’t follow the recommended steps of brainstorming. As you’ll recall, brainstorming refers to the quick generation of ideas free of evaluation. The originator of the term brainstorming said the following four rules must be followed for the technique to be effective (Osborn, 1959):

• Evaluation of ideas is forbidden.
• Wild and crazy ideas are encouraged.
• Quantity of ideas, not quality, is the goal.
• New combinations of ideas presented are encouraged.

To make brainstorming more of a decision-making method rather than an idea-generating method, group communication scholars have suggested additional steps that precede and follow brainstorming (Cragan & Wright, 1991).

• Do a warm-up brainstorming session. Some people are more apprehensive about publicly communicating their ideas than others are, and a warm-up session can help ease apprehension and prime group members for task-related idea generation. The warm-up can be initiated by anyone in the group and should last a few minutes. To get things started, a person could ask, “If our group formed a band, what would we be called?” or “What other purposes could a mailbox serve?” In the previous examples, the first warm-up encourages the group’s abstract creativity, while the second focuses more on practical and concrete ideas.
• Do the actual brainstorming session. This session shouldn’t last more than thirty minutes and should follow the four rules of brainstorming mentioned previously. To ensure that the fourth rule is realized, the facilitator could encourage people to build on each other’s ideas.
• Eliminate duplicate ideas. After the brainstorming session is over, group members can eliminate (without evaluating) ideas that are the same or very similar.
• Clarify, organize, and evaluate ideas. Before evaluation, see if any ideas need clarification. Then try to theme or group ideas together in some orderly fashion. Since “wild and crazy” ideas are encouraged, some suggestions may need clarification. If it becomes clear that there isn’t really a foundation to an idea and that it is too vague and can’t be clarified, it may be eliminated. As a caution though, it may be wise to avoid throwing out off-the-wall ideas that are hard to categorize and to instead put them in a miscellaneous or “wild and crazy” category.

Discussion before Decision Making

The nominal group technique guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members (Delbecq & Ven de Ven, 1971). This method is useful because the procedure involves all group members systematically, which fixes the problem of uneven participation during discussions. Since everyone contributes to the discussion, this method can also help reduce instances of social loafing. To use the nominal group technique, do the following:

• Silently and individually list ideas.
• Create a master list of ideas.
• Clarify ideas as needed.
• Take a secret vote to rank group members’ acceptance of ideas.

During the first step, have group members work quietly, in the same space, to write down every idea they have to address the task or problem they face. This shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. Whoever is facilitating the discussion should remind group members to use brainstorming techniques, which means they shouldn’t evaluate ideas as they are generated. Ask group members to remain silent once they’ve finished their list so they do not distract others.

During the second step, the facilitator goes around the group in a consistent order asking each person to share one idea at a time. As the idea is shared, the facilitator records it on a master list that everyone can see. Keep track of how many times each idea comes up, as that could be an idea that warrants more discussion. Continue this process until all the ideas have been shared. As a note to facilitators, some group members may begin to edit their list or self-censor when asked to provide one of their ideas. To limit a person’s apprehension with sharing his or her ideas and to ensure that each idea is shared, you can ask group members to exchange lists with someone else so they can share ideas from the list they receive without fear of being personally judged.

During step three, the facilitator should note that group members can now ask for clarification on ideas on the master list. Do not let this discussion stray into evaluation of ideas. To help avoid an unnecessarily long discussion, it may be useful to go from one person to the next to ask which ideas need clarifying and then go to the originator(s) of the idea in question for clarification.

During the fourth step, members use a voting ballot to rank the acceptability of the ideas on the master list. If the list is long, you may ask group members to rank only their top five or so choices. The facilitator then takes up the secret ballots and reviews them in a random order, noting the rankings of each idea. Ideally, the highest ranked idea can then be discussed and decided on. The nominal group technique does not carry a group all the way through to the point of decision; rather, it sets the group up for a roundtable discussion or use of some other method to evaluate the merits of the top ideas.

Specific Decision-Making Techniques

Some decision-making techniques involve determining a course of action based on the level of agreement among the group members. These methods include majority, expert, authority, and consensus rule. Table 17.1 “Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques” reviews the pros and cons of each of these methods.

Majority rule is a commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before a decision is made. A show-of-hands vote, a paper ballot, or an electronic voting system can determine the majority choice. Many decision-making bodies, including parliaments and superior courts, use majority rule to make decisions, which shows that it is often associated with democratic decision making, since each person gets one vote and each vote counts equally. Of course, other individuals and mediated messages can influence a person’s vote, but since the voting power is spread out over all group members, it is not easy for one person or party to take control of the decision-making process. In some cases—for example, to override a presidential veto or to amend the constitution—a super majority of two-thirds may be required to make a decision.

Minority rule is a decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members. When a designated expert makes a decision by minority rule, there may be buy-in from others in the group, especially if the members of the group didn’t have relevant knowledge or expertise. When a designated authority makes decisions, buy-in will vary based on group members’ level of respect for the authority. For example, decisions made by an elected authority may be more accepted by those who elected him/her than by those who didn’t. As with majority rule, this technique can be time saving. Unlike majority rule, one person or party can have control over the decision-making process. This type of decision making is more similar to that used by monarchs and dictators. An obvious negative consequence of this method is that the needs or wants of one person can override the needs and wants of the majority. A minority deciding for the majority has led to negative consequences throughout history. The white Afrikaner minority that ruled South Africa for decades instituted apartheid, which was a system of racial segregation that disenfranchised and oppressed the majority population. The quality of the decision and its fairness really depends on the designated expert or authority.

Consensus rule is a decision-making technique in which all members of the group must agree on the same decision. On rare occasions, a decision may be ideal for all group members, which can lead to unanimous agreement without further debate and discussion. Although this can be positive, be cautious that this isn’t a sign of groupthink. More typically, consensus is reached only after lengthy discussion. On the plus side, consensus often leads to high-quality decisions due to the time and effort it takes to get everyone in agreement. Group members are also more likely to be committed to the decision because of their investment in reaching it. On the negative side, the ultimate decision is often one that all group members can live with but not one that’s ideal for all members. Additionally, the process of arriving at consensus also includes conflict, as people debate ideas and negotiate the interpersonal tensions that may result.

Table 17.1 Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques

Spotlight: “Getting Critical”

Six Hats Method of Decision Making

Edward de Bono developed the Six Hats method of thinking in the late 1980s, and it has since become a regular feature in decision-making training in business and professional contexts (de Bono, 1985). The method’s popularity lies in its ability to help people get out of habitual ways of thinking and to allow group members to play different roles and see a problem or decision from multiple points of view. The basic idea is that each of the six hats represents a different way of thinking, and when we figuratively switch hats, we switch the way we think. The hats and their style of thinking are as follows:

• White hat. Objective—focuses on seeking information such as data and facts and then processes that information in a neutral way.
• Red hat. Emotional—uses intuition, gut reactions, and feelings to judge information and suggestions.
• Black hat. Negative—focuses on potential risks, points out possibilities for failure, and evaluates information cautiously and defensively.
• Yellow hat. Positive—is optimistic about suggestions and future outcomes, gives constructive and positive feedback, points out benefits and advantages.
• Green hat. Creative—tries to generate new ideas and solutions, thinks “outside the box.”
• Blue hat. Philosophical—uses metacommunication to organize and reflect on the thinking and communication taking place in the group, facilitates who wears what hat and when group members change hats.

Specific sequences or combinations of hats can be used to encourage strategic thinking. For example, the group leader may start off wearing the Blue Hat and suggest that the group start their decision-making process with some “White Hat thinking” in order to process through facts and other available information. During this stage, the group could also process through what other groups have done when faced with a similar problem. Then the leader could begin an evaluation sequence starting with two minutes of “Yellow Hat thinking” to identify potential positive outcomes, then “Black Hat thinking” to allow group members to express reservations about ideas and point out potential problems, then “Red Hat thinking” to get people’s gut reactions to the previous discussion, then “Green Hat thinking” to identify other possible solutions that are more tailored to the group’s situation or completely new approaches. At the end of a sequence, the Blue Hat would want to summarize what was said and begin a new sequence. To successfully use this method, the person wearing the Blue Hat should be familiar with different sequences and plan some of the thinking patterns ahead of time based on the problem and the group members. Each round of thinking should be limited to a certain time frame (two to five minutes) to keep the discussion moving.

Self-reflection and critical thinking questions:

• This decision-making method has been praised because it allows group members to “switch gears” in their thinking and allows for role playing, which lets people express ideas more freely. How can this help enhance critical thinking? Which combination of hats do you think would be best for a critical thinking sequence?
• What combinations of hats might be useful if the leader wanted to break the larger group up into pairs and why? For example, what kind of thinking would result from putting Yellow and Red together, Black and White together, or Red and White together, and so on?
• Based on your preferred ways of thinking and your personality, which hat would be the best fit for you? Which would be the most challenging? Why?

Influences on Decision Making

Many factors influence the decision-making process. For example, how might a group’s independence or access to resources affect the decisions they make? What potential advantages and disadvantages come with decisions made by groups that are more or less similar in terms of personality and cultural identities? In this section, we will explore how situational, personality, and cultural influences affect decision making in groups.

Situational Influences on Decision Making

A group’s situational context affects decision making. One key situational element is the degree of freedom that the group has to make its own decisions, secure its own resources, and initiate its own actions. Some groups have to go through multiple approval processes before they can do anything, while others are self-directed, self-governing, and self-sustaining. Another situational influence is uncertainty. In general, groups deal with more uncertainty in decision making than do individuals because of the increased number of variables that comes with adding more people to a situation. Individual group members can’t know what other group members are thinking, whether or not they are doing their work, and how committed they are to the group. So the size of a group is a powerful situational influence, as it adds to uncertainty and complicates communication.

Access to information also influences a group. First, the nature of the group’s task or problem affects its ability to get information. Group members can more easily make decisions about a problem when other groups have similarly experienced it. Even if the problem is complex and serious, the group can learn from other situations and apply what it learns. Second, the group must have access to flows of information. Access to archives, electronic databases, and individuals with relevant experience is necessary to obtain any relevant information about similar problems or to do research on a new or unique problem. In this regard, group members’ formal and information network connections also become important situational influences.

The origin and urgency of a problem are also situational factors that influence decision making. In terms of origin, problems usually occur in one of four ways:

• Something goes wrong. Group members must decide how to fix or stop something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that half of the building is contaminated with mold and must be closed down.
• Expectations change or increase. Group members must innovate more efficient or effective ways of doing something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that the district they are responsible for is being expanded.
• Something goes wrong and expectations change or increase. Group members must fix/stop something and become more efficient/effective. Example—the firehouse crew has to close half the building and must start responding to more calls due to the expanding district.
• The problem existed from the beginning. Group members must go back to the origins of the situation and walk through and analyze the steps again to decide what can be done differently. Example—a firehouse crew has consistently had to work with minimal resources in terms of building space and firefighting tools.

In each of the cases, the need for a decision may be more or less urgent depending on how badly something is going wrong, how much the expectations have been raised, or the degree to which people are fed up with a broken system. Decisions must be made in situations ranging from crisis level to mundane.

Personality Influences on Decision Making

A long-studied typology of value orientations that affect decision making consists of the following types of decision maker: the economic, the aesthetic, the theoretical, the social, the political, and the religious (Spranger, 1928).

• The economic decision maker makes decisions based on what is practical and useful.
• The aesthetic decision maker makes decisions based on form and harmony, desiring a solution that is elegant and in sync with the surroundings.
• The theoretical decision maker wants to discover the truth through rationality.
• The social decision maker emphasizes the personal impact of a decision and sympathizes with those who may be affected by it.
• The political decision maker is interested in power and influence and views people and/or property as divided into groups that have different value.
• The religious decision maker seeks to identify with a larger purpose, works to unify others under that goal, and commits to a viewpoint, often denying one side and being dedicated to the other.

In North America, economic, political, and theoretical decision making tend to be more prevalent decision-making orientations, which likely corresponds to the individualistic cultural orientation with its emphasis on competition and efficiency. But situational context, as we discussed before, can also influence our decision making.

The personalities of group members, especially leaders and other active members, affect the climate of the group. Group member personalities can be categorized based on where they fall on a continuum anchored by the following descriptors: dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional (Cragan & Wright, 1999). The more group members there are in any extreme of these categories, the more likely that the group climate will also shift to resemble those characteristics.

• Dominant versus submissive. Group members that are more dominant act more independently and directly, initiate conversations, take up more space, make more direct eye contact, seek leadership positions, and take control over decision-making processes. More submissive members are reserved, contribute to the group only when asked to, avoid eye contact, and leave their personal needs and thoughts unvoiced or give into the suggestions of others.
• Friendly versus unfriendly. Group members on the friendly side of the continuum find a balance between talking and listening, don’t try to win at the expense of other group members, are flexible but not weak, and value democratic decision making. Unfriendly group members are disagreeable, indifferent, withdrawn, and selfish, which leads them to either not invest in decision making or direct it in their own interest rather than in the interest of the group.
• Instrumental versus emotional. Instrumental group members are emotionally neutral, objective, analytical, task-oriented, and committed followers, which leads them to work hard and contribute to the group’s decision making as long as it is orderly and follows agreed-on rules. Emotional group members are creative, playful, independent, unpredictable, and expressive, which leads them to make rash decisions, resist group norms or decision-making structures, and switch often from relational to task focus.

Cultural Context and Decision Making

Just like neighborhoods, schools, and countries, small groups vary in terms of their degree of similarity and difference. Demographic changes and increases in technology that can bring different people together make it more likely that we will be interacting in more and more heterogeneous groups (Allen, 2011, p. 5). Some small groups are more homogenous, meaning the members are more similar, and some are more heterogeneous, meaning the members are more different. Diversity and difference within groups has advantages and disadvantages. In terms of advantages, in general, groups that are culturally heterogeneous have better overall performance than more homogenous groups (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999, p. 133). Additionally, when group members have time to get to know each other and competently communicate across their differences, the advantages of diversity include better decision making due to different perspectives (Thomas, 1999). Unfortunately, groups often operate under time constraints and other pressures that make the possibility for intercultural dialogue and understanding difficult. The main disadvantage of heterogeneous groups is the possibility for conflict, but given that all groups experience conflict, this isn’t solely due to the presence of diversity. We will now look more specifically at how some of the cultural value orientations we’ve learned about already in this book can play out in groups with international diversity and how domestic diversity in terms of demographics can also influence group decision making.

International Diversity in Group Interactions

Cultural value orientations such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles all manifest on a continuum of communication behaviours and can influence group decision making. Group members from individualistic cultures are more likely to value task-oriented, efficient, and direct communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as dividing up tasks into individual projects before collaboration begins and then openly debating ideas during discussion and decision making. Additionally, people from cultures that value individualism are more likely to openly express dissent from a decision, essentially expressing their disagreement with the group. Group members from collectivistic cultures are more likely to value relationships over the task at hand. Because of this, they also tend to value conformity and face-saving (often indirect) communication. This could manifest in behaviours such as establishing norms that include periods of socializing to build relationships before task-oriented communication like negotiations begin or norms that limit public disagreement in favor of more indirect communication that doesn’t challenge other group members or the group’s leader. In a group composed of people from a collectivistic culture, each member would likely play harmonizing roles, looking for signs of conflict and resolving them before they become public.

Power distance can also affect group interactions. Some cultures rank higher on power-distance scales, meaning they value hierarchy, make decisions based on status, and believe that people have a set place in society that is fairly unchangeable. Group members from high-power-distance cultures would likely appreciate a strong designated leader who exhibits a more directive leadership style and prefer groups in which members have clear and assigned roles. In a group that is homogenous in terms of having a high-power-distance orientation, members with higher status would be able to openly provide information, and those with lower status may not provide information unless a higher status member explicitly seeks it from them. Low-power-distance cultures do not place as much value and meaning on status and believe that all group members can participate in decision making. Group members from low-power-distance cultures would likely freely speak their mind during a group meeting and prefer a participative leadership style.

How much meaning is conveyed through the context surrounding verbal communication can also affect group communication. Some cultures have a high-context communication style in which much of the meaning in an interaction is conveyed through context such as nonverbal cues and silence. Group members from high-context cultures may avoid saying something directly, assuming that other group members will understand the intended meaning even if the message is indirect. So if someone disagrees with a proposed course of action, he or she may say, “Let’s discuss this tomorrow,” and mean, “I don’t think we should do this.” Such indirect communication is also a face-saving strategy that is common in collectivistic cultures. Other cultures have a low-context communication style that places more importance on the meaning conveyed through words than through context or nonverbal cues. Group members from low-context cultures often say what they mean and mean what they say. For example, if someone doesn’t like an idea, they might say, “I think we should consider more options. This one doesn’t seem like the best we can do.”

In any of these cases, an individual from one culture operating in a group with people of a different cultural orientation could adapt to the expectations of the host culture, especially if that person possesses a high degree of intercultural communication competence (ICC). Additionally, people with high ICC can also adapt to a group member with a different cultural orientation than the host culture. Even though these cultural orientations connect to values that affect our communication in fairly consistent ways, individuals may exhibit different communication behaviors depending on their own individual communication style and the situation.

Domestic Diversity and Group Communication

While it is becoming more likely that we will interact in small groups with international diversity, we are guaranteed to interact in groups that are diverse in terms of the cultural identities found within a single country or the subcultures found within a larger cultural group.

Gender stereotypes sometimes influence the roles that people play within a group. For example, the stereotype that women are more nurturing than men may lead group members (both male and female) to expect that women will play the role of supporters or harmonizers within the group. Since women have primarily performed secretarial work since the 1900s, it may also be expected that women will play the role of recorder. In both of these cases, stereotypical notions of gender place women in roles that are typically not as valued in group communication. The opposite is true for men. In terms of leadership, despite notable exceptions, research shows that men fill an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of leadership positions. We are socialized to see certain behaviours by men as indicative of leadership abilities, even though they may not be. For example, men are often perceived to contribute more to a group because they tend to speak first when asked a question or to fill a silence and are perceived to talk more about task-related matters than relationally oriented matters. Both of these tendencies create a perception that men are more engaged with the task. Men are also socialized to be more competitive and self-congratulatory, meaning that their communication may be seen as dedicated and their behaviours seen as powerful, and that when their work isn’t noticed they will be more likely to make it known to the group rather than take silent credit. Even though we know that the relational elements of a group are crucial for success, even in high-performance teams, that work is not as valued in our society as the task-related work.

Despite the fact that some communication patterns and behaviors related to our typical (and stereotypical) gender socialization affect how we interact in and form perceptions of others in groups, the differences in group communication that used to be attributed to gender in early group communication research seem to be diminishing. This is likely due to the changing organizational cultures from which much group work emerges, which have now had more than sixty years to adjust to women in the workplace. It is also due to a more nuanced understanding of gender-based research, which doesn’t take a stereotypical view from the beginning as many of the early male researchers did. Now, instead of biological sex being assumed as a factor that creates inherent communication differences, group communication scholars see that men and women both exhibit a range of behaviours that are more or less feminine or masculine. It is these gendered behaviours, and not a person’s gender, that seem to have more of an influence on perceptions of group communication. Interestingly, group interactions are still masculinist in that male and female group members prefer a more traditionally masculine communication style for task leaders and that both males and females in this role are more likely to adapt to that communication style. Conversely, men who take on social-emotional leadership behaviors adopt a more “feminine” communication style. In short, it seems that although “masculine” communication traits are more often associated with high status positions in groups, both men and women adapt to this expectation and are evaluated similarly (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999, p. 133).

Other demographic categories are also influential in group communication and decision making. In general, group members have an easier time communicating when they are more similar than different in terms of race and age. This ease of communication can make group work more efficient, but the homogeneity may sacrifice some creativity. As we learned earlier, groups that are diverse (e.g., they have members of different races and generations) benefit from the diversity of perspectives in terms of the quality of decision making and creativity of output.

In terms of age, for the first time since industrialization began, it is common to have three generations of people (and sometimes more) working side by side in an organizational setting. Although four generations often worked together in early factories, they were segregated based on their age group, and a hierarchy existed with older workers at the top and younger workers at the bottom. Today, however, generations interact regularly, and it is not uncommon for an older person to have a leader or supervisor who is younger (Allen, 2011, p. 5). The current generations in the workplace and consequently in work-based groups include the following:

• The Silent Generation. Born between 1925 and 1942, this is the smallest generation in the workforce right now, as many have retired or left for other reasons, but they may still occupy high-ranking positions in some organizations. This generation includes people who were born during the Great Depression or the early part of World War II, many of whom later fought in the Korean War (Clarke, 1970).
• The Baby Boomers. Born between 1946 and 1964, this generation continues to be well-represented in the workforce. Baby boomers are the most populous generation in North American history, and they are working longer than previous generations (more years).
• Generation X. Born between 1965 and 1981, this generation was the first to see technology like cell phones and the Internet make its way into classrooms and our daily lives. Compared to previous generations, “Gen-Xers” are more diverse in terms of race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation and also have a greater appreciation for and understanding of diversity.
• Generation Y. Born between 1982 and 2000, “Millennials” as they are also called are not as likely to remember a time without technology such as computers and cell phones. They have been greatly affected by the economic crisis of the late 2000s, experiencing significantly high unemployment rates.
• Generation Z . Born after 2000, these individuals have only recently joined the work force. They are more technology-minded and more invested in diversity, social justice, and environmentalism than previous generations.

The benefits and challenges that come with diversity of group members are important to consider. Since we will all work in diverse groups, we should be prepared to address potential challenges in order to reap the benefits. Diverse groups may be wise to coordinate social interactions outside of group time in order to find common ground that can help facilitate interaction and increase group cohesion. We should be sensitive but not let sensitivity create fear of “doing something wrong” that then prevents us from having meaningful interactions. Reviewing Chapter 6: Introduction to Cultural Communication will give you useful knowledge to help you navigate both international and domestic diversity and increase your communication competence in small groups and elsewhere.

Key Takeaways

• Define the problem by creating a problem statement that summarizes it.
• Analyze the problem and create a problem question that can guide solution generation.
• Generate possible solutions. Possible solutions should be offered and listed without stopping to evaluate each one.
• Evaluate the solutions based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Groups should also assess the potential effects of the narrowed list of solutions.
• Implement and assess the solution. Aside from enacting the solution, groups should determine how they will know the solution is working or not.
• Before a group makes a decision, it should brainstorm possible solutions. Group communication scholars suggest that groups (1) do a warm-up brainstorming session; (2) do an actual brainstorming session in which ideas are not evaluated, wild ideas are encouraged, quantity not quality of ideas is the goal, and new combinations of ideas are encouraged; (3) eliminate duplicate ideas; and (4) clarify, organize, and evaluate ideas. In order to guide the idea-generation process and invite equal participation from group members, the group may also elect to use the nominal group technique.
• Common decision-making techniques include majority rule, minority rule, and consensus rule. With majority rule, only a majority, usually one-half plus one, must agree before a decision is made. With minority rule, a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision, and the input of group members may or may not be invited or considered. With consensus rule, all members of the group must agree on the same decision.
• Situational factors include the degree of freedom a group has to make its own decisions, the level of uncertainty facing the group and its task, the size of the group, the group’s access to information, and the origin and urgency of the problem.
• Personality influences on decision making include a person’s value orientation (economic, aesthetic, theoretical, political, or religious), and personality traits (dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional).
• Cultural influences on decision making include the heterogeneity or homogeneity of the group makeup; cultural values and characteristics such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles; and gender and age differences.

• Scenario 1. Task difficulty is high, number of possible solutions is high, group interest in problem is high, group familiarity with problem is low, and need for solution acceptance is high.
• Scenario 2. Task difficulty is low, number of possible solutions is low, group interest in problem is low, group familiarity with problem is high, and need for solution acceptance is low.
• Scenario 1: Academic. A professor asks his or her class to decide whether the final exam should be an in-class or take-home exam.
• Scenario 2: Professional. A group of coworkers must decide which person from their department to nominate for a company-wide award.
• Scenario 3: Personal. A family needs to decide how to divide the belongings and estate of a deceased family member who did not leave a will.
• Scenario 4: Civic. A local branch of a political party needs to decide what five key issues it wants to include in the national party’s platform.
• Group communication researchers have found that heterogeneous groups (composed of diverse members) have advantages over homogenous (more similar) groups. Discuss a group situation you have been in where diversity enhanced your and/or the group’s experience.

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15.4 Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups Copyright © 2024 by Melissa Ashman; Arley Cruthers; eCampusOntario; Ontario Business Faculty; and University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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13 Leadership, Roles, and Problem Solving in Groups

Introduction

13.1 Group Member Roles

Task-related roles and behaviors.

Task roles and their related behaviors contribute directly to the group’s completion of a task or achievement of its goal or purpose. Task-related roles typically serve leadership, informational, or procedural functions. In this section, we will discuss the following roles and behaviors: task leader, expediter, information provider, information seeker, gatekeeper, and recorder.

Task Leader

Within any group, there may be a task leader. This person may have a high group status because of his or her maturity, problem-solving abilities, knowledge, and/or leadership experience and skills. This person acts to help the group complete its task (Cragan & Wright, 1991). This person may be a designated or emergent leader, but in either case, task leaders tend to talk more during group interactions than other group members and also tend to do more work in the group. Depending on the number of tasks a group has, there may be more than one task leader, especially if the tasks require different sets of skills or knowledge. Because of the added responsibilities of being a task leader, people in these roles may experience higher levels of stress. A task leader could lessen these stresses, however, through some of the maintenance role behaviors that will be discussed later.

We can divide task-leader behaviors two types: substantive and procedural (Pavitt, 1999). The substantive leader is the “idea person” who communicates “big picture” thoughts and suggestions that feed group discussion. The procedural leader is the person who gives the most guidance, perhaps following up on the ideas generated by the substantive leader. A skilled and experienced task leader may be able to perform both of these roles, but when the roles are filled by two different people, the person considered the procedural leader is more likely than the substantive leader to be viewed by members as the overall group leader. This indicates that task-focused groups assign more status to the person who actually guides the group toward the completion of the task (a “doer”) than the person who comes up with ideas (the “thinker”).

The expediter is a task-related role that functions to keep the group on track toward completing its task by managing the agenda and setting and assessing goals in order to monitor the group’s progress (Burke, Georganta, & Marlow, 2019). An expediter doesn’t push group members mindlessly along toward the completion of their task; an expediter must have a good sense of when a topic has been sufficiently discussed or when a group’s extended focus on one area has led to diminishing returns. In such cases, the expediter may say, “Now that we’ve had a thorough discussion of the pros and cons of switching the office from PCs to Macs, which side do you think has more support?” or “We’ve spent half of this meeting looking for examples of what other libraries have done and haven’t found anything useful. Maybe we should switch gears so we can get something concrete done tonight.”

To avoid the perception that group members are being rushed, a skilled expediter can demonstrate good active-listening skills by paraphrasing what has been discussed and summarizing what has been accomplished in such a way that makes it easier for group members to see the need to move on.

Information Provider

The information provider role includes behaviors that are more evenly shared compared to other roles, as ideally, all group members present new ideas, initiate discussions of new topics, and contribute their own relevant knowledge and experiences Burke, Georganta, & Marlow, 2019). When group members meet, they each possess different types of information. Early group meetings may consist of group members taking turns briefing each other on their area of expertise. In other situations, one group member may be chosen because of his or her specialized knowledge. This person may be the primary information provider for all other group members. For example, one of our colleagues was selected to serve on a university committee reviewing our undergraduate learning goals. Since her official role was to serve as the “faculty expert” on the subcommittee related to speaking, she played a more central information-provider function for the group during most of the initial meetings. Since other people on the subcommittee were not as familiar with speaking and its place within higher education curriculum, it made sense that information-providing behaviors were not as evenly distributed.

Information Seeker

The information seeker asks for more information, elaboration, or clarification on items relevant to the group’s task Burke, Georganta, & Marlow, 2019). The information sought may include facts or group member opinions. In general, information seekers ask questions for clarification, but they can also ask questions that help provide an important evaluative function. Most groups could benefit from more critically oriented information-seeking behaviors. As our discussion of groupthink notes, critical questioning helps increase the quality of ideas and group outcomes and helps avoid groupthink. By asking for more information, people have to defend (in a non-adversarial way) and/or support their claims, which can help ensure that the information is credible, relevant, and thoroughly considered. When information seeking or questioning occurs because of poor listening skills, it risks negatively affecting the group. Skilled information providers and seekers are also good active listeners. They increase all group members’ knowledge when they paraphrase and ask clarifying questions about the information presented.

The gatekeeper manages the flow of conversation in a group in order to achieve an appropriate balance so that all group members get to participate in a meaningful way Burke, Georganta, & Marlow, 2019). The gatekeeper may prompt others to provide information by saying something like “Let’s each share one idea we have for a movie to show during Black History Month.” He or she may also help correct an imbalance between members who have provided much information already and members who have been quiet by saying something like “Aretha, we’ve heard a lot from you today. Let us hear from someone else. Beau, what are your thoughts on Aretha’s suggestion?” Gatekeepers should be cautious about “calling people out” or at least making them feel that way. Instead of scolding someone for not participating, the gatekeeper should be ask a member to contribute something specific instead of just asking if that person has anything to add. Since gatekeepers make group members feel included, they also service the relational aspects of the group.

The recorder takes notes on the discussion and activities that occur during a group meeting. The recorder is the only role that is essentially limited to one person at a time since in most cases it would not be necessary or beneficial to have more than one person recording. At less formal meetings, there may be no recorder, while at formal meetings there is usually a person who records meeting minutes, which are an overview of what occurred at the meeting. Each committee will have different rules or norms regarding the level of detail within and availability of the minutes.

Maintenance Roles and Behaviors

Maintenance roles and their corresponding behaviors function to create and maintain social cohesion and fulfill the interpersonal needs of group members. All these role behaviors require strong and sensitive interpersonal skills. The maintenance roles we will discuss in this section include social-emotional leader, supporter, tension releaser, harmonizer, and interpreter.

Social-Emotional Leader

The social-emotional leader within a group may perform a variety of maintenance roles and is generally someone who is well liked by the other group members and whose role behaviors complement but do not compete with the task leader. The social-emotional leader may also reassure and support the task leader when he or she is stressed (Koch, 2013). In general, the social-emotional leader is a reflective thinker who has good perception skills that he or she uses to analyze the group dynamics and climate and then initiate the appropriate role behaviors to maintain a positive climate. This is not a role that shifts from person to person. While all members of the group perform some maintenance role behaviors at various times, the socioemotional leader reliably functions to support group members and maintain a positive relational climate. Social-emotional leadership functions can actually become detrimental to the group and lead to less satisfaction among members when they view maintenance behaviors as redundant or as too distracting from the task (Pavitt, 1999).

The role of supporter is characterized by communication behaviors that encourage other group members and provide emotional support as needed (Koch, 2013). The supporter’s work primarily occurs in one-on-one exchanges that are more intimate and in-depth than the exchanges that take place during full group meetings. While many group members may make supporting comments publicly at group meetings, these comments are typically superficial and/or brief. A supporter uses active empathetic listening skills to connect with group members who may seem down or frustrated by saying something like “Tayesha, you seemed kind of down today. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” Supporters also follow up on previous conversations with group members to maintain the connections they have already established by saying things like “Alan, I remember you said your mom is having surgery this weekend. I hope it goes well. Let me know if you need anything.”

Tension Releaser

The tension releaser is someone who is naturally funny and sensitive to the personalities of the group and the dynamics of any given situation and who uses these qualities to manage the frustration level of the group (Koch, 2013). Being funny is not enough to fulfill this role, as jokes or comments could indeed be humorous to other group members but are delivered at an inopportune time, which ultimately creates rather than releases tension. The healthy use of humor by the tension releaser performs the same maintenance function as the empathy employed by the harmonizer or the social-emotional leader, but it is less intimate and is typically directed toward the whole group instead of just one person.

Group members who help manage the various types of group conflict that emerge during group communication plays the harmonizer role (Koch, 2013). They keep their eyes and ears open for signs of conflict among group members and ideally intervene before it escalates. For example, the harmonizer may sense that one group member’s critique of another member’s idea was not received positively, and he or she may be able to rephrase the critique in a more constructive way, which can help diminish the other group member’s defensiveness. Harmonizers also deescalate conflict once it has already started—for example, by suggesting that the group take a break and then mediating between group members in a side conversation.

These actions can help prevent conflict from spilling over into other group interactions. In cases where the whole group experiences conflict, the harmonizer may help lead the group in perception-checking discussions that help members see an issue from multiple perspectives. For a harmonizer to be effective, he or she must be viewed as impartial and committed to the group as a whole rather than to one side, person, or faction within the larger group. A special kind of harmonizer that helps manage cultural differences within the group is the interpreter.

Interpreter

An interpreter helps manage the diversity within a group by mediating intercultural conflict, articulating common ground between different people, and generally creating a climate where difference is seen as an opportunity rather than as something to be feared (Koch, 2013). Just as an interpreter at the United Nations acts as a bridge between two different languages, the interpreter can bridge identity differences between group members. Interpreters can help perform the other maintenance roles discussed with a special awareness of and sensitivity toward cultural differences. Interpreters, because of their cultural sensitivity, may also take a proactive role to help address conflict before it emerges—for example, by taking a group member aside and explaining why his or her behavior or comments may be perceived as offensive.

Negative Roles and Behaviors

Group communication scholars began exploring the negative side of group member roles more than sixty years ago (Benne & Sheats, 1948). Studying these negative roles can help us analyze group interactions and potentially better understand why some groups are more successful than others are. It is important to acknowledge that we all perform some negative behaviors within groups but that those behaviors do not necessarily constitute a role. A person may temporarily monopolize a discussion to bring attention to his or her idea. If that behavior gets the attention of the group members and makes them realize they were misinformed or headed in a negative direction, then that behavior may have been warranted. Group members may enact negative behaviors with varying degrees of intensity and regularity, and their effects may range from mild annoyance to group failure. In general, the effects grow increasingly negative as they increase in intensity and frequency.

Self-Centered Roles Central Negative

The central negative argues against most of the ideas and proposals discussed in the group and often emerges because of a leadership challenge during group formation. The failed attempt to lead the group can lead to feelings of resentment toward the leader and/or the purpose of the group, which then manifest in negative behaviors that delay, divert, or block the group’s progress toward achieving its goal. This scenario is unfortunate because the central negative is typically a motivated and intelligent group member who can benefit the group if properly handled by the group leader or other members. Group communication scholars suggest that the group leader or leaders actively incorporate central negatives into group tasks and responsibilities to make them feel valued and to help diminish any residual anger, disappointment, or hurt feelings from the leadership conflict (Bormann & Bormann, 1988). Otherwise, the central negative will continue to argue against the proposals and decisions of the group, even when they may agree. In some cases, the central negative may unintentionally serve a beneficial function if his or her criticisms prevent groupthink.

Monopolizer

The monopolizer is a group member who makes excessive verbal contributions, preventing equal participation by other group members. In short, monopolizers like to hear the sound of their own voice and do not follow typical norms for conversational turn taking. Some people who are well-informed, charismatic, and competent communicators can get away with impromptu lectures and long stories, but monopolizers do not possess the magnetic qualities of such people. A group member’s excessive verbal contributions are more likely to be labeled as monopolizing when they are not related to the task or when they provide unnecessary or redundant elaboration. Some monopolizers do not intentionally speak for longer than they should. Instead, they think they are making a genuine contribution to the group. These folks likely lack sensitivity to nonverbal cues, or they would see that other group members are tired of listening or annoyed. Other monopolizers just like to talk and do not care what others think. Some may be trying to make up for a lack of knowledge or experience. This type of monopolizer is best described as a dilettante, or an amateur who tries to pass himself or herself off as an expert.

Several subgroups of behaviors fall under the monopolizer’s role. The “stage hog” monopolizes discussion with excessive verbal contributions and engages in one-upping and narcissistic listening. Gaining an advantage over is a spotlight-stealing strategy in which people try to verbally “out-do” others by saying something like “You think that’s bad? Listen to what happened to me!” They also listen to others in order to find something they can connect back to themselves, not to understand the message. The stage hog is like the diva that refuses to leave the stage to let the next performer begin. Unlike a monopolizer, who may engage in his or her behaviors unknowingly, stage hogs are usually aware of what they are doing.

The “egghead” monopolizes the discussion with excessive contributions based in actual knowledge. However, those contributions exceed the level of understanding of other group members or the needs of the group (Cragan & Wright, 1999). The egghead is different from the dilettante monopolizer discussed earlier because this person has genuine knowledge and expertise on a subject, which may be useful to the group. Nevertheless, like the monopolizer and stage hog, the egghead’s excessive contributions draw attention away from the task, slow the group down, and may contribute to a negative group climate. The egghead may be like an absentminded professor who is smart but lacks the social sensitivity to tell when he or she has said enough and is now starting to annoy other group members. This type of egghead naively believes that other group members care as much about the subject as he or she does.

The second type of egghead is more pompous and monopolizes the discussion to flaunt his or her intellectual superiority. While the group may tolerate the first type of egghead to a point, the group may perceive the second type of egghead more negatively and as one who will hurt the group. In general, the egghead’s advanced subject knowledge and excessive contributions can hurt the group’s potential for synergy, since other group members may defer to the egghead expert, which can diminish the creativity that comes from outside and non-expert perspectives.

13.2 Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups

Group problem solving.

The problem-solving process involves thoughts, discussions, actions, and decisions that occur from the first consideration of a problematic situation to the goal. The problems that groups face are varied, but some common problems include budgeting funds, raising funds, planning events, addressing customer or citizen complaints, creating or adapting products or services to fit needs, supporting members, and raising awareness about issues or causes. Problems of all sorts have three common components (Adams & Galanes, 2009):

• An undesirable situation. When conditions are desirable, there is not a problem.
• A desired situation. Even though it may only be a vague idea, there is a drive to better the undesirable situation. The vague idea may develop into a more precise goal that can be achieved, although solutions are not yet generated.
• Obstacles between undesirable and desirable situation. These things stand in the way between the current situation and the group’s goal of addressing it. This component of a problem requires the most work, and it is the part where decision-making occurs. Some examples of obstacles include limited funding, resources, personnel, time, or information. Obstacles can also take the form of people who are working against the group, including people resistant to change or people who disagree.

Discussion of these three elements of a problem helps the group tailor its problem-solving process, as each problem will vary. While these three general elements are present in each problem, the group should also address specific characteristics of the problem. Five common and important characteristics to consider are task difficulty, number of possible solutions, group member interest in problem, group member familiarity with problem, and the need for solution acceptance (Adams & Galanes, 2009).

• Task difficulty. Difficult tasks are also typically more complex. Groups should be prepared to spend time researching and discussing a difficult and complex task in order to develop a shared foundational knowledge. This typically requires individual work outside of the group and frequent group meetings to share information.
• Number of possible solutions. There are usually multiple ways to solve a problem or complete a task, but some problems have more potential solutions than others do. Figuring out how to prepare a beach house for an approaching hurricane is fairly complex and difficult, but there are still a limited number of things to do—for example, taping and boarding up windows; turning off water, electricity, and gas; trimming trees; and securing loose outside objects. Other problems may require more creativity. For example, designing a new restaurant may entail using some standard solutions but could also entail many different types of innovation with layout and design.
• Group member interest in problem. When group members are interested in the problem, they will be more engaged with the problem-solving process and invested in finding a quality solution. Groups with high interest in and knowledge about the problem may want more freedom to develop and implement solutions, while groups with low interest may prefer a leader who provides structure and direction.
• Group familiarity with problem. Some groups encounter a problem regularly, while other problems are unique or unexpected. A family who has lived in hurricane alley for decades probably has a better idea of how to prepare its house for a hurricane than does a family that just recently moved from the Midwest. Many groups that rely on funding have to revisit a budget every year, and in recent years, groups have had to get more creative with budgets due to funding cuts in nearly every sector. When group members are not familiar with a problem, they will need to do background research on what similar groups have done. They may want to bring in outside experts.
• Need for solution acceptance. In this step, groups must consider how many people the decision will affect and how much “buy-in” from others the group needs in order implement their solution successfully. Some small groups have many stakeholders on whom the success of a solution depends. Other groups are answerable only to themselves. In such cases, groups will want to poll those who will be affected by the solution. They may want to do a pilot implementation to see how people react. Imposing an excellent solution that does not have buy-in from stakeholders can still lead to failure.

Group Problem-Solving Process

There are several variations of similar problem-solving models based on scholar John Dewey’s reflective thinking process (Bormann & Bormann, 1988). As you read the steps in the process, think about how you can apply what we learned regarding the general and specific elements of problems.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Define the problem by considering the three elements shared by every problem: the current undesirable situation, the goal or more desirable situation, and obstacles in the way (Adams & Galanes, 2009). At this stage, group members share what they know about the current situation, without proposing solutions or evaluating the information. Here are some questions to ask during this stage: What is the current difficulty? How did we come to know that the difficulty exists? Who or what is involved? Why is it meaningful/urgent/important? What have the effects been so far? What, if any, elements of the difficulty require clarification?

At the end of this stage, the group should be able to compose a single sentence that summarizes the problem called a problem statement . Avoid wording in the problem statement or question that hints at potential solutions. A small group formed to investigate ethical violations of city officials could use the following problem statement: “Our state does not currently have a mechanism for citizens to report suspected ethical violations by city officials.”

Step 2: Analyze the Problem

During this step, a group should analyze the problem and the group’s relationship to the problem. Whereas the first step involved exploring the “what” related to the problem, this step focuses on the “why.” At this stage, group members can discuss the potential causes of the difficulty. Group members may also want to begin setting out an agenda or timeline for the group’s problem-solving process, looking forward to the other steps. To analyze the problem, the group can discuss the five common problem variables discussed before. Here are two examples of questions that the group formed to address ethics violations might ask: Why doesn’t our city have an ethics reporting mechanism? Do cities of similar size have such a mechanism? Once the problem has been analyzed, the group can pose a problem question that will guide the group as it generates possible solutions. “How can citizens report suspected ethical violations of city officials and how will such reports be processed and addressed?” As you can see, the problem question is more complex than the problem statement, since the group has moved on to more in-depth discussion of the problem during step 2.

Step 3: Generate Possible Solutions

During this step, group members generate possible solutions to the problem. Again, do not evaluate solutions at this point, only propose and clarify. The question should be what could we do to address this problem, not what should we do to address it? It is perfectly OK for a group member to question another person’s idea by asking something like “What do you mean?” or “Could you explain your reasoning more?” Discussions at this stage may reveal a need to return to previous steps to better define or more fully analyze a problem. Since many problems are multifaceted, it is necessary for group members to generate solutions for each part of the problem separately, making sure to have multiple solutions for each part. Stopping the solution-generating process prematurely can lead to groupthink.

Step 4: Evaluate Solutions

During this step, solutions can be critically evaluated based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed based on differences in relevance and/or merit, the group should analyze each solution based on its potential effects—especially negative effects. Groups that are required to report the rationale for their decision or whose decisions may be subject to public scrutiny would be wise to make a set list of criteria for evaluating each solution.

Additionally, solutions can be evaluated based on how well they fit with the group’s charge and the abilities of the group. To do this, group members may ask, “Does this solution live up to the original purpose or mission of the group?” “Can the solution actually be implemented with our current resources and connections?” “How will this solution be supported, funded, enforced, and assessed?” Secondary tensions and substantive conflict, two concepts discussed earlier, emerge during this step of problem solving, and group members will need to employ effective critical thinking and listening skills.

Decision-making is part of the larger process of problem solving and it plays a prominent role in this step. While there are several similar models for problem solving, groups can use many varied decision-making techniques. For example, to narrow the list of proposed solutions, group members may decide by majority vote, by weighing the pros and cons, or by discussing them until they reach a consensus. There are also more complex decision-making models like the “six hats method,” which we will discuss later. Once the group reaches a final decision, the group leader or facilitator should confirm that the group agrees. It may be beneficial to let the group break for a while or even to delay the final decision until a later meeting to allow people time to evaluate it outside of the group context.

Step 5: Implement and Assess the Solution

Implementing the solution requires some advanced planning, and it should not be rushed unless the group is operating under strict time restraints or a delay may lead to some kind of harm. Although some solutions can be implemented immediately, others may take days, months, or years. As was noted earlier, it may be beneficial for groups to poll those who will be affected by the solution as to their opinion of it or even to do a pilot test to observe the effectiveness of the solution and how people react to it. Before implementation, groups should also determine how and when they would assess the effectiveness of the solution by asking, “How will we know if the solution is working or not?” Since solution assessment will vary based on whether or not the group is disbanded, groups should also consider the following questions: If the group disbands after implementation, who will be responsible for assessing the solution? If the solution fails, will the same group reconvene? Will a new group be formed?

Certain elements of the solution may need to be delegated to various people inside and outside the group. Group members may also be assigned to implement a particular part of the solution based on their role or because it connects to their area of expertise. Likewise, group members may be tasked with publicizing the solution or “selling” it to a particular group of stakeholders. Last, the group should consider its future. In some cases, the group will get to decide if it will stay together and continue working on other tasks or if it will disband. In other cases, outside forces determine the group’s fate.

Decision Making in Groups

We all engage in personal decision making daily, and we all know that some decisions are more difficult than others are. When we make decisions in groups, we face some challenges that we do not face in our personal decision-making, but we also stand to benefit from some advantages of group decision-making (Napier & Gershenfeld, 2004). Group decision making can appear fair and democratic but really only be a gesture that covers up the fact that certain group members or the group leader have already decided. Group decision making also takes more time than individual decisions and can be burdensome if some group members do not do their assigned work, divert the group with self-centered or unproductive role behaviors, or miss meetings.

Conversely, though, group decisions are often more informed, since all group members develop a shared understanding of a problem through discussion and debate. The shared understanding may also be more complex and deep than what an individual would develop, because group members expose themselves to a variety of viewpoints that can broaden their own perspectives. Group decisions also benefit from synergy, one of the key advantages of group communication that we discussed earlier. Most groups do not use a specific method of decision-making, perhaps thinking that they will work things out as they go. This can lead to unequal participation, social loafing, premature decisions, prolonged discussion, and a host of other negative consequences. Therefore, in this section we will learn some practices that will prepare us for good decision-making and some specific techniques we can use to help us reach a final decision.

Brainstorming Before Decision Making

Before groups can make a decision, they need to generate possible solutions to their problem. The most commonly used method is brainstorming, although most people do not follow the recommended steps of brainstorming. As you will recall, brainstorming refers to the quick generation of ideas free of evaluation. The originator of the term brainstorming said the following four rules must be followed for the technique to be effective (Osborn, 1959):

• Evaluation of ideas is forbidden.
• Wild and crazy ideas are encouraged.
• Quantity of ideas, not quality, is the goal.
• New combinations of ideas presented are encouraged.

To make brainstorming more of a decision-making method rather than an idea-generating method, group communication scholars have suggested additional steps that precede and follow brainstorming (Cragan & Wright, 1991).

• Do a warm-up brainstorming session. Some people are more apprehensive about publicly communicating their ideas than others are, and a warm-up session can help ease apprehension and prime group members for task-related idea generation. Anyone in the group can initiate the short warm-up. To get things started, a person could ask, “If our group formed a band, what would we be called?” or “What other purposes could a mailbox serve?” In the previous examples, the first warm up gets the group’s creative juices flowing, while the second focuses more on practical and concrete ideas.
• Do the actual brainstorming session. This session should not last more than thirty minutes and should follow the four rules of brainstorming mentioned previously. In order to realize the fourth rule, the facilitator could encourage people to piggyback off each other’s ideas.
• Eliminate duplicate ideas. After the brainstorming session is over, group members can eliminate (without evaluating) ideas that are the same or very similar.
• Clarify, organize, and evaluate ideas. Before evaluation, see if any ideas need clarification. Then try to theme or group ideas together in some orderly fashion. Since “wild and crazy” ideas are encouraged, some suggestions may need clarification. If it becomes clear that there is not really a foundation to an idea and that it is too vague or abstract, it may be eliminated. As a caution, though, it may be wise not to throw out off-the-wall ideas that are hard to categorize and instead put them in a miscellaneous or “wild and crazy” category.

Discussion Before Decision Making

The nominal group technique guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members (Delbecq & Van de Ven, 1971). This method is useful because the procedure involves all group members systematically, which fixes the problem of uneven participation during discussions. Since everyone contributes to the discussion, this method can also help reduce instances of social loafing. To use the nominal group technique, do the following:

• Silently and individually, list ideas.
• Create a master list of ideas.
• Clarify ideas as needed.
• Take a secret vote to rank group members’ acceptance of ideas.

During the first step, have group members work quietly, in the same space, to write down every idea they have to address the task or problem they face. This should not take more than twenty minutes. Whoever is facilitating the discussion should remind group members to use brainstorming techniques, which means they should not evaluate ideas as they are generated. Ask group members to remain silent once they have finished their list so they do not distract others.

During the second step, the facilitator goes around the group in a consistent order asking each person to share one idea at a time. As the idea is shared, the facilitator records it on a master list that everyone can see. Keep track of how many times each idea comes up, as that could be an idea that warrants more discussion. Continue this process until all the ideas have been shared. As a note to facilitators, some group members may begin to edit their list or self-censor when asked to provide one of their ideas. To limit a person’s apprehension with sharing his or her ideas and to ensure that each idea is shared, I have asked group members to exchange lists with someone else so they can share ideas from the list they receive without fear of being judged.

During step three, the facilitator should note that group members could now ask for clarification on ideas on the master list. Do not let this discussion stray into evaluation of ideas. To help avoid an unnecessarily long discussion, it may be useful to go from one person to the next to ask which ideas need clarifying and then go to the originator(s) of the idea in question for clarification.

During the fourth step, members use a voting ballot to rank the acceptability of the ideas on the master list. If the list is long, you may ask group members to rank only their top five or so choices. The facilitator then takes up the secret ballots and reviews them in a random order, noting the rankings of each idea. Ideally, the highest ranked idea can then be discussed and decided on. The nominal group technique does not carry a group all the way through to the point of decision; rather, it sets the group up for a roundtable discussion or use of some other method to evaluate the merits of the top ideas.

Specific Decision-Making Techniques

Some decision-making techniques involve determining a course of action based on the level of agreement among the group members. These methods include majority, expert, authority, and consensus rule. Table 14.1 “Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques” reviews the pros and cons of each of these methods.

Majority rule is a commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before making a decision (Schippers & Rus, 2021). A show-of-hands vote, a paper ballot, or an electronic voting system can determine the majority choice. Many decision-making bodies, including the US House of Representatives, Senate, and Supreme Court, use majority rule to make decisions, which shows that it is often associated with democratic decision making, since each person gets one vote and each vote counts equally. Of course, other individuals and mediated messages can influence a person’s vote, but since the voting power is spread among all group members, it is not easy for one person or party to take control of the decision-making process. In some cases—for example, to override a presidential veto or to amend the constitution—a super majority of two-thirds may be required to make a decision.

Minority rule is a decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members. When a designated expert makes a decision by minority rule, there may be buy-in from others in the group, especially if the members of the group did not have relevant knowledge or expertise. When a designated authority makes decisions, buy-in will vary based on group members’ level of respect for the authority. For example, decisions made by an elected authority may be more accepted by those who elected him or her than by those who did not. As with majority rule, this technique can be time saving. Unlike majority rule, one person or party can have control over the decision-making process.

This type of decision-making is more similar to that used by monarchs and dictators. An obvious negative consequence of this method is that the needs or wants of one person can override the needs and wants of the majority. A minority deciding for the majority has led to negative consequences throughout history. The white Afrikaner minority that ruled South Africa for decades instituted apartheid, which was a system of racial segregation that disenfranchised and oppressed the majority population. The quality of the decision and its fairness really depends on the designated expert or authority.

Consensus rule is a decision-making technique in which all members of the group must agree on the same decision. On rare occasions, a decision may be ideal for all group members, which can lead to unanimous agreement without further debate and discussion. Although this can be positive, be cautious that this is not a sign of groupthink. More typically, groups reach consensus only after lengthy discussion. On the plus side, consensus often leads to high-quality decisions due to the time and effort it takes to get everyone in agreement. Group members are also more likely to be committed to the decision because of their investment in reaching it. On the negative side, the ultimate decision is often one that all group members can live with but not one that is ideal for all members. Additionally, the process of arriving at consensus also includes conflict, as people debate ideas and negotiate the interpersonal tensions that may result.

[table id=10 /]

Influences on Decision Making

Many factors influence the decision-making process. For example, how might a group’s independence or access to resources affect the decisions they make? What potential advantages and disadvantages come with decisions made by groups that are more or less similar in terms of personality and cultural identities? In this section, we will explore how situational, personality, and cultural influences affect decision making in groups.

Situational Influences on Decision-Making

A group’s situational context affects decision-making (Franken & Muris, 2005). One key situational element is the degree of freedom that the group has to make its own decisions, secure its own resources, and initiate its own actions. Some groups have to go through multiple approval processes before they can do anything, while others are self-directed, self-governing, and self-sustaining. Another situational influence is uncertainty. In general, groups deal with more uncertainty in decision-making than do individuals because of the increased number of variables that comes with adding more people to a situation. Individual group members cannot know what other group members are thinking, whether they are doing their work, and how committed they are to the group. Therefore, the size of a group is a powerful situational influence, as it adds to uncertainty and complicates communication.

Access to information also influences a group. First, the nature of the group’s task or problem affects its ability to get information. Group members can more easily make decisions about a problem when other groups have similarly experienced it. Even if the problem is complex and serious, the group can learn from other situations and apply what it learns. Second, the group must have access to flows of information. Access to archives, electronic databases, and individuals with relevant experience is necessary to obtain any relevant information about similar problems or to do research on a new or unique problem. In this regard, group members’ formal and information network connections also become important situational influences.

The origin and urgency of a problem are also situational factors that influence decision-making. In terms of origin, problems usually occur in one of four ways:

• Something goes wrong. Group members must decide how to fix or stop something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that half of the building is contaminated with mold and must be closed down.
• Expectations change or increase. Group members must innovate more efficient or effective ways of doing something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that the district they are responsible for is being expanded.
• Something goes wrong and expectations change or increase. Group members must fix/stop and become more efficient/effective. Example—the firehouse crew has to close half the building and must start responding to more calls due to the expanding district.
• The problem existed from the beginning. Group members must go back to the origins of the situation, walk through and analyze the steps again to decide what can be done differently. Example—a firehouse crew has consistently had to work with minimal resources in terms of building space and firefighting tools.

In each of the cases, the need for a decision may be more or less urgent depending on how badly something is going wrong, how high the expectations have been raised, or the degree to which people are fed up with a broken system. Decisions must be made in situations ranging from crisis level to mundane.

Cultural Context and Decision-Making

Just like neighborhoods, schools, and countries, small groups vary in terms of their degree of similarity and difference. Demographic changes in the United States and increases in technology that can bring different people together make it more likely that we will be interacting in more and more heterogeneous groups (Allen, 2011). Some small groups are more homogenous, meaning the members are more similar, and some are more heterogeneous, meaning the members are more different. Diversity and difference within groups has advantages and disadvantages. In terms of advantages, research finds that, in general, culturally heterogeneous groups perform better than more homogenous groups (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999).

Additionally, when group members have time to get to know each other and competently communicate across their differences, the advantages of diversity include better decision making due to different perspectives (Thomas, 1999). Unfortunately, groups often operate under time constraints and other pressures that make the possibility for intercultural dialogue and understanding difficult. The main disadvantage of heterogeneous groups is the possibility for conflict, but since all groups experience conflict, this is not solely due to the presence of diversity. We will now look more specifically at how some of the cultural value orientations we have learned about already in this text can play out in groups with international diversity and how domestic diversity in terms of demographics can influence group decision making.

International Diversity in Group Interactions

Cultural value orientations such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles all manifest on a continuum of communication behaviors and can influence group decision making (Yates & de Oliveira, 2016). Group members from individualistic cultures are more likely to value task-oriented, efficient, and direct communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as dividing tasks into individual projects before collaboration begins and then openly debating ideas during discussion and decision-making. Additionally, people from cultures that value individualism are more likely to express dissent from a decision, essentially expressing their disagreement with the group. Group members from collectivistic cultures are more likely to value relationships over the task. Because of this, they also tend to value conformity and face-saving (i.e., indirect) communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as establishing norms that include periods of socializing to build relationships before task-oriented communication (like negotiations) begins or norms that limit public disagreement in favor of more indirect communication that doesn’t challenge the face of other group members or the group’s leader. In a group composed of people from a collectivistic culture, each member would likely play harmonizing roles, looking for signs of conflict and resolving them before they become public.

Power distance can also affect group interactions. Some cultures rank higher on power-distance scales, meaning they value hierarchy, make decisions based on status, and believe that people have a set place in society that is unchangeable. Group members from high-power-distance cultures would likely appreciate a strong designated leader who exhibits a more directive leadership style and prefer groups in which members have clear and assigned roles. In a group that is homogenous in terms of having a high-power-distance orientation, members with higher status would be able to openly provide information, and those with lower status may not provide information unless a higher status member explicitly seeks it from them. Low-power-distance cultures do not place as much value and meaning on status and believe that all group members can participate in decision-making. Group members from low-power-distance cultures would likely freely speak their mind during a group meeting and prefer a participative leadership style.

How much meaning is conveyed through the context surrounding verbal communication can also affect group communication. Some cultures have a high-context communication style in which much of the meaning in an interaction is conveyed through context such as nonverbal cues and silence. Group members from high-context cultures may avoid saying something directly, assuming that other group members will understand the intended meaning even if the message is indirect. Therefore, if someone disagrees with a proposed course of action, he or she may say, “Let’s discuss this tomorrow,” and mean, “I don’t think we should do this.” Such indirect communication is also a face-saving strategy that is common in collectivistic cultures. Other cultures have a low-context communication style that places more importance on the meaning conveyed through words than through context or nonverbal cues. Group members from low-context cultures often say what they mean and mean what they say. For example, if someone does not like an idea, they might say, “I think we should consider more options. This one doesn’t seem like the best we can do.”

In any of these cases, an individual from one culture operating in a group with people of a different cultural orientation could adapt to the expectations of the host culture, especially if that person possesses a high degree of intercultural communication competence (ICC). Additionally, people with high ICC can also adapt to a group member with a different cultural orientation than the host culture. Even though these cultural orientations connect to values that affect our communication in consistent ways, individuals may exhibit different communication behaviors depending on their own individual communication style and the situation.

Domestic Diversity and Group Communication

While it is becoming more likely that we will interact in small groups with international diversity, we are guaranteed to interact in groups that are diverse in terms of the cultural identities found within a single country or the subcultures found within a larger cultural group.

Gender stereotypes sometimes influence the roles that people play within a group. For example, the stereotype that women are more nurturing than men may lead group members (both male and female) to expect that women will play the role of supporters or harmonizers within the group (Hentschel, Heilman, & Peus, 2019). Since women have primarily performed secretarial work since the 1900s, it may also be expected that women will play the role of recorder. In both of these cases, stereotypical notions of gender place women in roles that are typically not as valued in group communication. The opposite is true for men. In terms of leadership, despite notable exceptions, research shows that men fill an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of leadership positions. We are socialized to see certain behaviors by men as indicative of leadership abilities, even though they may not be. For example, men are often perceived to contribute more to a group because they tend to speak first when asked a question or to fill a silence and are perceived to talk more about task-related matters than relationally oriented matters.

Both of these tendencies create a perception that men are more engaged with the task. Men are also socialized to be more competitive and self-congratulatory, meaning that their communication may be seen as dedicated and their behaviors seen as powerful, and that when their work isn’t noticed they will be more likely to make it known to the group rather than take silent credit. Even though we know that the relational elements of a group are crucial for success, even in high-performance teams, that work is not as valued in our society as the task-related work.

Despite the fact that some communication patterns and behaviors related to our typical (and stereotypical) gender socialization affect how we interact in and form perceptions of others in groups, the differences in group communication that used to be attributed to gender in early group communication research seem to be diminishing. This is likely due to the changing organizational cultures from which much group work emerges, which have now had more than sixty years to adjust to women in the workplace. It is also due to a more nuanced understanding of gender-based research, which does not take a stereotypical view from the beginning as many of the early male researchers did.

Now, instead of assuming biological sex is a factor that creates inherent communication differences, group communication scholars see that men and women both exhibit a range of behaviors that are more or less feminine or masculine. It is these gendered behaviors, and not a person’s gender, that seem to have more of an influence on perceptions of group communication. Interestingly, group interactions are still masculinist in that male and female group members prefer a more masculine communication style for task leaders and that both males and females in this role are more likely to adapt to a more masculine communication style. Conversely, men who take on social-emotional leadership behaviors adopt a more feminine communication style. In short, it seems that although masculine communication traits are more often associated with high status positions in groups, both men and women adapt to this expectation and are evaluated similarly (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999).

In terms of age, for the first time since industrialization began, it is common to have three generations of people (and sometimes four) working side by side in an organizational setting. Although four generations often worked together in early factories, they were segregated based on their age group, and a hierarchy existed with older workers at the top and younger workers at the bottom. Today, however, generations interact regularly, and it is common for an older person to have a leader or supervisor who is younger than him or her (Allen, 2011). The current generations in the US workplace and consequently in work-based groups include the following:

• The Silent Generation. Born between 1925 and 1942, currently in their mid-60s to mid-80s, this is the smallest generation in the workforce right now, as many have retired or left for other reasons. This generation includes people who were born during the Great Depression or the early part of World War II, many of whom later fought in the Korean War (Clarke, 1970).
• The Baby Boomers. Born between 1946 and 1964, currently in their late forties to mid-60s, this is the largest generation in the workforce right now. Baby boomers are the most populous generation born in US history, and they are working longer than previous generations, which means they will remain the predominant force in organizations for ten to twenty more years.
• Generation X. Born between 1965 and 1981, currently in their early thirties to mid-40s, this generation was the first to see technology like cell phones and the Internet make its way into classrooms and our daily lives. Compared to previous generations, “Gen-Xers” are more diverse in terms of race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation and have a greater appreciation for and understanding of diversity.
• Generation Y. Born between 1982 and 2000, “Millennials” as they are also called are currently in their late teens up to about thirty years old. This generation is not as likely to remember a time without technology such as computers and cell phones. They are just entering into the workforce and have been greatly affected by recent economic crises. They are experiencing significantly high unemployment rates.

The benefits and challenges that come with diversity of group members are important to consider. Since we will all work in diverse groups, we should be prepared to address potential challenges in order to reap the benefits. Diverse groups may be wise to coordinate social interactions outside of group time in order to find common ground that can help facilitate interaction and increase group cohesion. We should be sensitive but not let sensitivity create fear of “doing something wrong” that then prevents us from having meaningful interactions.

Figure 13.1: Social-emotional leaders are reflective thinkers who use their perception skills to analyze group dynamics and maintain a positive climate. Dim Hou. 2019. Unsplash license . https://unsplash.com/photos/2P6Q7_uiDr0

Figure 13.2: Common components of group problems. Kindred Grey. 2022. CC BY 4.0 .

Figure 13.3: The group problem-solving process. Kindred Grey. 2022. CC BY 4.0 .

Figure 13.4: Brainstorming is a good way to generate possible solutions to a problem. Below are some suggestions to make brainstorming more of a decision-making method. Monstera. 2021. Pexels license . https://www.pexels.com/photo/excited-black-woman-using-laptop-9429552/

Figure 13.5: Culturally heterogeneous groups perform better than more homogenous groups. fauxels. 2019. Pexels license . https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-near-wooden-table-3184418/

Figure 13.6: It is common to have different generations working together in an organizational setting. Rendy Novantino. 2021. Unsplash license . https://unsplash.com/photos/wJoRe38l8fc

Section 13.1

Benne, K. D., & Sheats, P. (1948). Functional roles of group members. Journal of Social Issues 4(2), 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1948.tb01783.x

Bormann, E. G., & Bormann, N.C., (1988). Effective small group communication ( 4th ed.). Burgess International Group.

Burke, C. S., Georganta, E., & Marlow, S. (2019). A bottom up perspective to understanding the dynamics of team roles in mission critical teams. Frontiers in psychology , 10 , 1322. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01322

Cragan, J. F., & Wright, D. W. (1991). Communication in small group discussions: An integrated approach (3rd ed.). West Publishing.

Koch, A. (2013, October 24). Individual roles in groups . https://prezi.com/gmbfihtzyjg4/individual-roles-in-groups/

Pavitt, C. (1999). Theorizing about the group communication-leadership relationship. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), The handbook of group communication Theory and research (pp. 313-334). Sage.

Section 13.2

Adams, K., and Galanes, G. (2009). Communicating in groups: Applications and skills (7th ed.). McGraw Hill.

Allen, B. J. (2011). Difference matters: Communicating social identity (2nd ed.). Waveland Press.

Clarke, G. (1970, June 29). The silent generation revisited. Time, 95 (26), 38-40.

Delbecq, A. L., & Van de Ven, A. H. (1971). A group process model for problem identification and program planning. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science , 7 (4), 466–492. https://doi.org/10.1177/002188637100700404

Franken, I. H. A., and Muris, P. (2005). Individual differences in decision-making. Personality and Individual Differences, 39 (5), 991–998. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.04.004

Haslett, B.B., Ruebush, J. (1999). What differences do individual differences in groups make? The effects of individuals, culture, and group composition. In L. R. Frey, D. S. Gouran, & M. S. Poole (Eds.), The handbook of group communication theory and research (pp. 115–138). Sage.

Hentschel, T., Heilman, M. E., & Peus, C. V. (2019). The multiple dimensions of gender stereotypes: A current look at men’s and women’s characterizations of others and themselves. Frontiers in Psychology , 10 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00011

Napier, R. W., & Gershenfeld, M. K. (2004). Groups: Theory and experience (7th ed.). Houghton Mifflin.

Osborn, A. F. (1959). Applied imagination. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Schippers, M. C., & Rus, D. C. (2021). Majority decision-making works best under conditions of leadership ambiguity and shared task representations. Frontiers in Psychology , 12 , 519295. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.519295

Stanton, C. (2009, November 3). How to deliver group presentations: The unified team approach . http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/group-presentations-unified-team-approach/

Thomas, D. C. (1999). Cultural diversity and work group effectiveness: An experimental study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 30(2), 242–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022199030002006

Yates, J. F., & de Oliveira, S. (2016). Culture and decision making. Organizational behavior and human decision processes , 136 , 106–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2016.05.003

A task-related role that functions to keep the group on track toward completing its task by managing the agenda and setting and assessing goals in order to monitor the group’s progress

This role includes behaviors that are more evenly shared compared to other roles, as ideally, all group members present new ideas, initiate discussions of new topics, and contribute their own relevant knowledge and experiences

The person who has this task-related role asks for more information, elaboration, or clarification on items relevant to the group’s task

This person manages the flow of conversation in a group in order to achieve an appropriate balance so that all group members get to participate in a meaningful way

The person who takes notes on the discussion and activities that occur during a group meeting. This role is the only role that is limited to one person at a time

A maintenance role that is characterized by communication behaviors that encourage other group members and provide emotional support as needed

Group members who help manage the various types of group conflict that emerge during group communication, they keep their eyes and ears open for signs of conflict among group members and ideally intervene before it escalates

This person helps manage the diversity within a group by mediating intercultural conflict, articulating common ground between different people, and generally creating a climate where difference is seen as an opportunity rather than as something to be feared

A group member who makes excessive verbal contributions preventing equal participation by other group members. Can include the “egghead” and the “stage hog.”

This technique guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members

A commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before making the decision

A decision making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members

A decision-making technique in which all members of the group must agree on the same decision

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5.3 Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups

Learning Objectives

• Discuss the common components of problems.
• Explain the five steps of the group problem-solving process.
• Describe the brainstorming and discussion that should take place before the group makes a decision.
• Compare and contrast the different decision-making techniques.
• Discuss the various influences on decision making.

Although the steps of problem solving and decision making that we will discuss next may seem obvious, we often don’t think to or choose not to use them. Instead, we start working on a problem and later realize we are lost and have to backtrack. I’m sure we’ve all reached a point in a project or task and had the “OK, now what?” moment. It’s frustrating to get to a crucial point in building or fixing something only to realize that you have to unscrew a support board that you already screwed in, have to drive back to the hardware store to get something that you didn’t think to get earlier, or have to completely start over. In this section, we will discuss the group problem-solving process, methods of decision making, and influences on these processes.

Group Problem Solving

The problem-solving process involves thoughts, discussions, actions, and decisions that occur from the first consideration of a problematic situation to the goal. The problems that groups face are varied, but they all share some common components.

Problems of all sorts have three common components (Adams & Galanes, 2009):

• An undesirable situation. When conditions are desirable, there isn’t a problem.
• A desired situation. Even though it may only be a vague idea, there is a drive to better the undesirable situation. The vague idea may develop into a more precise goal that can be achieved, although solutions are not yet generated.
• Obstacles between undesirable and desirable situation. These are things that stand in the way between the current situation and the group’s goal of addressing it. This component of a problem requires the most work, and it is the part where decision making occurs. Some examples of obstacles include limited funding, resources, personnel, time, or information. Obstacles can also take the form of people who are working against the group, including people resistant to change or people who disagree.

Discussion of these three elements of a problem helps the group tailor its problem-solving process, as each problem will vary.

Group Problem-Solving Process

There are several variations of similar problem-solving models based on US American scholar John Dewey’s reflective thinking process (Bormann & Bormann, 1988). As you read through the steps in the process, think about how you can apply what we learned regarding the general and specific elements of problems. Some of the following steps are straightforward, and they are things we would logically do when faced with a problem. However, taking a deliberate and systematic approach to problem solving has been shown to benefit group functioning and performance. A deliberate approach is especially beneficial for groups that do not have an established history of working together and will only be able to meet occasionally. Although a group should attend to each step of the process, group leaders or other group members who facilitate problem solving should be cautious not to dogmatically follow each element of the process or force a group along. Such a lack of flexibility could limit group member input and negatively affect the group’s cohesion and climate.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Define the problem by considering the three elements shared by every problem: the current undesirable situation, the goal or more desirable situation, and obstacles in the way (Adams & Galanes, 2009). At this stage, group members share what they know about the current situation, without proposing solutions or evaluating the information. Here are some good questions to ask during this stage: What is the current difficulty? How did we come to know that the difficulty exists? Who/what is involved? Why is it meaningful/urgent/important? What have the effects been so far? What, if any, elements of the difficulty require clarification? At the end of this stage, the group should be able to compose a single sentence that summarizes the problem called a problem statement . Avoid wording in the problem statement or question that hints at potential solutions. A small group formed to investigate ethical violations of city officials could use the following problem statement: “Our state does not currently have a mechanism for citizens to report suspected ethical violations by city officials.”

Step 2: Analyze the Problem

During this step a group should analyze the problem and the group’s relationship to the problem. Whereas the first step involved exploring the “what” related to the problem, this step focuses on the “why.” At this stage, group members can discuss the potential causes of the difficulty. Group members may also want to begin setting out an agenda or timeline for the group’s problem-solving process, looking forward to the other steps. To fully analyze the problem, the group can discuss the five common problem variables discussed before. Here are two examples of questions that the group formed to address ethics violations might ask: Why doesn’t our city have an ethics reporting mechanism? Do cities of similar size have such a mechanism? Once the problem has been analyzed, the group can pose a problem question that will guide the group as it generates possible solutions. “How can citizens report suspected ethical violations of city officials and how will such reports be processed and addressed?” As you can see, the problem question is more complex than the problem statement, since the group has moved on to more in-depth discussion of the problem during step 2.

Step 3: Generate Possible Solutions

During this step, group members generate possible solutions to the problem. Again, solutions should not be evaluated at this point, only proposed and clarified. The question should be what could we do to address this problem, not what should we do to address it. It is perfectly OK for a group member to question another person’s idea by asking something like “What do you mean?” or “Could you explain your reasoning more?” Discussions at this stage may reveal a need to return to previous steps to better define or more fully analyze a problem. Since many problems are multifaceted, it is necessary for group members to generate solutions for each part of the problem separately, making sure to have multiple solutions for each part. Stopping the solution-generating process prematurely can lead to groupthink. For the problem question previously posed, the group would need to generate solutions for all three parts of the problem included in the question. Possible solutions for the first part of the problem (How can citizens report ethical violations?) may include “online reporting system, e-mail, in-person, anonymously, on-the-record,” and so on. Possible solutions for the second part of the problem (How will reports be processed?) may include “daily by a newly appointed ethics officer, weekly by a nonpartisan nongovernment employee,” and so on. Possible solutions for the third part of the problem (How will reports be addressed?) may include “by a newly appointed ethics commission, by the accused’s supervisor, by the city manager,” and so on.

Step 4: Evaluate Solutions

During this step, solutions can be critically evaluated based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed based on more obvious differences in relevance and/or merit, the group should analyze each solution based on its potential effects—especially negative effects. Groups that are required to report the rationale for their decision or whose decisions may be subject to public scrutiny would be wise to make a set list of criteria for evaluating each solution. Additionally, solutions can be evaluated based on how well they fit with the group’s charge and the abilities of the group. To do this, group members may ask, “Does this solution live up to the original purpose or mission of the group?” and “Can the solution actually be implemented with our current resources and connections?” and “How will this solution be supported, funded, enforced, and assessed?” Secondary tensions and substantive conflict, two concepts discussed earlier, emerge during this step of problem solving, and group members will need to employ effective critical thinking and listening skills.

Decision making is part of the larger process of problem solving and it plays a prominent role in this step. While there are several fairly similar models for problem solving, there are many varied decision-making techniques that groups can use. For example, to narrow the list of proposed solutions, group members may decide by majority vote, by weighing the pros and cons, or by discussing them until a consensus is reached. There are also more complex decision-making models like the “six hats method,” which we will discuss later. Once the final decision is reached, the group leader or facilitator should confirm that the group is in agreement. It may be beneficial to let the group break for a while or even to delay the final decision until a later meeting to allow people time to evaluate it outside of the group context.

Step 5: Implement and Assess the Solution

Implementing the solution requires some advanced planning, and it should not be rushed unless the group is operating under strict time restraints or delay may lead to some kind of harm. Although some solutions can be implemented immediately, others may take days, months, or years. As was noted earlier, it may be beneficial for groups to poll those who will be affected by the solution as to their opinion of it or even to do a pilot test to observe the effectiveness of the solution and how people react to it.

Before implementation, groups should also determine how and when they would assess the effectiveness of the solution by asking,

“How will we know if the solution is working or not?” Since solution assessment will vary based on whether or not the group is disbanded, groups should also consider the following questions: If the group disbands after implementation, who will be responsible for assessing the solution? If the solution fails, will the same group reconvene or will a new group be formed?

Certain elements of the solution may need to be delegated out to various people inside and outside the group. Group members may also be assigned to implement a particular part of the solution based on their role in the decision making or because it connects to their area of expertise. Likewise, group members may be tasked with publicizing the solution or “selling” it to a particular group of stakeholders. Last, the group should consider its future. In some cases, the group will get to decide if it will stay together and continue working on other tasks or if it will disband. In other cases, outside forces determine the group’s fate.

Six Thinking Hats Method

Edward de Bono developed the Six Thinking Hats  method of thinking in the late 1980s, and it has since become a regular feature in problem-solving and decision-making training in business and professional contexts (de Bono, 1985). The method’s popularity lies in its ability to help people get out of habitual ways of thinking and to allow group members to play different roles and see a problem or decision from multiple points of view. The basic idea is that each of the six hats represents a different way of thinking, and when we figuratively switch hats, we switch the way we think. The hats and their style of thinking are as follows:

• White hat. Objective—focuses on seeking information such as data and facts and then neutrally processes that information.
• Red hat. Emotional—uses intuition, gut reactions, and feelings to judge information and suggestions.
• Black hat. Critical—focuses on potential risks, points out possibilities for failure, and evaluates information cautiously and defensively.
• Yellow hat. Positive—is optimistic about suggestions and future outcomes, gives constructive and positive feedback, points out benefits and advantages.
• Green hat. Creative—tries to generate new ideas and solutions, thinks “outside the box.”
• Blue hat. Process—uses metacommunication to organize and reflect on the thinking and communication taking place in the group, facilitates who wears what hat and when group members change hats.

Specific sequences or combinations of hats can be used to encourage strategic thinking. For example, the group leader may start off wearing the Blue Hat and suggest that the group start their decision-making process with some “White Hat thinking” to process through facts and other available information. During this stage, the group could also process through what other groups have done when faced with a similar problem. Then the leader could begin an evaluation sequence starting with two minutes of “Yellow Hat thinking” to identify potential positive outcomes, then “Black Hat thinking” to allow group members to express reservations about ideas and point out potential problems, then “Red Hat thinking” to get people’s gut reactions to the previous discussion, then “Green Hat thinking” to identify other possible solutions that are more tailored to the group’s situation or completely new approaches. At the end of a sequence, the Blue Hat would want to summarize what was said and begin a new sequence. To successfully use this method, the person wearing the Blue Hat should be familiar with different sequences and plan some of the thinking patterns ahead of time based on the problem and the group members. Each round of thinking should be limited to a certain time frame (two to five minutes) to keep the discussion moving.

• This problem-solving method has been praised because it allows group members to “switch gears” in their thinking and allows for role-playing, which lets people express ideas more freely. How can this help enhance critical thinking? Which combination of hats do you think would be best for a critical thinking sequence?
• What combinations of hats might be useful if the leader wanted to break the larger group up into pairs and why? For example, what kind of thinking would result from putting Yellow and Red together, Black and White together, or Red and White together, and so on?
• Based on your preferred ways of thinking and your personality, which hat would be the best fit for you? Which would be the most challenging? Why?

Decision Making in Groups

We all engage in personal decision making daily, and we all know that some decisions are more difficult than others. When we make decisions in groups, we face some challenges that we do not face in our personal decision making, but we also stand to benefit from some advantages of group decision making (Napier & Gershenfeld, 2004). Group decision making can appear fair and democratic but really only be a gesture that covers up the fact that certain group members or the group leader have already decided. Group decision making also takes more time than individual decisions and can be burdensome if some group members do not do their assigned work, divert the group with self-centered or unproductive role behaviors, or miss meetings. Conversely, though, group decisions are often more informed, since all group members develop a shared understanding of a problem through discussion and debate. The shared understanding may also be more complex and deep than what an individual would develop, because the group members are exposed to a variety of viewpoints that can broaden their own perspectives. Group decisions also benefit from synergy, one of the key advantages of group communication that we discussed earlier. Most groups do not use a specific method of decision making, perhaps thinking that they’ll work things out as they go. This can lead to unequal participation, social loafing, premature decisions, prolonged discussion, and a host of other negative consequences. So in this section we will learn some practices that will prepare us for good decision making and some specific techniques we can use to help us reach a final decision.

Brainstorming Before Decision Making

Before groups can make a decision, they need to generate possible solutions to their problem. The most commonly used method is brainstorming, although most people don’t follow the recommended steps of brainstorming. As you’ll recall, brainstorming refers to the quick generation of ideas free of evaluation. The originator of the term brainstorming said the following four rules must be followed for the technique to be effective (Osborn, 1959):

• Evaluation of ideas is forbidden.
• Wild and crazy ideas are encouraged.
• Quantity of ideas, not quality, is the goal.
• New combinations of ideas presented are encouraged.

Discussion Before Decision Making

The nominal group technique guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members (Delbecq & Ven de Ven, 1971). This method is useful because the procedure involves all group members systematically, which fixes the problem of uneven participation during discussions. Since everyone contributes to the discussion, this method can also help reduce instances of social loafing. To use the nominal group technique, do the following:

• Silently and individually list ideas.
• Create a master list of ideas.
• Clarify ideas as needed.
• Take a secret vote to rank group members’ acceptance of ideas.

Specific Decision-Making Techniques

Some decision-making techniques involve determining a course of action based on the level of agreement among the group members. These methods include majority, expert, authority, and consensus rule. Table 5.3.1 “Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques” reviews the pros and cons of each of these methods.

Majority rule is a commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before a decision is made. A show-of-hands vote, a paper ballot, or an electronic voting system can determine the majority choice. Many decision-making bodies, including the US House of Representatives, Senate, and Supreme Court, use majority rule to make decisions, which shows that it is often associated with democratic decision making, since each person gets one vote and each vote counts equally. Of course, other individuals and mediated messages can influence a person’s vote, but since the voting power is spread out over all group members, it is not easy for one person or party to take control of the decision-making process. In some cases—for example, to override a presidential veto or to amend the constitution—a super majority of two-thirds may be required to make a decision.

Minority rule is a decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members. When a designated expert makes a decision by minority rule, there may be buy-in from others in the group, especially if the members of the group didn’t have relevant knowledge or expertise. When a designated authority makes decisions, buy-in will vary based on group members’ level of respect for the authority. For example, decisions made by an elected authority may be more accepted by those who elected him or her than by those who didn’t. As with majority rule, this technique can be time saving. Unlike majority rule, one person or party can have control over the decision-making process. This type of decision making is more similar to that used by monarchs and dictators. An obvious negative consequence of this method is that the needs or wants of one person can override the needs and wants of the majority. A minority deciding for the majority has led to negative consequences throughout history. The white Afrikaner minority that ruled South Africa for decades instituted apartheid, which was a system of racial segregation that disenfranchised and oppressed the majority population. The quality of the decision and its fairness really depends on the designated expert or authority.

Consensus rule is a decision-making technique in which all members of the group must agree on the same decision. On rare occasions, a decision may be ideal for all group members, which can lead to unanimous agreement without further debate and discussion. Although this can be positive, be cautious that this isn’t a sign of groupthink. More typically, consensus is reached only after lengthy discussion. On the plus side, consensus often leads to high-quality decisions due to the time and effort it takes to get everyone in agreement. Group members are also more likely to be committed to the decision because of their investment in reaching it. On the negative side, the ultimate decision is often one that all group members can live with but not one that’s ideal for all members. Additionally, the process of arriving at consensus also includes conflict, as people debate ideas and negotiate the interpersonal tensions that may result.

Table 5.3.1: Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques

Influences on Decision Making

Many factors influence the decision-making process. For example, how might a group’s independence or access to resources affect the decisions they make? What potential advantages and disadvantages come with decisions made by groups that are more or less similar in terms of personality and cultural identities? In this section, we will explore how situational, personality, and cultural influences affect decision making in groups.

Situational Influences on Decision Making

A group’s situational context affects decision making. One key situational element is the degree of freedom that the group has to make its own decisions, secure its own resources, and initiate its own actions. Some groups have to go through multiple approval processes before they can do anything, while others are self-directed, self-governing, and self-sustaining. Another situational influence is uncertainty. In general, groups deal with more uncertainty in decision making than do individuals because of the increased number of variables that comes with adding more people to a situation. Individual group members can’t know what other group members are thinking, whether or not they are doing their work, and how committed they are to the group. So the size of a group is a powerful situational influence, as it adds to uncertainty and complicates communication.

Access to information also influences a group. First, the nature of the group’s task or problem affects its ability to get information. Group members can more easily make decisions about a problem when other groups have similarly experienced it. Even if the problem is complex and serious, the group can learn from other situations and apply what it learns. Second, the group must have access to flows of information. Access to archives, electronic databases, and individuals with relevant experience is necessary to obtain any relevant information about similar problems or to do research on a new or unique problem. In this regard, group members’ formal and information network connections also become important situational influences.

The origin and urgency of a problem are also situational factors that influence decision making. In terms of origin, problems usually occur in one of four ways:

• Something goes wrong. Group members must decide how to fix or stop something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that half of the building is contaminated with mold and must be closed down.
• Expectations change or increase. Group members must innovate more efficient or effective ways of doing something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that the district they are responsible for is being expanded.
• Something goes wrong and expectations change or increase. Group members must fix/stop and become more efficient/effective. Example—the firehouse crew has to close half the building and must start responding to more calls due to the expanding district.
• The problem existed from the beginning. Group members must go back to the origins of the situation and walk through and analyze the steps again to decide what can be done differently. Example—a firehouse crew has consistently had to work with minimal resources in terms of building space and firefighting tools.

In each of the cases, the need for a decision may be more or less urgent depending on how badly something is going wrong, how high the expectations have been raised, or the degree to which people are fed up with a broken system. Decisions must be made in situations ranging from crisis level to mundane.

Personality Influences on Decision Making

The personalities of group members, especially leaders and other active members, affect the climate of the group. Group member personalities can be categorized based on where they fall on a continuum anchored by the following descriptors: dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional (Cragan & Wright, 1999). The more group members there are in any extreme of these categories, the more likely that the group climate will also shift to resemble those characteristics.

• Dominant versus submissive. Group members that are more dominant act more independently and directly, initiate conversations, take up more space, make more direct eye contact, seek leadership positions, and take control over decision-making processes. More submissive members are reserved, contribute to the group only when asked to, avoid eye contact, and leave their personal needs and thoughts unvoiced or give into the suggestions of others.
• Friendly versus unfriendly. Group members on the friendly side of the continuum find a balance between talking and listening, don’t try to win at the expense of other group members, are flexible but not weak, and value democratic decision making. Unfriendly group members are disagreeable, indifferent, withdrawn, and selfish, which leads them to either not invest in decision making or direct it in their own interest rather than in the interest of the group.
• Instrumental versus emotional. Instrumental group members are emotionally neutral, objective, analytical, task-oriented, and committed followers, which leads them to work hard and contribute to the group’s decision making as long as it is orderly and follows agreed-on rules. Emotional group members are creative, playful, independent, unpredictable, and expressive, which leads them to make rash decisions, resist group norms or decision-making structures, and switch often from relational to task focus.

Cultural Context and Decision Making

Demographic changes in the United States and increases in technology that can bring different people together make it more likely that we will be interacting in more and more heterogeneous groups (Allen, 2011). Some small groups are more homogenous, meaning the members are more similar, and some are more heterogeneous, meaning the members are more different. Diversity and difference within groups has advantages and disadvantages. In terms of advantages, research finds that, in general, groups that are culturally heterogeneous have better overall performance than more homogenous groups (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999). Additionally, when group members have time to get to know each other and competently communicate across their differences, the advantages of diversity include better decision making due to different perspectives (Thomas, 1999). Unfortunately, groups often operate under time constraints and other pressures that make the possibility for intercultural dialogue and understanding difficult. The main disadvantage of heterogeneous groups is the possibility for conflict, but given that all groups experience conflict, this isn’t solely due to the presence of diversity. We will now look more specifically at how some of the cultural value orientations we’ve learned about already in this book can play out in groups with international diversity and how domestic diversity in terms of demographics can also influence group decision making.

International Diversity in Group Interactions

As we learned in Chapter 4.3: “Intercultural Communication,” different cultural value dimensions can influence a person’s approach to group interactions. Cultural value orientations such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles all manifest on a continuum of communication behaviors and can influence group decision making. Group members from individualistic cultures are more likely to value task-oriented, efficient, and direct communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as dividing up tasks into individual projects before collaboration begins and then openly debating ideas during discussion and decision making. Additionally, people from cultures that value individualism are more likely to openly express dissent from a decision, essentially expressing their disagreement with the group. Group members from collectivistic cultures are more likely to value relationships over the task at hand. Because of this, they also tend to value conformity and face-saving (often indirect) communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as establishing norms that include periods of socializing to build relationships before task-oriented communication like negotiations begin or norms that limit public disagreement in favor of more indirect communication that doesn’t challenge the face of other group members or the group’s leader. In a group composed of people from a collectivistic culture, each member would likely play harmonizing roles, looking for signs of conflict and resolving them before they become public.

Power distance can also affect group interactions. Some cultures rank higher on power-distance scales, meaning they value hierarchy, make decisions based on status, and believe that people have a set place in society that is fairly unchangeable. Group members from high-power-distance cultures would likely appreciate a strong designated leader who exhibits a more directive leadership style and prefer groups in which members have clear and assigned roles. In a group that is homogenous in terms of having a high-power-distance orientation, members with higher status would be able to openly provide information, and those with lower status may not provide information unless a higher status member explicitly seeks it from them. Low-power-distance cultures do not place as much value and meaning on status and believe that all group members can participate in decision making. Group members from low-power-distance cultures would likely freely speak their mind during a group meeting and prefer a participative leadership style.

How much meaning is conveyed through the context surrounding verbal communication can also affect group communication. Some cultures have a high-context communication style in which much of the meaning in an interaction is conveyed through context such as nonverbal cues and silence. Group members from high-context cultures may avoid saying something directly, assuming that other group members will understand the intended meaning even if the message is indirect. So if someone disagrees with a proposed course of action, he or she may say, “Let’s discuss this tomorrow,” and mean, “I don’t think we should do this.” Such indirect communication is also a face-saving strategy that is common in collectivistic cultures. Other cultures have a low-context communication style that places more importance on the meaning conveyed through words than through context or nonverbal cues. Group members from low-context cultures often say what they mean and mean what they say. For example, if someone doesn’t like an idea, they might say, “I think we should consider more options. This one doesn’t seem like the best we can do.”

In any of these cases, an individual from one culture operating in a group with people of a different cultural orientation could adapt to the expectations of the host culture, especially if that person possesses a high degree of intercultural communication competence (ICC). Additionally, people with high ICC can also adapt to a group member with a different cultural orientation than the host culture. Even though these cultural orientations connect to values that affect our communication in fairly consistent ways, individuals may exhibit different communication behaviors depending on their own individual communication style and the situation.

Domestic Diversity and Group Communication

While it is becoming more likely that we will interact in small groups with international diversity, we are guaranteed to interact in groups that are diverse in terms of the cultural identities found within a single country or the subcultures found within a larger cultural group.

Gender stereotypes sometimes influence the roles that people play within a group. For example, the stereotype that women are more nurturing than men may lead group members (both male and female) to expect that women will play the role of supporters or harmonizers within the group. Since women have primarily performed secretarial work since the 1900s, it may also be expected that women will play the role of recorder. In both of these cases, stereotypical notions of gender place women in roles that are typically not as valued in group communication. The opposite is true for men. In terms of leadership, despite notable exceptions, research shows that men fill an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of leadership positions. We are socialized to see certain behaviors by men as indicative of leadership abilities, even though they may not be. For example, men are often perceived to contribute more to a group because they tend to speak first when asked a question or to fill a silence and are perceived to talk more about task-related matters than relationally oriented matters. Both of these tendencies create a perception that men are more engaged with the task. Men are also socialized to be more competitive and self-congratulatory, meaning that their communication may be seen as dedicated and their behaviors seen as powerful, and that when their work isn’t noticed they will be more likely to make it known to the group rather than take silent credit. Even though we know that the relational elements of a group are crucial for success, even in high-performance teams, that work is not as valued in our society as the task-related work.

Despite the fact that some communication patterns and behaviors related to our typical (and stereotypical) gender socialization affect how we interact in and form perceptions of others in groups, the differences in group communication that used to be attributed to gender in early group communication research seem to be diminishing. This is likely due to the changing organizational cultures from which much group work emerges, which have now had more than seventy years to adjust to women in the workplace. It is also due to a more nuanced understanding of gender-based research, which doesn’t take a stereotypical view from the beginning as many of the early male researchers did. Now, instead of biological sex being assumed as a factor that creates inherent communication differences, group communication scholars see that men and women both exhibit a range of behaviors that are more or less feminine or masculine. It is these gendered behaviors, and not a person’s gender, that seem to have more of an influence on perceptions of group communication. Interestingly, group interactions are still masculinist in that male and female group members prefer a more masculine communication style for task leaders and that both males and females in this role are more likely to adapt to a more masculine communication style. Conversely, men who take on social-emotional leadership behaviors adopt a more feminine communication style. In short, it seems that although masculine communication traits are more often associated with high status positions in groups, both men and women adapt to this expectation and are evaluated similarly (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999).

Other demographic categories are also influential in group communication and decision making. In general, group members have an easier time communicating when they are more similar than different in terms of race and age. This ease of communication can make group work more efficient, but the homogeneity may sacrifice some creativity. As we learned earlier, groups that are diverse (e.g., they have members of different races and generations) benefit from the diversity of perspectives in terms of the quality of decision making and creativity of output.

In terms of age, for the first time since industrialization began, it is common to have three generations of people (and sometimes four) working side by side in an organizational setting. Although four generations often worked together in early factories, they were segregated based on their age group, and a hierarchy existed with older workers at the top and younger workers at the bottom. Today, however, generations interact regularly, and it is not uncommon for an older person to have a leader or supervisor who is younger than him or her (Allen, 2011). The current generations in the US workplace and consequently in work-based groups include the following:

• The Silent Generation . Born between 1925 and 1942, currently in their mid-seventies to mid-nineties, this is the smallest generation in the workforce right now, as many have retired or left for other reasons. This generation includes people who were born during the Great Depression or the early part of World War II, many of whom later fought in the Korean War (Clarke, 1970).
• The Baby Boomers . Born between 1946 and 1964, currently in their late fifties to mid-seventies, this is the largest generation in the workforce right now. Baby boomers are the most populous generation born in US history, and they are working longer than previous generations, which means they will remain the predominant force in organizations for ten to twenty more years.
• Generation X . Born between 1965 and 1981, currently in their early forties to mid-fifties, this generation was the first to see technology like cell phones and the Internet make its way into classrooms and our daily lives. Compared to previous generations, “Gen-Xers” are more diverse in terms of race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation and also have a greater appreciation for and understanding of diversity.
• Generation Y . Born between 1982 and 1999, “Millennials” as they are also called are currently in their late twenties up to about forty years old. This generation is not as likely to remember a time without technology such as computers and cell phones. They are just starting to enter into the workforce and have been greatly affected by the economic crisis of the late 2000s, experiencing significantly high unemployment rates.
• Generation Z . Born between 2000 and 2012, are sometimes called iGen. They are just joining the workforce. This generation came of age alongside social media. They were the first population to have to cope with cyber-bullying and other pervasive internet issues. This generation also faced more school violence and concerns over climate crisis than past generations.
• Generation Alpha . Born 2013-2025, are currently coming of age. This is the first generation born to parents who grew up fluent with technology such as the internet, cell phones, tablets, social media, etc. This is the most racially diverse and technologically adept generation so far.

The benefits and challenges that come with diversity of group members are important to consider. Since we will all work in diverse groups, we should be prepared to address potential challenges in order to reap the benefits. Diverse groups may be wise to coordinate social interactions outside of group time in order to find common ground that can help facilitate interaction and increase group cohesion. We should be sensitive but not let sensitivity create fear of “doing something wrong” that then prevents us from having meaningful interactions. Reviewing Chapter 4: “Culture and Communication” will give you useful knowledge to help you navigate both international and domestic diversity and increase your communication competence in small groups and elsewhere.

Key Takeaways

• Every problem has common components: an undesirable situation, a desired situation, and obstacles between the undesirable and desirable situations. Every problem also has a set of characteristics that vary among problems, including task difficulty, number of possible solutions, group member interest in the problem, group familiarity with the problem, and the need for solution acceptance.

The group problem-solving process has five steps:

• Define the problem by creating a problem statement that summarizes it.
• Analyze the problem and create a problem question that can guide solution generation.
• Generate possible solutions. Possible solutions should be offered and listed without stopping to evaluate each one.
• Evaluate the solutions based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Groups should also assess the potential effects of the narrowed list of solutions.
• Implement and assess the solution. Aside from enacting the solution, groups should determine how they will know the solution is working or not.
• Before a group makes a decision, it should brainstorm possible solutions. Group communication scholars suggest that groups (1) do a warm-up brainstorming session; (2) do an actual brainstorming session in which ideas are not evaluated, wild ideas are encouraged, quantity not quality of ideas is the goal, and new combinations of ideas are encouraged; (3) eliminate duplicate ideas; and (4) clarify, organize, and evaluate ideas. In order to guide the idea-generation process and invite equal participation from group members, the group may also elect to use the nominal group technique.
• Common decision-making techniques include majority rule, minority rule, and consensus rule. With majority rule, only a majority, usually one-half plus one, must agree before a decision is made. With minority rule, a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision, and the input of group members may or may not be invited or considered. With consensus rule, all members of the group must agree on the same decision.

Several factors influence the decision-making process:

• Situational factors include the degree of freedom a group has to make its own decisions, the level of uncertainty facing the group and its task, the size of the group, the group’s access to information, and the origin and urgency of the problem.
• Personality influences on decision making include a person’s value orientation (economic, aesthetic, theoretical, political, or religious), and personality traits (dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional).
• Cultural influences on decision making include the heterogeneity or homogeneity of the group makeup; cultural values and characteristics such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles; and gender and age differences.
• Scenario 1. Task difficulty is high, number of possible solutions is high, group interest in problem is high, group familiarity with problem is low, and need for solution acceptance is high.
• Scenario 2. Task difficulty is low, number of possible solutions is low, group interest in problem is low, group familiarity with problem is high, and need for solution acceptance is low.
• Scenario 1: Academic. A professor asks his or her class to decide whether the final exam should be an in-class or take-home exam.
• Scenario 2: Professional. A group of coworkers must decide which person from their department to nominate for a company-wide award.
• Scenario 3: Personal. A family needs to decide how to divide the belongings and estate of a deceased family member who did not leave a will.
• Scenario 4: Civic. A local branch of a political party needs to decide what five key issues it wants to include in the national party’s platform.
• Group communication researchers have found that heterogeneous groups (composed of diverse members) have advantages over homogenous (more similar) groups. Discuss a group situation you have been in where diversity enhanced your and/or the group’s experience.

Adams, K., and Gloria G. Galanes, Communicating in Groups: Applications and Skills , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 220–21.

Allen, B. J., Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity , 2nd ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2011), 5.

Bormann, E. G., and Nancy C. Bormann, Effective Small Group Communication , 4th ed. (Santa Rosa, CA: Burgess CA, 1988), 112–13.

Clarke, G., “The Silent Generation Revisited,” Time, June 29, 1970, 46.

Cragan, J. F., and David W. Wright, Communication in Small Group Discussions: An Integrated Approach , 3rd ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1991), 77–78.

de Bono, E., Six Thinking Hats (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1985).

Delbecq, A. L., and Andrew H. Ven de Ven, “A Group Process Model for Problem Identification and Program Planning,” The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 7, no. 4 (1971): 466–92.

Haslett, B. B., and Jenn Ruebush, “What Differences Do Individual Differences in Groups Make?: The Effects of Individuals, Culture, and Group Composition,” in The Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research , ed. Lawrence R. Frey (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 133.

Napier, R. W., and Matti K. Gershenfeld, Groups: Theory and Experience , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 292.

Osborn, A. F., Applied Imagination (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959).

Spranger, E., Types of Men (New York: Steckert, 1928).

Stanton, C., “How to Deliver Group Presentations: The Unified Team Approach,” Six Minutes Speaking and Presentation Skills , November 3, 2009, accessed August 28, 2012, http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/group-presentations-unified-team-approach .

Thomas, D. C., “Cultural Diversity and Work Group Effectiveness: An Experimental Study,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 30, no. 2 (1999): 242–63.

A single sentence that summarizes the problem

A question that guides that group as it generates possible solutions

A technique that guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members

A decision-making technique in which a majority must agree before a decision is made

A decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members

A decision-making technique in which all members of a group must agree on the same decision

The group born in the US between 1925 and 1942; the smallest generation in today’s workforce due to retirement or other reasons

The group born in the US between 1946 and 1964; the largest and most predominant generation in the current workforce

The group of people born in the US between 1965 and 1981; the first generation to see technology (cell phones, Internet) make its way into classrooms and daily life; have a greater appreciation for and understanding of diversity

The group of people born in the US between 1982 and 2000; also called millennials; have never experienced a time without technology such as computers and cell phones

Born between 2000 and 2012, are sometimes called iGen. This generation came of age alongside social media. They were the first population to have to cope with cyberbullying and other pervasive internet issues. This generation also faced more school violence and concerns over climate crisis than past generations

The group of people born 2013-2025 and currently coming of age. This is the first generation born to parents who grew up fluent with technology such as the internet, cell phones, tablets, social media, etc. This is the most racially diverse and technologically adept U.S. generation so far

Interpersonal & Small Group Communication Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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11.5 Decision Making in Groups

Learning objectives.

• Understand the pros and cons of individual and group decision making.
• Learn to recognize the signs of groupthink.
• Recognize different tools and techniques for making better decisions.

When It Comes to Decision Making, Are Two Heads Better Than One?

When it comes to decision making, are two heads better than one? The answer to this question depends on several factors. Group decision making has the advantages of drawing from the experiences and perspectives of a larger number of individuals. Hence, they have the potential to be more creative and lead to a more effective decision. In fact, groups may sometimes achieve results beyond what they could have done as individuals. Groups also make the task more enjoyable for members in question. Finally, when the decision is made by a group rather than a single individual, implementation of the decision will be easier because group members will be invested in the decision. If the group is diverse, better decisions may be made because different group members may have different ideas based on their background and experiences. Research shows that for top management teams, groups that debate issues and that are diverse make decisions that are more comprehensive and better for the bottom line in terms of profitability and sales (Simons, et. al., 1999).

Despite its popularity within organizations, group decision making suffers from a number of disadvantages. We know that groups rarely outperform their best member (Miner, 1984). While groups have the potential to arrive at an effective decision, they often suffer from process losses. For example, groups may suffer from coordination problems. Anyone who has worked with a team of individuals on a project can attest to the difficulty of coordinating members’ work or even coordinating everyone’s presence in a team meeting. Furthermore, groups can suffer from social loafing , or the tendency of some members to put forth less effort while working within a group. Groups may also suffer from groupthink , the tendency to avoid critical evaluation of ideas the group favors. Finally, group decision making takes a longer time compared with individual decision making, given that all members need to discuss their thoughts regarding different alternatives.

Thus, whether an individual or a group decision is preferable will depend on the specifics of the situation. For example, if there is an emergency and a decision needs to be made quickly, individual decision making might be preferred. Individual decision making may also be appropriate if the individual in question has all the information needed to make the decision and if implementation problems are not expected. However, if one person does not have all the information and skills needed to make the decision, if implementing the decision will be difficult without the involvement of those who will be affected by the decision, and if time urgency is more modest, then decision making by a group may be more effective.

Figure 11.14 Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Levels of Decision Making

Have you ever been in a decision-making group that you felt was heading in the wrong direction, but you didn’t speak up and say so? If so, you have already been a victim of groupthink. Groupthink is a group pressure phenomenon that increases the risk of the group making flawed decisions by leading to reduced mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment. Groupthink is characterized by eight symptoms that include (Janis, 1972):

• Illusion of invulnerability shared by most or all of the group members that creates excessive optimism and encourages them to take extreme risks.
• Collective rationalizations where members downplay negative information or warnings that might cause them to reconsider their assumptions.
• An unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality that may incline members to ignore ethical or moral consequences of their actions.
• Stereotyped views of out-groups are seen when groups discount rivals’ abilities to make effective responses.
• Direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes, illusions, or commitments.
• Self-censorship when members of the group minimize their own doubts and counterarguments.
• Illusions of unanimity based on self-censorship and direct pressure on the group; the lack of dissent is viewed as unanimity.
• The emergence of self-appointed mindguards where one or more members protect the group from information that runs counter to the group’s assumptions and course of action.

Figure 11.15

Avoiding groupthink can be a matter of life or death. In January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The decision to launch Challenger that day, despite problems with mechanical components of the vehicle and unfavorable weather conditions, is cited as an example of groupthink.

NASA – Challenger flight 51-1 crew – public domain.

While research on groupthink has not confirmed all of the theory, groups do tend to suffer from symptoms of groupthink when they are large and when the group is cohesive because the members like each other (Esser, 1998; Mullen, et. al., 1994). The assumption is that the more frequently a group displays one or more of the eight symptoms, the worse the quality of their decisions will be.

However, if your group is cohesive, it is not necessarily doomed to engage in groupthink.

Recommendations for Avoiding Groupthink

Groups should:.

• Discuss the symptoms of groupthink and how to avoid them.
• Assign a rotating devil’s advocate to every meeting.
• Invite experts or qualified colleagues who are not part of the core decision-making group to attend meetings, and get reactions from outsiders on a regular basis and share these with the group.
• Encourage a culture of difference where different ideas are valued.
• Debate the ethical implications of the decisions and potential solutions being considered.

Individuals Should:

• Monitor their own behavior for signs of groupthink and modify behavior if needed.
• Check themselves for self-censorship.
• Carefully avoid mindguard behaviors.
• Avoid putting pressure on other group members to conform.
• Remind members of the ground rules for avoiding groupthink if they get off track.

Group Leaders Should:

• Break the group into two subgroups from time to time.
• Have more than one group work on the same problem if time and resources allow it. This makes sense for highly critical decisions.
• Remain impartial and refrain from stating preferences at the outset of decisions.
• Set a tone of encouraging critical evaluations throughout deliberations.
• Create an anonymous feedback channel where all group members can contribute to if desired.

Tools and Techniques for Making Better Decisions

Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was developed to help with group decision making by ensuring that all members participate fully. NGT is not a technique to be used at all meetings routinely. Rather, it is used to structure group meetings when members are grappling with problem solving or idea generation. It follows four steps (Delbecq, et. al., 1975). First, each member of the group engages in a period of independently and silently writing down ideas. Second, the group goes in order around the room to gather all the ideas that were generated. This goes on until all the ideas are shared. Third, a discussion takes place around each idea and members ask for and give clarification and make evaluative statements. Finally, individuals vote for their favorite ideas by using either ranking or rating techniques. Following the four-step NGT helps to ensure that all members participate fully and avoids group decision-making problems such as groupthink.

Delphi Technique is unique because it is a group process using written responses to a series of questionnaires instead of physically bringing individuals together to make a decision. The first questionnaire asks individuals to respond to a broad question, such as stating the problem, outlining objectives, or proposing solutions. Each subsequent questionnaire is built from the information gathered in the previous one. The process ends when the group reaches a consensus. Facilitators can decide whether to keep responses anonymous. This process is often used to generate best practices from experts. For example, Purdue University professor Michael Campion used this process when he was editor of the research journal Personnel Psychology and wanted to determine the qualities that distinguished a good research article. Using the Delphi Technique, he was able to gather responses from hundreds of top researchers from around the world without ever having to leave his office and distill them into a checklist of criteria that he could use to evaluate articles submitted to the journal (Campion, 1993).

Majority rule refers to a decision-making rule where each member of the group is given a single vote, and the option that receives the greatest number of votes is selected. This technique has remained popular, perhaps because of its simplicity, speed, ease of use, and representational fairness. Research also supports majority rule as an effective decision-making technique (Hastie & Kameda, 2005). However, those who did not vote in favor of the decision will be less likely to support it.

Consensus is another decision-making rule that groups may use when the goal is to gain support for an idea or plan of action. While consensus tends to take longer in the first place, it may make sense when support is needed to enact the plan. The process works by discussing the issues, generating a proposal, calling for consensus, and discussing any concerns. If concerns still exist, the proposal is modified to accommodate them. These steps are repeated until consensus is reached. Thus, this decision-making rule is inclusive, participatory, cooperative, and democratic. Research shows that consensus can lead to better accuracy (Roch, 2007), and it helps members feel greater satisfaction with decisions (Mohammed & Ringseis, 2001) and to have greater acceptance. However, groups take longer with this approach and groups that cannot reach consensus become frustrated (Peterson, 1999).

Group decision support systems (GDSS) are interactive computer-based systems that are able to combine communication and decision technologies to help groups make better decisions. Organizations know that having effective knowledge management systems to share information is important. Research shows that a GDSS can actually improve the output of group collaborative work through higher information sharing (Lam & Schaubroeck, 2000). Organizations know that having effective knowledge management systems to share information is important, and their spending reflects this reality. According to a 2002 article, businesses invested $2.7 billion into new systems in 2002 and projections were for this number to double every five years. As the popularity of these systems grows, they risk becoming counterproductive. Humans can only process so many ideas and information at one time. As virtual meetings grow larger, it is reasonable to assume that information overload can occur and good ideas will fall through the cracks, essentially recreating a problem that the GDSS was intended to solve that is to make sure every idea is heard. Another problem is the system possibly becoming too complicated. If the systems evolve to a point of uncomfortable complexity, it has recreated the problem of the bully pulpit and shyness. Those who understand the interface will control the narrative of the discussion, while those who are less savvy will only be along for the ride (Nunamaker, et. al., 1991). Lastly, many of these programs fail to take into account the factor of human psychology. These systems could make employees more reluctant to share information due to lack of control, lack of immediate feedback, the fear of “flaming” or harsher than normal criticism, and the desire to have original information hence more power (Babock, 2004).

Figure 11.16

Healthy communication and trust are key elements to effective group decision making.

Teamwork and team spirit – CC BY-ND 2.0.

Decision trees are diagrams in which answers to yes or no questions lead decision makers to address additional questions until they reach the end of the tree. Decision trees are helpful in avoiding errors such as framing bias (Wright & Goodwin, 2002). Decision trees tend to be helpful in guiding the decision maker to a predetermined alternative and ensuring consistency of decision making—that is, every time certain conditions are present, the decision maker will follow one course of action as opposed to others if the decision is made using a decision tree.

Figure 11.17

Using decision trees can improve investment decisions by optimizing them for maximum payoff. A decision tree consists of three types of nodes. Decision nodes are commonly represented by squares. Chance nodes are represented by circles. End nodes are represented by triangles.

Michael Coté – Cloud buying decision tree – CC BY 2.0.

Key Takeaway

There are trade-offs between making decisions alone and within a group. Groups have greater diversity of experiences and ideas than individuals, but they also have potential process losses such as groupthink. Groupthink can be avoided by recognizing the eight symptoms discussed. Finally, there are a variety of tools and techniques available for helping to make more effective decisions in groups, including the Nominal Group Technique, Delphi Technique, majority rule, consensus, GDSS, and decision trees. Understanding the link between managing teams and making decisions is an important aspect of a manager’s leading function.

• Do you prefer to make decisions in a group or alone? What are the main reasons for your preference?
• Have you been in a group that used the brainstorming technique? Was it an effective tool for coming up with creative ideas? Please share examples.
• Have you been in a group that experienced groupthink? If so, how did you deal with it?
• Which of the decision making tools discussed in this chapter (NGT, Delphi, etc.) have you used? How effective were they?

Babock, P. (2004, May). Shedding light on knowledge management. HR Magazine , pp. 47–50.

Campion, M. A. (1993). Article review checklist: A criterion checklist for reviewing research articles in applied psychology. Personnel Psychology, 46 , 705–718.

Delbecq, A. L., Van de Ven, A. H., & Gustafson, D. H. (1975). Group techniques for program planning: A guide to nominal group and Delphi processes . Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

Esser, J. K. (1998). Alive and well after 25 years: A review of groupthink research. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 73 , 116–141.

Hastie, R., & Kameda, T. (2005). The robust beauty of majority rules in group decisions. Psychological Review, 112 , 494–508.

Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of groupthink . New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Lam, S. S. K., & Schaubroeck, J. (2000). Improving group decisions by better pooling information: A comparative advantage of group decision support systems. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85 , 565–573.

Miner, F. C. (1984). Group versus individual decision making: An investigation of performance measures, decision strategies, and process losses/gains. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 33 , 112–124.

Mohammed, S., & Ringseis, E. (2001). Cognitive diversity and consensus in group decision making: The role of inputs, processes, and outcomes. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 85 , 310–335.

Mullen, B., Anthony, T., Salas, E., & Driskell, J. E. (1994). Group cohesiveness and quality of decision making: An integration of tests of the groupthink hypothesis. Small Group Research, 25 , 189–204.

Nunamaker, J. F., Jr., Dennis, A. R., Valacich, J. S., Vogel, D. R., George, J. F. (1991, July). Electronic meetings to support group work. Communications of the ACM , 34 (7), 40–61.

Peterson, R. (1999). Can you have too much of a good thing? The limits of voice for improving satisfaction with leaders. Personality and Social Psychology, 25 , 313–324.

Roch, S. G. (2007). Why convene rater teams: An investigation of the benfits of anticipated discussion, consensus, and rater motivation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104 , 14–29.

Simons, T., Pelled, L. H., & Smith, K. A. (1999). Making use of difference: Diversity, debate, decision comprehensiveness in top management teams. Academy of Management Journal, 42 , 662–673.

Wright, G., & Goodwin, P. (2002). Eliminating a framing bias by using simple instructions to “think harder” and respondents with managerial experience: Comment on “breaking the frame.” Strategic Management Journal, 23 , 1059–1067.

Principles of Management Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Group Decision Making: Definition, Features, Steps, Methods, Examples, and Pros/Cons

Table of Contents

What is Group Decision Making?

Group decision-making involves individuals collectively making choices from various options, a process where no single member is solely accountable for the decision. This method leverages social dynamics and input from all involved to reach outcomes often different from individual decisions.

In workplace settings, it fosters stakeholder buy-in, consensus building, and creativity. Based on the concept of synergy, collective decisions tend to be more effective than those made by individuals, potentially yielding superior performance outcomes.

Under usual circumstances, collaborative decision-making is preferred, allowing ample time for deliberation, discussion, and dialogue. Committees, teams, or partnerships facilitate this participatory process.

Additionally, group decision-making is a participatory process where multiple individuals collectively analyze problems, consider alternatives, and select solutions. The number of participants, their diversity , and the decision-making process itself significantly impact the effectiveness of group decisions.

Characteristics of Group Decision-Making

Here are five key characteristics of group decision-making:

Collective Responsibility

Group decisions entail shared responsibility among members. Each individual contributes to and is accountable for the final decision, fostering a sense of ownership among the group.

Diverse Perspectives

Group decision-making integrates varied viewpoints, expertise, and experiences. This diversity enriches discussions, leading to a broader consideration of options and potential solutions.

Interactive Process

It involves active interaction among group members. Discussions, debates, and exchanges of ideas are pivotal in shaping and refining decisions.

Read More: 3 Conditions of Decision-Making

Consensus Building

Group decision-making often aims for consensus. The process encourages agreement among members, ensuring that the majority aligns with the chosen solution.

Influenced by Social Dynamics

Social factors like leadership styles, group cohesion, power dynamics, and communication patterns significantly impact the decision-making process and its outcomes. These dynamics can shape the direction and quality of the decision reached.

Steps in Group Decision Making Process

Group decision-making is a complex yet crucial process in any organizational setting. It involves several interconnected stages that navigate from identifying the core issue or opportunity to reflecting on the entire decision-making process for future improvements.

Identifying the Problem or Opportunity

At the outset, the group delves into understanding and defining the issue or opportunity at hand. This phase necessitates clarity and a comprehensive grasp of the problem. Gaining alignment among group members regarding the essence of the situation lays the groundwork for subsequent actions.

Read More: 7 Steps of Decision-Making Process in Management

Generating Alternatives

This phase sparks the essence of creativity within the group. Members collectively brainstorm various potential solutions or courses of action. Encouraging a broad spectrum of ideas, no matter how unconventional they might seem, stimulates innovation and diversity in thinking.

Evaluating Alternatives

Once the pool of potential solutions is established, the group switches gears to critical analysis. Each alternative undergoes scrutiny against predefined criteria. This involves meticulous consideration of the advantages, disadvantages, risks, benefits, and probable outcomes associated with each option.

Decision Making

Collectively, the group moves towards the crucial phase of decision-making. Here, based on the comprehensive evaluation, members collaborate to select the most fitting alternative. The chosen solution aims to effectively address the identified problem or opportunity.

Implementing the Decision

After the decision is made, the focus shifts to practicality. The group formulates an action plan to execute the chosen solution. Assigning responsibilities, delineating timelines, and devising a comprehensive implementation strategy become pivotal.

Read More: What is Operational Decision?

Monitoring and Evaluating

Post-implementation, the decision isn’t left on autopilot. The group meticulously tracks the progress of the implemented solution. Continuous assessment, feedback loops, and evaluations help in gauging the effectiveness of the decision. This phase aids in identifying potential areas that might need adjustments or enhancements.

Closure and Reflection

Finally, the group conducts a comprehensive reflection on the entire decision-making process. This critical step entails introspection into what worked well, areas for improvement, lessons learned, and strategies to enhance future decisions. This reflective process fosters continuous improvement and enhances the group’s decision-making capabilities.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Group Decision Making

Let’s explore some advantages and disadvantages of group decision-making:

Read More: Policy Decision Making

Advantages:

• Diverse Perspectives: Groups bring together individuals with varied expertise, experiences, and viewpoints. This diversity often leads to a comprehensive consideration of options, ensuring a broader outlook on problems or opportunities.
• Enhanced Creativity: Collaboration within a group often sparks creativity. Brainstorming and collective idea generation can foster innovative solutions that might not have surfaced through individual decision-making.
• Increased Acceptance and Buy-In: Involving multiple stakeholders in the decision-making process boost their engagement and commitment to the chosen solution. This collective involvement often results in a higher level of support and ownership of the decision.

Disadvantages:

• Time-Consuming Process: Group decision-making typically involves discussions, debates, and consensus-building, which can be time-consuming. The process might slow down due to conflicting viewpoints or prolonged deliberations.
• Potential for Groupthink: Sometimes, group dynamics lead to conformity or groupthink, where individuals suppress dissenting opinions to maintain harmony or follow dominant viewpoints. This can hinder the critical evaluation of alternatives.
• Diffusion of Responsibility: In larger groups, the diffusion of responsibility might occur, leading to a lack of accountability or individuals avoiding responsibility for the decision’s outcomes.

Read More: Individual Decision Making

Methods of Group Decision Making

The four key group decision-making methods include the following:

Brainstorming

This method involves generating a plethora of ideas in a free-flowing manner without criticism or evaluation. It encourages creativity and diverse thinking among group members. Once ideas are collected, they’re later reviewed and assessed.

Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

NGT combines individual idea generation with group discussion and evaluation. Members independently generate ideas, which are then pooled and discussed. Participants vote or rank the ideas, leading to a prioritized list for decision-making.

Delphi Technique

This method gathers insights from dispersed experts without face-to-face interaction. Experts provide input through structured questionnaires or surveys, and subsequent rounds refine ideas based on previous responses. The process continues until a consensus or convergence is reached.

Read More: Personal Decision-Making in Management

Consensus Decision-Making

In this approach, group members work together to find a solution acceptable to all. It involves discussing various perspectives and concerns, aiming for unanimous agreement. If consensus isn’t feasible, a compromise often leads to a decision.

Examples of Group Decision Making

Now let’s explore some examples of how group decisions are being made in workplace settings:

Strategic Planning Meetings

Organizations conduct strategic planning sessions involving key stakeholders, executives, and department heads. During these sessions, groups collaboratively assess market trends, set goals, define strategies, and make critical decisions about the company’s future direction. Through group discussions, they determine objectives and allocate resources to achieve long-term success.

Project Team Decision-Making

Project teams, comprised of individuals from different departments or disciplines, engage in group decision-making. They collectively decide on project timelines, resource allocation, risk management strategies, and course corrections throughout the project lifecycle. Decisions about project scope, milestones, and task assignments are made collaboratively to ensure project success.

Read More: Organizational Decision-Making

Product Development Committees

In businesses, teams comprising product managers, engineers, marketers, and other relevant stakeholders gather to make decisions about new product development or enhancements. These groups evaluate market demands, technological feasibility, cost implications, and customer feedback to decide on features, designs, pricing, and launch strategies.

Cross-functional Problem-Solving Groups

Organizations often form cross-functional teams to address complex challenges or troubleshoot issues affecting different departments. These groups bring diverse expertise together to identify problems, analyze root causes, brainstorm solutions, and implement action plans collaboratively. Their decisions affect organizational processes, efficiency, and performance improvements.

Human Resources Hiring Panels

Hiring decisions in many organizations involve panels or committees consisting of HR professionals, department heads, and team members. They collectively review candidates, conduct interviews, and decide on hiring selections. This group decision-making process ensures a comprehensive evaluation of candidates based on diverse perspectives and skill assessments.

Read Next: Strategic Decision Making

By profession, Sujan Chaudhary is a BBA (Bachelor in Business Administration) graduate, and by passion a blogger. He loves to share his business knowledge with the rest of the world. While not writing, he will be found reading and exploring the world.

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People Management

10 effective group decision-making techniques for teams.

January 19, 2024

Group decision-making techniques have a way of transcending individual prowess and creating symphonies of collective intelligence.  

These methods celebrate diversity and clear the way for ideas to flow freely, guiding your team toward decisions and success.

From vibrant brainstorming sessions to structured methodologies that harness the power of diverse perspectives, group decision-making is at the heart of modern teamwork. 🤝

This guide explores the best group decision-making techniques to align your team members in a harmonious crescendo of creative ideas and potential solutions.

What is Group Decision-Making?

Importance of group decision-making, common group decision-making challenges, 1. brainstorming sessions, 2. dialectical inquiry, 3. decision tree, 4. devil’s advocacy, 5. democratic decision-making, 6. nominal group technique, 7. delphi technique, 8. unanimous decisions , 9. stand-up meetings, 10. digital decision-making tools.

Group decision-making is a collaborative approach where people collectively discuss, analyze, and evaluate different options to solve problems and find the best solutions. It’s used in various contexts, including business meetings, academic settings, community organizations, and social groups.

Also known as a collective decision-making process , it’s characterized by a group exchanging ideas, perspectives, and information. Team members collaborate as they explore possible solutions and problem-solving methods to achieve a consensus or majority agreement. 

For example, a small group might work together to analyze a specific problem within their organization, complete with brainstorming sessions and dynamic meetings.

After carefully exploring different ideas, opinions, and options, the group chooses a solution with the best chance of addressing the issue. 

Note that the dynamics of group decision-making involve the interplay of individual opinions, preferences, and expertise within the group, and each of these aspects can influence the outcome.

The importance of group decision-making comes from moving beyond individual brilliance and using collective intelligence to foster innovation and success. 

Here are some of the ways group decision-making techniques benefit teams and organizations:

• Improve creative problem-solving and streamline processes within your organization by drawing on ideas from all team members, not just leaders and experts 
• Increase buy-in and enthusiasm for team members and stakeholders by getting them involved and making them feel respected 
• Mitigate risks and identify potential pitfalls ahead of time by exploring several perspectives on the pros and cons of each option 
• Leverage the strengths and expertise of your human resources by sharing the process and responsibilities of decision-making methods with everyone 

The list could continue, but you’re here for techniques, so we’ll stop there. Long story short, magic happens when a diverse group of people put their minds together.

Like individual decision-making, it’s important to be aware of the potential disadvantages of group decision-making. After all, nothing is perfect, and almost everything can be executed poorly. 

One of the most common issues is groupthink. When this happens, the group prioritizes harmony over critical thinking, often leading to flawed and irrational decisions.

Another common problem with collaborative decision-making is that unharmonious team collaboration is often time-consuming. In other words, group decision-making sometimes leads to bad decisions and wasted time.

Using proven group decision-making techniques is a great way to avoid these pitfalls and reap benefits like improved creativity, mitigated risks, and engagement.

10 Effective Group Decision-Making Techniques

Every member of the group benefits from finding the right formula for your team’s decision-making prowess. It’s all about determining the right combination your team needs to make better decisions.

You’ll need different decision-making techniques and tools depending on your problem, organization, goals, and group members. 

Review these 10 group decision-making techniques and tools to understand what will work for you and your team.

Brainstorming is a group decision-making technique that embraces the spontaneous and collaborative generation of diverse ideas.

In doing so, group members foster creative solutions and encourage the exploration of possibilities without the hindrance of biases.

Not a huge fan of traditional brainstorming? That’s okay!

ClickUp’s Whiteboards have redefined brainstorming and group decision-making processes by providing teams an interactive canvas to transform ideas into impactful actions. It breaks down communication barriers and encourages the free flow of ideas.

Annotations, comments, and reactions facilitate instant feedback, transforming your Whiteboard into a space where every team member’s input is valued.

ClickUp Collaboration Detection enables everyone—even remote teams—to brainstorm on the same Whiteboard simultaneously, creating a visual symphony of brilliance.

Dialectical inquiry is a structured process that divides team members into two subgroups. Each subgroup then forms and explores a set of opposing viewpoints and contrasting arguments.

After both sides present their alternative solutions, the group debates to agree on a single set of viewpoints. The final decision may incorporate elements from a single approach, both approaches, or neither.

This is a good way to create a meeting agenda that prevents groupthink from sabotaging important decisions.

By systematically exploring conflicting perspectives, dialectical inquiry seeks to uncover hidden assumptions, identify potential pitfalls, and encourage critical thinking. It harnesses the power of constructive conflict, fostering an environment where dissent is a catalyst for innovation.

A decision tree is like an organized brainstorming board that offers a structured visual representation of potential alternatives and outcomes tied to a series of choices or actions. 🌳

Decision trees typically begin with a single node that branches into multiple potential outcomes. Each outcome serves as a node, further branching into additional possibilities and creating a comprehensive map of potential decision pathways.

This approach gets even easier when you use Whiteboards by ClickUp. Whiteboards make creating a visual decision tree simple and map group discussions accordingly. And thanks to the straightforward, user-friendly interface, everyone gets a better idea of the insights and possibilities being explored.

Playing the role of the devil’s advocate is beneficial when done correctly, especially for group decision-making.

You’ll start by assigning one person or a group to become critics of each idea brought to the table. This can prevent groupthink, improve group dynamics, and highlight potentially risky or expensive decisions.

Using team collaboration software like ClickUp makes this easier by giving teams multiple ways to communicate their thoughts and ideas. This technique works for almost all types of meetings , too.

For instance, imagine a scenario where your group uses ClickUp Whiteboards for their brainstorming session. Here, devil’s advocates seamlessly express their critiques through comments, reactions, and annotations directly linked to specific ideas and thoughts.

This allows the entire team to review and discuss before arriving at the most informed and strategic course of action.

Democratic decision-making does away with the idea of designated decision-makers. It’s a voting system and the majority rules.

This technique works in a few different ways. The most obvious application is to come to your final decision based on a group vote. 

However, team members who voted for a different decision than the one that “wins” sometimes don’t feel as passionate about supporting it. If the assigned group leader thinks that this is a possibility, democratic decision-making is also helpful in narrowing down the potential alternatives that your group meetings are discussing.

Questionnaires delivered to the team facilitator keep everyone’s vote anonymous and empower people to vote honestly, which reduces the risk of groupthink.

Democratic voting can also speed up the process of group decision-making when you’ve reached a plateau.

ClickUp’s Form view can streamline vote collection by enabling team members to submit their opinions and preferences in seconds. 

The nominal group technique (NGT) harnesses the collective insights of individuals while maintaining a structured approach. In other words, it makes brainstorming a more standardized process .

Group members are encouraged to generate ideas independently and then share them with the group. This speeds up decisions and group consensus, especially for projects that require cross-functional collaboration .

Each team member shares their thoughts without discussion. Once everyone has presented their ideas, the group discusses them to clarify points. A structured voting process then ranks the suggestions by priority and viability.

The Delphi technique distills collective wisdom from subject matter experts while maintaining anonymity. The group assigns a facilitator to pose open-ended questions to a panel of experts for independent and anonymous responses.

The team or facilitator will then compile, summarize, and share these responses with the group of experts to gain further feedback. This compilation, summarization, and sharing process is repeated until a decision is reached.

The Delphi method aims to mitigate the influence of dominant personalities, organizational behavior, and group dynamics so experts can contribute without confrontation.

This systematic exchange of information and opinions is particularly effective for complex decision-making, strategic planning, and other scenarios where diverse expertise is critical.

Unanimity in group decision-making refers to the condition where every person agrees and supports a proposed course of action. 🙌

Teams often approach the unanimity technique as an open discussion, information-sharing, or brainstorming session. The final decision is made once everyone reaches a consensus with collective endorsement and shared perspective.

Achieving this level of harmony and cohesion in a group is great, but it’s often time-consuming. Anyone who’s spent days on jury duty trying to come to a unanimous verdict might (understandably) cringe at the mention of this technique. 

With the time element in mind, unanimous decisions are best for situations that demand complete agreement for the success or acceptance of the chosen course of action. 

You might want to try other group decision-making techniques on this list for smaller decisions, though.

Stand-up meetings are the opposite of the unanimity group decision-making technique. They’re designed to be short and effective with zero wasted time, so they’re often held standing (or sometimes walking). 

These meetings involve each team member taking turns in a round-robin-style discussion, answering simple questions like these:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What do you plan to do today?
• Is anything blocking your progress?

Adjust and expand upon these questions to address the specific decision your team is trying to make. Then, use the ideas and information gathered from this stand-up meeting to decide in a more formal meeting.

The point of the daily standup meeting is to aid team coordination. This fast feedback loop helps teams align and stay on track, similar to a football huddle. If an issue pops up, you can address it quickly and keep projects on track.

ClickUp’s Daily Standup Meeting Template gives you everything you need to plan, take notes, and track project progress. Pair it with ClickUp’s Stand Up Meeting Agenda Template to eliminate the guesswork and improve your team’s group decision-making process. 

The right decision-making tools and apps can improve every technique on this list. 🛠️

While we’ve already given some examples of how ClickUp can be used for other techniques on this list, it’s useful for much more than that. Use ClickUp for Teams to assist your team members across almost every facet of project management and decision-making, regardless of the department or how big (or small) your company is.

For example, ClickUp Chat view brings all communication and conversations about the decision together on one platform. This makes it easier to review existing information, ideas, and contributions more efficiently.

The ClickUp Communication Plan Template is another great tool to leverage. Use it to improve any (or all) of these techniques with better communication, whether your team is remote, hybrid, or on-site.

That’s just one of over 1,000 templates ClickUp offers for better decision-making, project management, and meeting efficiency.

For example, you can use our task list templates to create a structure for your decision-making meeting ahead of time or work as a team to optimize a task list for a given project.

Digital decision-making tools like ClickUp also save you time by automating daily tasks, generating AI summaries of your meetings, tracking project progress, and keeping team members on the same page.

Harmonize Your Group Decision-Making Process

Choosing the right group decision-making processes is paramount for successful, innovative choices.

Remember, each team member plays a unique role in crafting the collective masterpiece that is a well-thought-out decision. Use the above group decision-making techniques to propel your team members (and organization) toward a happy, harmonious future.

It’s time to embrace techniques like brainstorming, democratic voting, the NGT, and the Delphi method to create an environment that fosters visionary decisions and strategies.

Experience the transformative power of a platform that streamlines your collaborative efforts and turns the diverse voices of your team into a harmonious masterpiece. Sign up for ClickUp today —it’s free!

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14.3 Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups

Learning objectives.

• Discuss the common components of problems.
• Explain the five steps of the group problem-solving process.
• Describe the brainstorming and discussion that should take place before the group makes a decision.
• Compare and contrast the different decision-making techniques.
• Discuss the various influences on decision making.

Although the steps of problem solving and decision making that we will discuss next may seem obvious, we often don’t think to or choose not to use them. Instead, we start working on a problem and later realize we are lost and have to backtrack. I’m sure we’ve all reached a point in a project or task and had the “OK, now what?” moment. It’s frustrating to get to a crucial point in building or fixing something only to realize that you have to unscrew a support board that you already screwed in, have to drive back to the hardware store to get something that you didn’t think to get earlier, or have to completely start over. In this section, we will discuss the group problem-solving process, methods of decision making, and influences on these processes.

Group Problem Solving

The problem-solving process involves thoughts, discussions, actions, and decisions that occur from the first consideration of a problematic situation to the goal. The problems that groups face are varied, but they all share some common components.

Problems of all sorts have three common components (Adams & Galanes, 2009):

• An undesirable situation. When conditions are desirable, there isn’t a problem.
• A desired situation. Even though it may only be a vague idea, there is a drive to better the undesirable situation. The vague idea may develop into a more precise goal that can be achieved, although solutions are not yet generated.
• Obstacles between undesirable and desirable situation. These are things that stand in the way between the current situation and the group’s goal of addressing it. This component of a problem requires the most work, and it is the part where decision making occurs. Some examples of obstacles include limited funding, resources, personnel, time, or information. Obstacles can also take the form of people who are working against the group, including people resistant to change or people who disagree.

Discussion of these three elements of a problem helps the group tailor its problem-solving process, as each problem will vary.

Group problem solving can be a confusing puzzle unless it is approached systematically.

Muness Castle – Problem Solving – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Group Problem-Solving Process

There are several variations of similar problem-solving models based on US American scholar John Dewey’s reflective thinking process (Bormann & Bormann, 1988). As you read through the steps in the process, think about how you can apply what we learned regarding the general and specific elements of problems. Some of the following steps are straightforward, and they are things we would logically do when faced with a problem. However, taking a deliberate and systematic approach to problem solving has been shown to benefit group functioning and performance. A deliberate approach is especially beneficial for groups that do not have an established history of working together and will only be able to meet occasionally. Although a group should attend to each step of the process, group leaders or other group members who facilitate problem solving should be cautious not to dogmatically follow each element of the process or force a group along. Such a lack of flexibility could limit group member input and negatively affect the group’s cohesion and climate.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Define the problem by considering the three elements shared by every problem: the current undesirable situation, the goal or more desirable situation, and obstacles in the way (Adams & Galanes, 2009). At this stage, group members share what they know about the current situation, without proposing solutions or evaluating the information. Here are some good questions to ask during this stage: What is the current difficulty? How did we come to know that the difficulty exists? Who/what is involved? Why is it meaningful/urgent/important? What have the effects been so far? What, if any, elements of the difficulty require clarification? At the end of this stage, the group should be able to compose a single sentence that summarizes the problem called a problem statement . Avoid wording in the problem statement or question that hints at potential solutions. A small group formed to investigate ethical violations of city officials could use the following problem statement: “Our state does not currently have a mechanism for citizens to report suspected ethical violations by city officials.”

Step 2: Analyze the Problem

During this step a group should analyze the problem and the group’s relationship to the problem. Whereas the first step involved exploring the “what” related to the problem, this step focuses on the “why.” At this stage, group members can discuss the potential causes of the difficulty. Group members may also want to begin setting out an agenda or timeline for the group’s problem-solving process, looking forward to the other steps. To fully analyze the problem, the group can discuss the five common problem variables discussed before. Here are two examples of questions that the group formed to address ethics violations might ask: Why doesn’t our city have an ethics reporting mechanism? Do cities of similar size have such a mechanism? Once the problem has been analyzed, the group can pose a problem question that will guide the group as it generates possible solutions. “How can citizens report suspected ethical violations of city officials and how will such reports be processed and addressed?” As you can see, the problem question is more complex than the problem statement, since the group has moved on to more in-depth discussion of the problem during step 2.

Step 3: Generate Possible Solutions

During this step, group members generate possible solutions to the problem. Again, solutions should not be evaluated at this point, only proposed and clarified. The question should be what could we do to address this problem, not what should we do to address it. It is perfectly OK for a group member to question another person’s idea by asking something like “What do you mean?” or “Could you explain your reasoning more?” Discussions at this stage may reveal a need to return to previous steps to better define or more fully analyze a problem. Since many problems are multifaceted, it is necessary for group members to generate solutions for each part of the problem separately, making sure to have multiple solutions for each part. Stopping the solution-generating process prematurely can lead to groupthink. For the problem question previously posed, the group would need to generate solutions for all three parts of the problem included in the question. Possible solutions for the first part of the problem (How can citizens report ethical violations?) may include “online reporting system, e-mail, in-person, anonymously, on-the-record,” and so on. Possible solutions for the second part of the problem (How will reports be processed?) may include “daily by a newly appointed ethics officer, weekly by a nonpartisan nongovernment employee,” and so on. Possible solutions for the third part of the problem (How will reports be addressed?) may include “by a newly appointed ethics commission, by the accused’s supervisor, by the city manager,” and so on.

Step 4: Evaluate Solutions

During this step, solutions can be critically evaluated based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed based on more obvious differences in relevance and/or merit, the group should analyze each solution based on its potential effects—especially negative effects. Groups that are required to report the rationale for their decision or whose decisions may be subject to public scrutiny would be wise to make a set list of criteria for evaluating each solution. Additionally, solutions can be evaluated based on how well they fit with the group’s charge and the abilities of the group. To do this, group members may ask, “Does this solution live up to the original purpose or mission of the group?” and “Can the solution actually be implemented with our current resources and connections?” and “How will this solution be supported, funded, enforced, and assessed?” Secondary tensions and substantive conflict, two concepts discussed earlier, emerge during this step of problem solving, and group members will need to employ effective critical thinking and listening skills.

Decision making is part of the larger process of problem solving and it plays a prominent role in this step. While there are several fairly similar models for problem solving, there are many varied decision-making techniques that groups can use. For example, to narrow the list of proposed solutions, group members may decide by majority vote, by weighing the pros and cons, or by discussing them until a consensus is reached. There are also more complex decision-making models like the “six hats method,” which we will discuss later. Once the final decision is reached, the group leader or facilitator should confirm that the group is in agreement. It may be beneficial to let the group break for a while or even to delay the final decision until a later meeting to allow people time to evaluate it outside of the group context.

Step 5: Implement and Assess the Solution

Implementing the solution requires some advanced planning, and it should not be rushed unless the group is operating under strict time restraints or delay may lead to some kind of harm. Although some solutions can be implemented immediately, others may take days, months, or years. As was noted earlier, it may be beneficial for groups to poll those who will be affected by the solution as to their opinion of it or even to do a pilot test to observe the effectiveness of the solution and how people react to it. Before implementation, groups should also determine how and when they would assess the effectiveness of the solution by asking, “How will we know if the solution is working or not?” Since solution assessment will vary based on whether or not the group is disbanded, groups should also consider the following questions: If the group disbands after implementation, who will be responsible for assessing the solution? If the solution fails, will the same group reconvene or will a new group be formed?

Once a solution has been reached and the group has the “green light” to implement it, it should proceed deliberately and cautiously, making sure to consider possible consequences and address them as needed.

Jocko Benoit – Prodigal Light – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Certain elements of the solution may need to be delegated out to various people inside and outside the group. Group members may also be assigned to implement a particular part of the solution based on their role in the decision making or because it connects to their area of expertise. Likewise, group members may be tasked with publicizing the solution or “selling” it to a particular group of stakeholders. Last, the group should consider its future. In some cases, the group will get to decide if it will stay together and continue working on other tasks or if it will disband. In other cases, outside forces determine the group’s fate.

“Getting Competent”

Problem Solving and Group Presentations

Giving a group presentation requires that individual group members and the group as a whole solve many problems and make many decisions. Although having more people involved in a presentation increases logistical difficulties and has the potential to create more conflict, a well-prepared and well-delivered group presentation can be more engaging and effective than a typical presentation. The main problems facing a group giving a presentation are (1) dividing responsibilities, (2) coordinating schedules and time management, and (3) working out the logistics of the presentation delivery.

In terms of dividing responsibilities, assigning individual work at the first meeting and then trying to fit it all together before the presentation (which is what many college students do when faced with a group project) is not the recommended method. Integrating content and visual aids created by several different people into a seamless final product takes time and effort, and the person “stuck” with this job at the end usually ends up developing some resentment toward his or her group members. While it’s OK for group members to do work independently outside of group meetings, spend time working together to help set up some standards for content and formatting expectations that will help make later integration of work easier. Taking the time to complete one part of the presentation together can help set those standards for later individual work. Discuss the roles that various group members will play openly so there isn’t role confusion. There could be one point person for keeping track of the group’s progress and schedule, one point person for communication, one point person for content integration, one point person for visual aids, and so on. Each person shouldn’t do all that work on his or her own but help focus the group’s attention on his or her specific area during group meetings (Stanton, 2009).

Scheduling group meetings is one of the most challenging problems groups face, given people’s busy lives. From the beginning, it should be clearly communicated that the group needs to spend considerable time in face-to-face meetings, and group members should know that they may have to make an occasional sacrifice to attend. Especially important is the commitment to scheduling time to rehearse the presentation. Consider creating a contract of group guidelines that includes expectations for meeting attendance to increase group members’ commitment.

Group presentations require members to navigate many logistics of their presentation. While it may be easier for a group to assign each member to create a five-minute segment and then transition from one person to the next, this is definitely not the most engaging method. Creating a master presentation and then assigning individual speakers creates a more fluid and dynamic presentation and allows everyone to become familiar with the content, which can help if a person doesn’t show up to present and during the question-and-answer section. Once the content of the presentation is complete, figure out introductions, transitions, visual aids, and the use of time and space (Stanton, 2012). In terms of introductions, figure out if one person will introduce all the speakers at the beginning, if speakers will introduce themselves at the beginning, or if introductions will occur as the presentation progresses. In terms of transitions, make sure each person has included in his or her speaking notes when presentation duties switch from one person to the next. Visual aids have the potential to cause hiccups in a group presentation if they aren’t fluidly integrated. Practicing with visual aids and having one person control them may help prevent this. Know how long your presentation is and know how you’re going to use the space. Presenters should know how long the whole presentation should be and how long each of their segments should be so that everyone can share the responsibility of keeping time. Also consider the size and layout of the presentation space. You don’t want presenters huddled in a corner until it’s their turn to speak or trapped behind furniture when their turn comes around.

• Of the three main problems facing group presenters, which do you think is the most challenging and why?
• Why do you think people tasked with a group presentation (especially students) prefer to divide the parts up and have members work on them independently before coming back together and integrating each part? What problems emerge from this method? In what ways might developing a master presentation and then assigning parts to different speakers be better than the more divided method? What are the drawbacks to the master presentation method?

Decision Making in Groups

We all engage in personal decision making daily, and we all know that some decisions are more difficult than others. When we make decisions in groups, we face some challenges that we do not face in our personal decision making, but we also stand to benefit from some advantages of group decision making (Napier & Gershenfeld, 2004). Group decision making can appear fair and democratic but really only be a gesture that covers up the fact that certain group members or the group leader have already decided. Group decision making also takes more time than individual decisions and can be burdensome if some group members do not do their assigned work, divert the group with self-centered or unproductive role behaviors, or miss meetings. Conversely, though, group decisions are often more informed, since all group members develop a shared understanding of a problem through discussion and debate. The shared understanding may also be more complex and deep than what an individual would develop, because the group members are exposed to a variety of viewpoints that can broaden their own perspectives. Group decisions also benefit from synergy, one of the key advantages of group communication that we discussed earlier. Most groups do not use a specific method of decision making, perhaps thinking that they’ll work things out as they go. This can lead to unequal participation, social loafing, premature decisions, prolonged discussion, and a host of other negative consequences. So in this section we will learn some practices that will prepare us for good decision making and some specific techniques we can use to help us reach a final decision.

Brainstorming before Decision Making

Before groups can make a decision, they need to generate possible solutions to their problem. The most commonly used method is brainstorming, although most people don’t follow the recommended steps of brainstorming. As you’ll recall, brainstorming refers to the quick generation of ideas free of evaluation. The originator of the term brainstorming said the following four rules must be followed for the technique to be effective (Osborn, 1959):

• Evaluation of ideas is forbidden.
• Wild and crazy ideas are encouraged.
• Quantity of ideas, not quality, is the goal.
• New combinations of ideas presented are encouraged.

Discussion before Decision Making

The nominal group technique guides decision making through a four-step process that includes idea generation and evaluation and seeks to elicit equal contributions from all group members (Delbecq & Ven de Ven, 1971). This method is useful because the procedure involves all group members systematically, which fixes the problem of uneven participation during discussions. Since everyone contributes to the discussion, this method can also help reduce instances of social loafing. To use the nominal group technique, do the following:

• Silently and individually list ideas.
• Create a master list of ideas.
• Clarify ideas as needed.
• Take a secret vote to rank group members’ acceptance of ideas.

Specific Decision-Making Techniques

Some decision-making techniques involve determining a course of action based on the level of agreement among the group members. These methods include majority, expert, authority, and consensus rule. Table 14.1 “Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques” reviews the pros and cons of each of these methods.

Majority rule is a simple method of decision making based on voting. In most cases a majority is considered half plus one.

Becky McCray – Voting – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Majority rule is a commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before a decision is made. A show-of-hands vote, a paper ballot, or an electronic voting system can determine the majority choice. Many decision-making bodies, including the US House of Representatives, Senate, and Supreme Court, use majority rule to make decisions, which shows that it is often associated with democratic decision making, since each person gets one vote and each vote counts equally. Of course, other individuals and mediated messages can influence a person’s vote, but since the voting power is spread out over all group members, it is not easy for one person or party to take control of the decision-making process. In some cases—for example, to override a presidential veto or to amend the constitution—a super majority of two-thirds may be required to make a decision.

Minority rule is a decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members. When a designated expert makes a decision by minority rule, there may be buy-in from others in the group, especially if the members of the group didn’t have relevant knowledge or expertise. When a designated authority makes decisions, buy-in will vary based on group members’ level of respect for the authority. For example, decisions made by an elected authority may be more accepted by those who elected him or her than by those who didn’t. As with majority rule, this technique can be time saving. Unlike majority rule, one person or party can have control over the decision-making process. This type of decision making is more similar to that used by monarchs and dictators. An obvious negative consequence of this method is that the needs or wants of one person can override the needs and wants of the majority. A minority deciding for the majority has led to negative consequences throughout history. The white Afrikaner minority that ruled South Africa for decades instituted apartheid, which was a system of racial segregation that disenfranchised and oppressed the majority population. The quality of the decision and its fairness really depends on the designated expert or authority.

Consensus rule is a decision-making technique in which all members of the group must agree on the same decision. On rare occasions, a decision may be ideal for all group members, which can lead to unanimous agreement without further debate and discussion. Although this can be positive, be cautious that this isn’t a sign of groupthink. More typically, consensus is reached only after lengthy discussion. On the plus side, consensus often leads to high-quality decisions due to the time and effort it takes to get everyone in agreement. Group members are also more likely to be committed to the decision because of their investment in reaching it. On the negative side, the ultimate decision is often one that all group members can live with but not one that’s ideal for all members. Additionally, the process of arriving at consensus also includes conflict, as people debate ideas and negotiate the interpersonal tensions that may result.

Table 14.1 Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques

Influences on Decision Making

Many factors influence the decision-making process. For example, how might a group’s independence or access to resources affect the decisions they make? What potential advantages and disadvantages come with decisions made by groups that are more or less similar in terms of personality and cultural identities? In this section, we will explore how situational, personality, and cultural influences affect decision making in groups.

Situational Influences on Decision Making

A group’s situational context affects decision making. One key situational element is the degree of freedom that the group has to make its own decisions, secure its own resources, and initiate its own actions. Some groups have to go through multiple approval processes before they can do anything, while others are self-directed, self-governing, and self-sustaining. Another situational influence is uncertainty. In general, groups deal with more uncertainty in decision making than do individuals because of the increased number of variables that comes with adding more people to a situation. Individual group members can’t know what other group members are thinking, whether or not they are doing their work, and how committed they are to the group. So the size of a group is a powerful situational influence, as it adds to uncertainty and complicates communication.

Access to information also influences a group. First, the nature of the group’s task or problem affects its ability to get information. Group members can more easily make decisions about a problem when other groups have similarly experienced it. Even if the problem is complex and serious, the group can learn from other situations and apply what it learns. Second, the group must have access to flows of information. Access to archives, electronic databases, and individuals with relevant experience is necessary to obtain any relevant information about similar problems or to do research on a new or unique problem. In this regard, group members’ formal and information network connections also become important situational influences.

The urgency of a decision can have a major influence on the decision-making process. As a situation becomes more urgent, it requires more specific decision-making methods and types of communication.

Judith E. Bell – Urgent – CC BY-SA 2.0.

The origin and urgency of a problem are also situational factors that influence decision making. In terms of origin, problems usually occur in one of four ways:

• Something goes wrong. Group members must decide how to fix or stop something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that half of the building is contaminated with mold and must be closed down.
• Expectations change or increase. Group members must innovate more efficient or effective ways of doing something. Example—a firehouse crew finds out that the district they are responsible for is being expanded.
• Something goes wrong and expectations change or increase. Group members must fix/stop and become more efficient/effective. Example—the firehouse crew has to close half the building and must start responding to more calls due to the expanding district.
• The problem existed from the beginning. Group members must go back to the origins of the situation and walk through and analyze the steps again to decide what can be done differently. Example—a firehouse crew has consistently had to work with minimal resources in terms of building space and firefighting tools.

In each of the cases, the need for a decision may be more or less urgent depending on how badly something is going wrong, how high the expectations have been raised, or the degree to which people are fed up with a broken system. Decisions must be made in situations ranging from crisis level to mundane.

Personality Influences on Decision Making

The personalities of group members, especially leaders and other active members, affect the climate of the group. Group member personalities can be categorized based on where they fall on a continuum anchored by the following descriptors: dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional (Cragan & Wright, 1999). The more group members there are in any extreme of these categories, the more likely that the group climate will also shift to resemble those characteristics.

• Dominant versus submissive. Group members that are more dominant act more independently and directly, initiate conversations, take up more space, make more direct eye contact, seek leadership positions, and take control over decision-making processes. More submissive members are reserved, contribute to the group only when asked to, avoid eye contact, and leave their personal needs and thoughts unvoiced or give into the suggestions of others.
• Friendly versus unfriendly. Group members on the friendly side of the continuum find a balance between talking and listening, don’t try to win at the expense of other group members, are flexible but not weak, and value democratic decision making. Unfriendly group members are disagreeable, indifferent, withdrawn, and selfish, which leads them to either not invest in decision making or direct it in their own interest rather than in the interest of the group.
• Instrumental versus emotional. Instrumental group members are emotionally neutral, objective, analytical, task-oriented, and committed followers, which leads them to work hard and contribute to the group’s decision making as long as it is orderly and follows agreed-on rules. Emotional group members are creative, playful, independent, unpredictable, and expressive, which leads them to make rash decisions, resist group norms or decision-making structures, and switch often from relational to task focus.

Cultural Context and Decision Making

Demographic changes in the United States and increases in technology that can bring different people together make it more likely that we will be interacting in more and more heterogeneous groups (Allen, 2011). Some small groups are more homogenous, meaning the members are more similar, and some are more heterogeneous, meaning the members are more different. Diversity and difference within groups has advantages and disadvantages. In terms of advantages, research finds that, in general, groups that are culturally heterogeneous have better overall performance than more homogenous groups (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999). Additionally, when group members have time to get to know each other and competently communicate across their differences, the advantages of diversity include better decision making due to different perspectives (Thomas, 1999). Unfortunately, groups often operate under time constraints and other pressures that make the possibility for intercultural dialogue and understanding difficult. The main disadvantage of heterogeneous groups is the possibility for conflict, but given that all groups experience conflict, this isn’t solely due to the presence of diversity. We will now look more specifically at how some of the cultural value orientations we’ve learned about already in this book can play out in groups with international diversity and how domestic diversity in terms of demographics can also influence group decision making.

International Diversity in Group Interactions

Cultural value orientations such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles all manifest on a continuum of communication behaviors and can influence group decision making. Group members from individualistic cultures are more likely to value task-oriented, efficient, and direct communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as dividing up tasks into individual projects before collaboration begins and then openly debating ideas during discussion and decision making. Additionally, people from cultures that value individualism are more likely to openly express dissent from a decision, essentially expressing their disagreement with the group. Group members from collectivistic cultures are more likely to value relationships over the task at hand. Because of this, they also tend to value conformity and face-saving (often indirect) communication. This could manifest in behaviors such as establishing norms that include periods of socializing to build relationships before task-oriented communication like negotiations begin or norms that limit public disagreement in favor of more indirect communication that doesn’t challenge the face of other group members or the group’s leader. In a group composed of people from a collectivistic culture, each member would likely play harmonizing roles, looking for signs of conflict and resolving them before they become public.

Power distance can also affect group interactions. Some cultures rank higher on power-distance scales, meaning they value hierarchy, make decisions based on status, and believe that people have a set place in society that is fairly unchangeable. Group members from high-power-distance cultures would likely appreciate a strong designated leader who exhibits a more directive leadership style and prefer groups in which members have clear and assigned roles. In a group that is homogenous in terms of having a high-power-distance orientation, members with higher status would be able to openly provide information, and those with lower status may not provide information unless a higher status member explicitly seeks it from them. Low-power-distance cultures do not place as much value and meaning on status and believe that all group members can participate in decision making. Group members from low-power-distance cultures would likely freely speak their mind during a group meeting and prefer a participative leadership style.

How much meaning is conveyed through the context surrounding verbal communication can also affect group communication. Some cultures have a high-context communication style in which much of the meaning in an interaction is conveyed through context such as nonverbal cues and silence. Group members from high-context cultures may avoid saying something directly, assuming that other group members will understand the intended meaning even if the message is indirect. So if someone disagrees with a proposed course of action, he or she may say, “Let’s discuss this tomorrow,” and mean, “I don’t think we should do this.” Such indirect communication is also a face-saving strategy that is common in collectivistic cultures. Other cultures have a low-context communication style that places more importance on the meaning conveyed through words than through context or nonverbal cues. Group members from low-context cultures often say what they mean and mean what they say. For example, if someone doesn’t like an idea, they might say, “I think we should consider more options. This one doesn’t seem like the best we can do.”

In any of these cases, an individual from one culture operating in a group with people of a different cultural orientation could adapt to the expectations of the host culture, especially if that person possesses a high degree of intercultural communication competence (ICC). Additionally, people with high ICC can also adapt to a group member with a different cultural orientation than the host culture. Even though these cultural orientations connect to values that affect our communication in fairly consistent ways, individuals may exhibit different communication behaviors depending on their own individual communication style and the situation.

Domestic Diversity and Group Communication

While it is becoming more likely that we will interact in small groups with international diversity, we are guaranteed to interact in groups that are diverse in terms of the cultural identities found within a single country or the subcultures found within a larger cultural group.

Gender stereotypes sometimes influence the roles that people play within a group. For example, the stereotype that women are more nurturing than men may lead group members (both male and female) to expect that women will play the role of supporters or harmonizers within the group. Since women have primarily performed secretarial work since the 1900s, it may also be expected that women will play the role of recorder. In both of these cases, stereotypical notions of gender place women in roles that are typically not as valued in group communication. The opposite is true for men. In terms of leadership, despite notable exceptions, research shows that men fill an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of leadership positions. We are socialized to see certain behaviors by men as indicative of leadership abilities, even though they may not be. For example, men are often perceived to contribute more to a group because they tend to speak first when asked a question or to fill a silence and are perceived to talk more about task-related matters than relationally oriented matters. Both of these tendencies create a perception that men are more engaged with the task. Men are also socialized to be more competitive and self-congratulatory, meaning that their communication may be seen as dedicated and their behaviors seen as powerful, and that when their work isn’t noticed they will be more likely to make it known to the group rather than take silent credit. Even though we know that the relational elements of a group are crucial for success, even in high-performance teams, that work is not as valued in our society as the task-related work.

Despite the fact that some communication patterns and behaviors related to our typical (and stereotypical) gender socialization affect how we interact in and form perceptions of others in groups, the differences in group communication that used to be attributed to gender in early group communication research seem to be diminishing. This is likely due to the changing organizational cultures from which much group work emerges, which have now had more than sixty years to adjust to women in the workplace. It is also due to a more nuanced understanding of gender-based research, which doesn’t take a stereotypical view from the beginning as many of the early male researchers did. Now, instead of biological sex being assumed as a factor that creates inherent communication differences, group communication scholars see that men and women both exhibit a range of behaviors that are more or less feminine or masculine. It is these gendered behaviors, and not a person’s gender, that seem to have more of an influence on perceptions of group communication. Interestingly, group interactions are still masculinist in that male and female group members prefer a more masculine communication style for task leaders and that both males and females in this role are more likely to adapt to a more masculine communication style. Conversely, men who take on social-emotional leadership behaviors adopt a more feminine communication style. In short, it seems that although masculine communication traits are more often associated with high status positions in groups, both men and women adapt to this expectation and are evaluated similarly (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999).

Other demographic categories are also influential in group communication and decision making. In general, group members have an easier time communicating when they are more similar than different in terms of race and age. This ease of communication can make group work more efficient, but the homogeneity may sacrifice some creativity. As we learned earlier, groups that are diverse (e.g., they have members of different races and generations) benefit from the diversity of perspectives in terms of the quality of decision making and creativity of output.

In terms of age, for the first time since industrialization began, it is common to have three generations of people (and sometimes four) working side by side in an organizational setting. Although four generations often worked together in early factories, they were segregated based on their age group, and a hierarchy existed with older workers at the top and younger workers at the bottom. Today, however, generations interact regularly, and it is not uncommon for an older person to have a leader or supervisor who is younger than him or her (Allen, 2011). The current generations in the US workplace and consequently in work-based groups include the following:

• The Silent Generation. Born between 1925 and 1942, currently in their midsixties to mideighties, this is the smallest generation in the workforce right now, as many have retired or left for other reasons. This generation includes people who were born during the Great Depression or the early part of World War II, many of whom later fought in the Korean War (Clarke, 1970).
• The Baby Boomers. Born between 1946 and 1964, currently in their late forties to midsixties, this is the largest generation in the workforce right now. Baby boomers are the most populous generation born in US history, and they are working longer than previous generations, which means they will remain the predominant force in organizations for ten to twenty more years.
• Generation X. Born between 1965 and 1981, currently in their early thirties to midforties, this generation was the first to see technology like cell phones and the Internet make its way into classrooms and our daily lives. Compared to previous generations, “Gen-Xers” are more diverse in terms of race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation and also have a greater appreciation for and understanding of diversity.
• Generation Y. Born between 1982 and 2000, “Millennials” as they are also called are currently in their late teens up to about thirty years old. This generation is not as likely to remember a time without technology such as computers and cell phones. They are just starting to enter into the workforce and have been greatly affected by the economic crisis of the late 2000s, experiencing significantly high unemployment rates.

The benefits and challenges that come with diversity of group members are important to consider. Since we will all work in diverse groups, we should be prepared to address potential challenges in order to reap the benefits. Diverse groups may be wise to coordinate social interactions outside of group time in order to find common ground that can help facilitate interaction and increase group cohesion. We should be sensitive but not let sensitivity create fear of “doing something wrong” that then prevents us from having meaningful interactions. Reviewing Chapter 8 “Culture and Communication” will give you useful knowledge to help you navigate both international and domestic diversity and increase your communication competence in small groups and elsewhere.

Key Takeaways

• Every problem has common components: an undesirable situation, a desired situation, and obstacles between the undesirable and desirable situations. Every problem also has a set of characteristics that vary among problems, including task difficulty, number of possible solutions, group member interest in the problem, group familiarity with the problem, and the need for solution acceptance.

The group problem-solving process has five steps:

• Define the problem by creating a problem statement that summarizes it.
• Analyze the problem and create a problem question that can guide solution generation.
• Generate possible solutions. Possible solutions should be offered and listed without stopping to evaluate each one.
• Evaluate the solutions based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Groups should also assess the potential effects of the narrowed list of solutions.
• Implement and assess the solution. Aside from enacting the solution, groups should determine how they will know the solution is working or not.
• Before a group makes a decision, it should brainstorm possible solutions. Group communication scholars suggest that groups (1) do a warm-up brainstorming session; (2) do an actual brainstorming session in which ideas are not evaluated, wild ideas are encouraged, quantity not quality of ideas is the goal, and new combinations of ideas are encouraged; (3) eliminate duplicate ideas; and (4) clarify, organize, and evaluate ideas. In order to guide the idea-generation process and invite equal participation from group members, the group may also elect to use the nominal group technique.
• Common decision-making techniques include majority rule, minority rule, and consensus rule. With majority rule, only a majority, usually one-half plus one, must agree before a decision is made. With minority rule, a designated authority or expert has final say over a decision, and the input of group members may or may not be invited or considered. With consensus rule, all members of the group must agree on the same decision.

Several factors influence the decision-making process:

• Situational factors include the degree of freedom a group has to make its own decisions, the level of uncertainty facing the group and its task, the size of the group, the group’s access to information, and the origin and urgency of the problem.
• Personality influences on decision making include a person’s value orientation (economic, aesthetic, theoretical, political, or religious), and personality traits (dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional).
• Cultural influences on decision making include the heterogeneity or homogeneity of the group makeup; cultural values and characteristics such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles; and gender and age differences.
• Scenario 1. Task difficulty is high, number of possible solutions is high, group interest in problem is high, group familiarity with problem is low, and need for solution acceptance is high.
• Scenario 2. Task difficulty is low, number of possible solutions is low, group interest in problem is low, group familiarity with problem is high, and need for solution acceptance is low.
• Scenario 1: Academic. A professor asks his or her class to decide whether the final exam should be an in-class or take-home exam.
• Scenario 2: Professional. A group of coworkers must decide which person from their department to nominate for a company-wide award.
• Scenario 3: Personal. A family needs to decide how to divide the belongings and estate of a deceased family member who did not leave a will.
• Scenario 4: Civic. A local branch of a political party needs to decide what five key issues it wants to include in the national party’s platform.
• Group communication researchers have found that heterogeneous groups (composed of diverse members) have advantages over homogenous (more similar) groups. Discuss a group situation you have been in where diversity enhanced your and/or the group’s experience.

Adams, K., and Gloria G. Galanes, Communicating in Groups: Applications and Skills , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 220–21.

Allen, B. J., Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity , 2nd ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2011), 5.

Bormann, E. G., and Nancy C. Bormann, Effective Small Group Communication , 4th ed. (Santa Rosa, CA: Burgess CA, 1988), 112–13.

Clarke, G., “The Silent Generation Revisited,” Time, June 29, 1970, 46.

Cragan, J. F., and David W. Wright, Communication in Small Group Discussions: An Integrated Approach , 3rd ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1991), 77–78.

de Bono, E., Six Thinking Hats (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1985).

Delbecq, A. L., and Andrew H. Ven de Ven, “A Group Process Model for Problem Identification and Program Planning,” The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 7, no. 4 (1971): 466–92.

Haslett, B. B., and Jenn Ruebush, “What Differences Do Individual Differences in Groups Make?: The Effects of Individuals, Culture, and Group Composition,” in The Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research , ed. Lawrence R. Frey (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 133.

Napier, R. W., and Matti K. Gershenfeld, Groups: Theory and Experience , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 292.

Osborn, A. F., Applied Imagination (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959).

Spranger, E., Types of Men (New York: Steckert, 1928).

Stanton, C., “How to Deliver Group Presentations: The Unified Team Approach,” Six Minutes Speaking and Presentation Skills , November 3, 2009, accessed August 28, 2012, http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/group-presentations-unified-team-approach .

Thomas, D. C., “Cultural Diversity and Work Group Effectiveness: An Experimental Study,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 30, no. 2 (1999): 242–63.

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together

• Al Pittampalli

If your meetings are unproductive, this might be the reason.

There are five stages of problem solving: defining the problem, generating solutions, evaluating solutions, picking a solution, and making a plan. When we solve problems on our own, we intuitively move in between these stages to quickly generate solutions. We assume this method will also work in group settings, however, it often fails because each person could be occupying a different problem solving stage at the same time (essentially, no one is on the same page — even though they think they are). To solve problems as a group, we need to jettison the assumption that intuitive problem solving is sufficient, and instead embrace a more methodical approach. In a methodical meeting, for each issue that needs to be discussed, members deliberately and explicitly choose just one problem-solving stage to complete.

Why are so many meetings so unproductive?

• Al Pittampalli is the founder of the Modern Meeting Company and the author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting (Penguin).

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BUS403: Negotiations and Conflict Management

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making in Groups

This text summarizes common characteristics of problems and the five steps in group problem-solving. The reading describes brainstorming and discussions that should occur before group decision-making, compares and contrasts decision-making techniques, and explores various influences on decision-making. The section "Getting Competent" emphasizes the need for leaders and managers to delegate tasks and responsibilities as they identify specialized skills among their teams and employees.

Group Problem-Solving Process

Group problem-solving can be a confusing puzzle unless it is approached systematically.

There are several variations of similar problem-solving models based on American scholar John Dewey's reflective thinking process. As you read through the steps in the process, think about how you can apply what we learned regarding the general and specific elements of problems. Some of the following steps are straightforward, and they are things we would logically do when faced with a problem.

However, taking a deliberate and systematic approach to problem-solving has been shown to benefit group functioning and performance. A deliberate approach is especially beneficial for groups that do not have an established history of working together and will only be able to meet occasionally.

Although a group should attend to each step of the process, group leaders or other group members who facilitate problem-solving should be cautious not to dogmatically follow each element of the process or force a group along. Such a lack of flexibility could limit group member input and negatively affect cohesion and climate.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Define the problem by considering the three elements shared by every problem: the current undesirable situation, the goal or more desirable situation, and obstacles. At this stage, group members share what they know about the current situation, without proposing solutions or evaluating the information.

Here are some good questions to ask during this stage: What is the current difficulty? How did we come to know that the difficulty exists? Who/what is involved? Why is it meaningful/urgent/important? What have the effects been so far? What, if any, elements of the difficulty require clarification?

At the end of this stage, the group should be able to compose a single sentence that summarizes the problem called a problem statement . Avoid wording in the problem statement or question that hints at potential solutions. A small group formed to investigate ethical violations of city officials could use the following problem statement: "Our state does not currently have a mechanism for citizens to report suspected ethical violations by city officials".

Step 2: Analyze the Problem

During this step a group should analyze the problem and the group's relationship to the problem. Whereas the first step involved exploring the "what" related to the problem, this step focuses on the "why." At this stage, group members can discuss the potential causes of the difficulty. Group members may also want to begin setting an agenda or timeline for the group's problem-solving process, looking forward to the other steps.

To fully analyze the problem, the group can discuss the five common problem variables discussed before. Here are two examples of questions that the group formed to address ethics violations might ask: Why doesn't our city have an ethics reporting mechanism? Do cities of similar size have such a mechanism? Once the problem has been analyzed, the group can pose a problem question that will guide the group as it generates possible solutions. "How can citizens report suspected ethical violations of city officials and how will such reports be processed and addressed?" As you can see, the problem question is more complex than the problem statement, since the group has moved on to more in-depth discussion of the problem during step 2.

Step 3: Generate Possible Solutions

During this step, group members generate possible solutions to the problem. Again, solutions should not be evaluated at this point, only proposed and clarified. The question should be, "What could we do to address this problem?" not "What should we do to address it?" It is perfectly OK for a group member to question another person's idea by asking something like "What do you mean?" or "Could you explain your reasoning more?"

Discussions at this stage may reveal a need to return to previous steps to better define or more fully analyze a problem. Since many problems are multifaceted, group members must generate solutions for each part of the problem separately, ensuring multiple solutions for each part. Stopping the solution-generating process prematurely can lead to groupthink. For the problem question previously posed, the group would need to generate solutions for all three parts of the problem included in the question.

Possible solutions for the first part of the problem (how can citizens report ethical violations?) may include an "online reporting system, email, in-person, anonymously, on-the-record," and so on.

Possible solutions for the second part of the problem (how will reports be processed?) may include "daily by a newly appointed ethics officer, weekly by a nonpartisan nongovernment employee," and so on. Possible solutions for the third part of the problem (how will reports be addressed?) may include "by a newly appointed ethics commission, by the accused's supervisor, by the city manager," and so on.

Step 4: Evaluate Solutions

During this step, solutions can be critically evaluated based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed based on more obvious differences in relevance and/or merit, the group should analyze each solution based on its potential effects – especially negative effects. Groups that are required to report the rationale for their decision or whose decisions may be subject to public scrutiny would be wise to make a set list of criteria for evaluating each solution. Additionally, solutions can be evaluated based on how well they fit with the group's charge and the group's abilities.

To do this, group members may ask, "Does this solution live up to the original purpose or mission of the group?" "Can the solution be implemented with our current resources and connections?" and "How will this solution be supported, funded, enforced, and assessed?" Secondary tensions and substantive conflict, two concepts discussed earlier, emerge during this step of problem-solving, and group members will need to employ effective critical thinking and listening skills. Decision-making is part of the larger problem-solving process, and it plays a prominent role in this step. While there are several fairly similar models for problem-solving, there are many varied decision-making techniques that groups can use.

For example, to narrow the proposed solutions, group members may decide by majority vote, by weighing the pros and cons, or by discussing them until a consensus is reached. There are also more complex decision-making models like the "six hats method," which we will discuss later. Once the final decision is reached, the group leader or facilitator should confirm that the group is in agreement. It may be beneficial to let the group break for a while or even to delay the final decision until a later meeting to allow people time to evaluate it outside of the group context.

Step 5: Implement and Assess the Solution

Implementing the solution requires some advanced planning, and it should not be rushed unless the group is operating under strict time restraints or delay may lead to some kind of harm. Although some solutions can be implemented immediately, others may take days, months, or years. As was noted earlier, it may be beneficial for groups to poll those affected by the solution to their opinion or even to do a pilot test to observe the solution's effectiveness and how people react to it.

Before implementation, groups should also determine how and when they would assess the solution's effectiveness by asking, "How will we know if the solution is working?" Since solution assessment will vary based on whether or not the group is disbanded, groups should also consider the following questions: If the group disbands after implementation, who will be responsible for assessing the solution? If the solution fails, will the same group reconvene or will a new group be formed?

Once a solution has been reached and the group has the "green light" to implement it, it should proceed deliberately and cautiously, making sure to consider possible consequences and address them as needed. Certain elements of the solution may need to be delegated to various people inside and outside the group. Group members may also be assigned to implement a particular part of the solution based on their role in the decision-making or because it connects to their expertise. Likewise, group members may be tasked with publicizing the solution or "selling" it to a particular group of stakeholders. Last, the group should consider its future. In some cases, the group will get to decide if it will stay together and continue working on other tasks or if it will disband. In other cases, outside forces determine the group's fate.

Getting Competent

Giving a group presentation requires that individual group members and the group solve many problems and make many decisions. Although having more people involved in a presentation increases logistical difficulties and has the potential to create more conflict, a well-prepared and well-delivered group presentation can be more engaging and effective than a typical presentation.

The main problems facing a group giving a presentation are (1) dividing responsibilities, (2) coordinating schedules and time management, and (3) working out the logistics of the presentation delivery.

Regarding dividing responsibilities, assigning individual work at the first meeting and then trying to fit it all together before the presentation (which is what many college students do when faced with a group project) is not the recommended method. Integrating content and visual aids created by several different people into a seamless final product takes time and effort, and the person "stuck" with this job at the end usually ends up developing some resentment toward his or her group members.

While it is OK for group members to work independently outside of group meetings, spend time working together to help set up some standards for content and formatting expectations that will help make later integration of work easier. Taking the time to complete one part of the presentation together can help set those standards for later individual work.

Discuss the roles various group members will play openly to avoid role confusion. There could be one point person for keeping track of the group's progress and schedule, one point person for communication, one point person for content integration, one point person for visual aids, and so on. Each person shouldn't do all that work on his or her own but help focus the group's attention on his or her specific area during group meetings.

Scheduling group meetings is one of the most challenging problems groups face, given people's busy lives. From the beginning, it should be communicated that the group needs to spend considerable time in face-to-face meetings. Group members should know they may have to sacrifice occasionally to attend. Especially important is the commitment to scheduling time to rehearse the presentation. Consider creating a contract of group guidelines that includes expectations for meeting attendance to increase group members' commitment.

Group presentations require members to navigate many logistics of their presentation. While it may be easier for a group to assign each member to create a five-minute segment and then transition from one person to the next, this is not the most engaging method. Creating a master presentation and assigning individual speakers creates a more fluid and dynamic presentation. It allows everyone to become familiar with the content, which can help if a person does not show up to present and during the question-and-answer section.

Once the presentation's content is complete, figure out introductions, transitions, visual aids, and the use of time and space. In terms of introductions, figure out if one person will introduce all the speakers at the beginning, if speakers will introduce themselves at the beginning, or if introductions will occur as the presentation progresses. In terms of transitions, make sure each person has included in his or her speaking notes when presentation duties switch from one person to the next. 

Visual aids can potentially cause hiccups in a group presentation if they aren't fluidly integrated. Practicing visual aids and having one person control them may help prevent this. Know how long your presentation is and know how you're going to use the space. Presenters should know how long the whole presentation should be and how long each segment should be so that everyone can share the responsibility of keeping time. Also consider the size and layout of the presentation space. You don't want presenters huddled in a corner until it's their turn to speak or trapped behind furniture when their turn comes around.

Of the three main problems facing group presenters, which do you think is the most challenging and why?

• Why do you think people tasked with a group presentation (especially students) prefer to divide the parts and have members work on them independently before coming back together and integrating each part?
• What problems emerge from this method? In what ways might developing a master presentation and then assigning parts to different speakers be better than the more divided method? What are the drawbacks to the master presentation method?

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Study Guides

• Critical Thinking

Decision-making and Problem-solving

Appreciate the complexities involved in decision-making & problem solving.

Develop evidence to support views

Analyze situations carefully

Discuss subjects in an organized way

Predict the consequences of actions

Weigh alternatives

Generate and organize ideas

Form and apply concepts

Design systematic plans of action

A 5-Step Problem-Solving Strategy

Specify the problem – a first step to solving a problem is to identify it as specifically as possible.  It involves evaluating the present state and determining how it differs from the goal state.

Analyze the problem – analyzing the problem involves learning as much as you can about it.  It may be necessary to look beyond the obvious, surface situation, to stretch your imagination and reach for more creative options.

seek other perspectives

be flexible in your analysis

consider various strands of impact

brainstorm about all possibilities and implications

research problems for which you lack complete information. Get help.

Formulate possible solutions – identify a wide range of possible solutions.

try to think of all possible solutions

be creative

consider similar problems and how you have solved them

Evaluate possible solutions – weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each solution.  Think through each solution and consider how, when, and where you could accomplish each.  Consider both immediate and long-term results.  Mapping your solutions can be helpful at this stage.

Choose a solution – consider 3 factors:

compatibility with your priorities

amount of risk

practicality

Keys to Problem Solving

Think aloud – problem solving is a cognitive, mental process.  Thinking aloud or talking yourself through the steps of problem solving is useful.  Hearing yourself think can facilitate the process.

Allow time for ideas to "gel" or consolidate.  If time permits, give yourself time for solutions to develop.  Distance from a problem can allow you to clear your mind and get a new perspective.

Talk about the problem – describing the problem to someone else and talking about it can often make a problem become more clear and defined so that a new solution will surface.

Decision Making Strategies

Decision making is a process of identifying and evaluating choices.  We make numerous decisions every day and our decisions may range from routine, every-day types of decisions to those decisions which will have far reaching impacts.  The types of decisions we make are routine, impulsive, and reasoned.  Deciding what to eat for breakfast is a routine decision; deciding to do or buy something at the last minute is considered an impulsive decision; and choosing your college major is, hopefully, a reasoned decision.  College coursework often requires you to make the latter, or reasoned decisions.

Decision making has much in common with problem solving.  In problem solving you identify and evaluate solution paths; in decision making you make a similar discovery and evaluation of alternatives.  The crux of decision making, then, is the careful identification and evaluation of alternatives.  As you weigh alternatives, use the following suggestions:

Consider the outcome each is likely to produce, in both the short term and the long term.

Compare alternatives based on how easily you can accomplish each.

Evaluate possible negative side effects each may produce.

Consider the risk involved in each.

Be creative, original; don't eliminate alternatives because you have not heard or used them before.

An important part of decision making is to predict both short-term and long-term outcomes for each alternative.  You may find that while an alternative seems most desirable at the present, it may pose problems or complications over a longer time period.

• Uses of Critical Thinking
• Critically Evaluating the Logic and Validity of Information
• Recognizing Propaganda Techniques and Errors of Faulty Logic
• Developing the Ability to Analyze Historical and Contemporary Information
• Recognize and Value Various Viewpoints
• Appreciating the Complexities Involved in Decision-Making and Problem-Solving
• Being a Responsible Critical Thinker & Collaborating with Others
• Suggestions
• Read the Textbook
• When to Take Notes
• 10 Steps to Tests
• Studying for Exams
• Test-Taking Errors
• Test Anxiety
• Objective Tests
• Essay Tests
• The Reading Process
• Levels of Comprehension
• Strengthen Your Reading Comprehension
• Reading Rate
• How to Read a Textbook
• Organizational Patterns of a Paragraph
• Topics, Main Ideas, and Support
• Inferences and Conclusions
• Interpreting What You Read
• Concentrating and Remembering
• Converting Words into Pictures
• Spelling and the Dictionary
• Eight Essential Spelling Rules
• Exceptions to the Rules
• Motivation and Goal Setting
• Effective Studying
• Time Management
• Listening and Note-Taking
• Memory and Learning Styles
• Textbook Reading Strategies
• Memory Tips
• Test-Taking Strategies
• The First Step
• Study System
• Maximize Comprehension
• Different Reading Modes
• Paragraph Patterns
• An Effective Strategy
• Finding the Main Idea
• Read a Medical Text
• Read in the Sciences
• Read University Level
• Textbook Study Strategies
• The Origin of Words
• Using a Dictionary
• Interpreting a Dictionary Entry
• Structure Analysis
• Common Roots
• Word Relationships
• Using Word Relationships
• Context Clues
• The Importance of Reading
• Vocabulary Analogies
• Guide to Talking with Instructors
• Writing Help

Dr. Elizabeth Coria Selected for Aspen Institute Fellowship

Marie schoeff art gallery exhibition, cuesta college celebrates 59th commencement ceremony.

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