Consensus – good or bad?
The term 'group thinking' has stuck in my mind since last week lecture.
It makes me suspicious about any discussion which reaches a consensus. A question comes up first in my mind about any consensus, is it a real consensus or the consequence of group thinking?
I make my own definition about consensus that when there are no interaction during thinking processes and people come up with the same opinion, it is a true consensus. However, if they don't after independent thinking and discussion or arguement bring congruence at the end, I doubt!! There could be chances that people get to a stage where they take into account the same factors so same conclusion can be made. However, when it is not independent thinking, the person who introduce new factors to others, they might have also spread their thoughts in other minds.
This thought makes me come to a lesson that, the anyone can add value to a group or a team when they are themselves, however limited their experience is, as long as they have enough knowledge and keep their thoughts independent to challenge and distort others'biases, they are contributing realistically. It is not necessarily how senior a person could be but it's about a value of an independent mind! :)
19 Mar 2011 23:52
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Tags: Rdm
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Anh T. Dang
In order to support your point in the last paragraph, you could use the concept of Belbin team-role which explains 8 necessary roles for teamwork: Plant, Resource Investigator, Sharper, Monitor-Evaluator, Coordinator, Implementer, Team-worker and Completer-Finisher. Team members should cover all these roles to be able to deliver a good outcome and None is better or worse than the others. The website https://e-belbin.com/ provides a test to identify which roles are preferred for each person based on his/her personality.
10 Apr 2011, 01:46
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