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Group Think = Creativity by Karen Fattorosi
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Location: Blogs Webster University Business Experts |
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| Posted by: Webster University |
7/5/2007 |
I think I am experiencing writer’s block. Perhaps that is overly presumptuous--to think myself a writer. I am hardly a writer. I dabble with words and random thoughts. At any rate, over the past few weeks I have had no “light bulb” moments that resulted in a blog. The other day I enjoyed lunch with a handful of friends. Our discussions wondered all over the map, sometimes the whole table was involved, sometimes side conversations. Lively, interactive, bright minds, diverse ideas and viewpoints, engaging and inspiring–this is where ideas are born. Two hours and a short list of topics later I am resisting smugness in comparing my lunch with other writer’s roundtable illuminaries: Louella Parsons, Truman Capote, Samuel Johnson.
A few weeks ago, U.S. News and World Report had an interesting article on developing ideas in the workplace. The subtitle is: “If you’re in a group, you’ll have a better shot at being creative.” This intrigued me because I teach Group Counseling at Webster University and find compelling parallels in group dynamics between the workplace and counseling groups. After all, counseling in groups is all about getting the work done. As part of their training, students in the group counseling class are divided into groups and given a complicated assignment. While completing their task they are involved in a self-study on their own awareness of group dynamics and group processing within their task group. The task group is not unlike a work group given an assignment. It is very interesting to observe the different groups and their approach to the group task. Students who overly focus on the end product tend to enjoy their group much less and creativity suffers.
Arguments can be made for the necessity of a productive group to have a strong leader to keep everyone and the task on track. Nonetheless, the most dynamic, creative, and productive groups have no leader. The leader tends to focus the group and promote staying on task. That does not encourage extraneous information that can bring in new ideas to the project. Often this dwelling in the tangential results in new and unlikely solutions to problems. Nature serves as a model for this. The mutation, the biological accident, allows the species to survive extreme challenges.
So put your heads together the next time you are stumped, challenged, or want a different way to look at something. Systems theory explains group-think this way: 1 + 1 = 3. Put people together and the resulting group is different than the sum total of the individuals. Lunching with friends is group work at its best. |
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