Different perspectives o greater comprehension o

Different perspectives
o Greater comprehension
o Increased acceptance
o Training ground
 Disadvantages of group-aided decision making
o Social pressure
o Domination by vocal few
o Politics
o Goal displacement
o Group think
o Risky shift
 If decision occurs frequently  use groups because they
tend to produce more consistent decisions than do
individuals
 Given time constraints  most competent individual
 Face of environmental threats  groups use less
information and fewer communication channels and thus
increases the probability of a bad decision. **essential to
devise mechanisms to enhance communication
effectiveness
 Group problem solving techniques
o Requires that they reach a consensus : presenting
options and gaining agreement to support a
decision. Does not require unanimous agreement
because group members may still disagree with the
final decision buy are willing to work toward its
success
 Roadblocks when trying to achieve a
consensus  cannot generate relevant
alternatives to the problems
 Successful tips when trying to achieve an
consensus  groups should use active listening

skills, involve as many members as possible,
seek out the reasons behind arguments, dig for
the facts
o Brainstorming: process to generate multiple ideas
and alternatives for solving problems
 Silent idea generation is recommended over
the practice of having group members
randomly shout out their ideas because it leads
to a greater number of unique ideas
 Managers of team leaders may want to collect
the brainstormed ideas anonymously  more
controversial ideas and more nonredudent
ideas are generated by anaymous than
nonanymous brainstorming groups
 7 rules of brainstorming
 Defer judgment—don’t criticize during
the initial stage of idea generations
 Build on the ideas of others—encourage
people to extend other’s ideas
 Encourage wild ideas—out of the box
thinking
 Go for quantity over quality—encourages
people to think beyond their favorite
ideas
 Be visual—different color pens, poster
boards
 Stay focused on the topic
 One conversation at a time
o Nominal group technique (NGT): helps groups
generate ideas and evaluate and select solutions
 Reduces the roadblocks to group decision
making by (1) separating brainstorming from
evaluation (2) promoting balanced

participation among group members (3)
incorporating mathematical voting techniques
in order to reach consensus
o Delphi Technique: a group process that
anonymously generates ideas or judements from
physically dispersed experts, unlike NGT, experts’
ideas are obtained from questionaires or via the
internet as opposed to face to face group discussions
 Begins process by identifying the issue(s) he
wants to investigate
 Next participants are identified and a
questionnaire is developed
 Manager then summarizes the responses and
sends feedback to participants
 Participants are asked to review feedback,
prioritize the issues being considered and