November 2010: The executive coach has a vital role to play in improving team decision-making, preventing some of the catastrophic results of Groupthink, and creating “an environment where individuals believe that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, such as asking for help, admitting errors and challenging each other.”
This was one of the key messages coming out of the sixth Meyler Campbell Annual Lecture, delivered by Professor Shlomo Ben-Hur of IMD, one of the world’s leading business schools based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Lecture took place at the Royal Society of Medicine on Tuesday November 16th 2010 in partnership with leading executive coaching firm Praesta, who sponsored the drinks reception that followed.
In a thought-provoking and highly topical talk – ‘Coaching Executive Teams to Reach Better Decisions’ – Professor Ben-Hur, whose professional career spans a wide variety of high-level roles including Vice President of Leadership Development and Learning at BP Group and Chief Learning Officer of DaimlerChrysler Services, examined some of the disastrous decision-making that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
He argued that the current responses of new guidelines, stronger regulation and more clearly defined responsibilities would be insufficient in preventing such scenarios happening again “since many of the causes are default human behaviours.”
“The challenges to making good decisions are so pervasive and deep rooted that traditional learning mechanisms are no longer adequate,” Professor Ben-Hur continued. “Changing these established natural routines and preventing the re-emergence of past, poor behaviours demands the hands on help, the repeating practice of new skills, and the ongoing feedback that only an executive coach can provide.”
“There are few greater mechanisms to mitigate risk in decision-making today”, he said, “and a key part of my objectives are to strengthen the reputation of the business coaching community.”
As well as introducing some of the key elements behind dysfunctional decision-making and Groupthink and referencing a number of Groupthink examples from the appeasement of Hitler to the Vietnam War and the 1990s Daimler Chrysler merger, Professor Ben-Hur introduced three tools that can equip leaders to improve their decision-making and the crucial role of executive coaching in supporting these tools. These were:
Meyler Campbell Managing Director, Anne Scoular, commented:
“The 2010 Annual Lecture is a truly historic moment for business coaching. Why? Because it sees business coaching finally move to the centre of decision-making within organisations. From decisions on the environment to road digging in London to military planning in conflicts overseas, we’ve seen so many examples over the last few years of crucial decisions being taken badly.
“What we learned tonight, however, is that there is hope and that business coaching can play an absolutely key role in creating the information-rich, supportive, collaborative and reflective environment where the dangers of Groupthink can be well and truly pre-empted.
“With Shlomo’s in depth practical understanding of the realities of corporate life, his organisational psychology background, and his background as a coach, he comes with a truly unique perspective. We thank you for a truly inspiring and compelling Annual Lecture.”
Anne’s words were backed up by Mairi Eastwood, Partner at Praesta, who in her closing comments to the Lecture, said:
“One of the greatest challenges a business coach has is articulating where they add value to an organisation and the people within it.
“Tonight’s Lecture has demonstrated to us clearly how we do that in relation to the dangers of group think. It shows the whole range of areas we work with, from the validity and completeness of hard data, right to the psychological challenges of speaking out with a different and challenging view and having your voice heard.”
Professor Ben-Hur started the Lecture by looking at the global financial turbulence of 2008. From boards to audit commissions, senior managers, regulators, rating agencies and politicians, how had some of the world’s most intelligent high performers made so many catastrophic decisions and been so impotent at protecting their organisations from risk?
One of the main reasons for this he said was dysfunctional decision-making where information flow is suppressed, people have more extreme attitudes and judgments and also tend to have less flexibility in adapting to changing circumstances. “Amazingly, this actually leads to a greater confidence in their decision-making”, said Professor Ben-Hur.
“This is not a reflection of individual attributes but group dynamics, what is known as Groupthink”, Professor Ben-Hur explained. “This is where group pressures lead to a deterioration of mental efficiencies and moral judgments.”
The term Groupthink was coined by William H. Whyte in a 1952 Fortune magazine article, but is perhaps most closely associated with the work of Irving Janis from Yale University. According to Whyte and Janis, Groupthink is “a mode of thinking that people engage in when deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when members’ striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”
And it’s not just the financial crisis that was a victim of Groupthink. From the inability to predict Pearl Harbour to the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the escalation of the Vietnam War to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, some of the most important decisions of the past century have been affected by Groupthink. In all these cases, warnings were discarded – such was the quest for unanimity with alternative courses of action never considered.
Professor Ben-Hur also gave two very personal examples of where Groupthink had led to flawed decision-making – the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the merger of Daimler Chrysler. In the former – “the bloodiest war in the history of Israel” and where a number of Professor Ben-Hur’s family and friends lost their lives, the Israeli high command was completely surprised by the Syrian and Egyptian attacks.
In the case of the Daimler/Chrysler merger, where Professor Ben-Hur was Chief Learning Officer, the executive team never contested the vision of Jurgen Schrempp, the CEO. The merger ultimately ended in failure with Daimler walking away in 2007.
Professor Ben-Hur explained the three layers of Groupthink, identified in Janis’s research. These are:
Key among these is the general unwillingness to speak out. “How often have you seen someone say something in a meeting which is the total opposite of what they said they were going to say”, pointed out Professor Ben-Hur.
So what are the remedies to Groupthink? “Tweaks, such as an examination of incentives or a putting up of regulatory safeguards are unlikely to work,” said Professor Ben-Hur, who also expressed his doubts on the current safeguards put in place to prevent any future financial crises.
“Such solutions to the current crisis come from a very rational perspective and is rarely enough to ensure good decisions”, Professor Ben-Hur said, citing how the Voltaire perspective of a rational man had been exposed by sociologists and psychologists, such as Freud and Weber “who exposed what lies beneath the surface.”
He continued:
“Such a rational approach often leads to people thinking about the changes they need to make to get around these new regulations rather than examining how they need to change the way they do things for the right reasons!”
Instead, Professor Ben-Hur argued that there are two main solutions to Groupthink. The first is a focus on processes and solutions to foster more and better quality discussions. This might include independent groups working on the same problem, extended debate time, or the introduction of outside experts, such as a business coach.
The second solution is what is called insight solutions, focused on helping teams better understand the various biases and politics that underpin so much organisational decision-making. This might include individual and group feedback and the engagement again of a coach.
“There needs to be a combination of these two approaches but we also need to widen the context so it doesn’t just focus on the meeting room”, said Professor Ben-Hur.
Professor Ben-Hur used the Lecture to explain the three basic tools that he and his colleague, Nikolas Kinley, had developed to help counteract the dangers of Groupthink and the crucial role business coaches would play in enacting and supporting these tools.
These tools consisted of i) Improving the Information Flow; ii) Giving People a Microphone to Say What Needs Saying; and iii) Provide Participants With the Ability to Reflect on Group Decision-Making and Intervene if Necessary.
Citing the example of the collapse of Barings where senior managers didn’t know what they need to know and in the words of the rogue trader himself, Nick Leeson were “afraid to ask stupid questions”, Professor Ben-Hur stressed the importance of leaders being able to detect weaker signals in meeting rooms rather than just the dominant opinion as well as ensuring you hear the vital bits of information without being overwhelmed with too much information.
One of the key balancing acts here, Professor Ben-Hur pointed out, was “the need to be constructively critical of the information one receives without reducing the likelihood of people bringing new ideas to the table.” Here, the need to understand the impact one’s actions can have on other people’s behaviour is crucial.
To this end, business coaches can help managers understand their impact on the flow of information and how to consciously optimise this flow through appreciative inquiry and a downgrading of perceived power and status. Gathering feedback from the team and ensuring a focus on repetitive inter-personal patterns can be two important coaching methods here.
The second important tool is the need to have that microphone to say what needs saying. “All too often, humans tend to overestimate the presence of risk when speaking up,” said Professor Ben-Hur. “Organisations need not shoot the messenger and individuals need to develop the capability of raising issues.”
Here business coaches can evaluate the leader’s ability to raise issues and implement any necessary skills development, whether it be assertiveness, communication, or the ability to better facilitate discussions.
The final tool is the ability to take a step back from the events in the moment and capture the flow and the dynamics of debate before decision are made. Such a tool comes out of the Buddhist term mindfulness defined as &dsquo;bringing one’s complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis.” It is only though this that one can avoid the danger of returning to old behaviours.
“We must be aware of what we do, why we do it as we do it”, said Ben-Hur. ”It is the ability to notice the content of one’s thoughts, emotions, and motivations as they appear, and then step back and decide which of them really supports one’s agenda.”
Again business coaches have a crucial role to play in helping the individual reflect on specific actions and to mentally step out of discussions to consider what is happening. Methods might include brief post-meeting individual coaching sessions with group members and mediation and physiological techniques, such as breathing exercises.
Professor Ben-Hur also stressed how important it is for business coaches to articulate their expertise and value they can add. “There are few greater mechanisms to mitigate risk in decision-making today”, he said, “and a key part of my objectives are to strengthen the reputation of the business coaching community.”
The discussion continued following the Lecture with a high-level panel consisting of Heather Dawson, who leads the board effectiveness team at Praesta; Neil Ghosh, a Meyler Campbell Business Coach graduate; and Nikolas Kinley, a long standing academic partner of Professor Shlomo Ben-Hur and Head of Learning at Barclays GRB.
Questions covered and discussed with the panel included whether coaches should move from individual to group models of coaching – an area raised by Neil Ghosh, what regions of the world have the best cultural attributes to counteract Groupthink, and the importance of diversity within groups to encourage differing opinions.
Nikolas Kinley stressed the importance of “attributes, such as curiosity and humility in preventing Groupthink” and “that part of the challenge for coaches will be able to become part of the system and yet to still have sufficient distance so that you bring something original and unique to the table.” Helen Dawson pointed out the importance of reviewing past decisions – “the ability to step back and be in that reflective space.”
In an interactive discussion, another example of successful dynamics within a group environment, was that of an Italian family dinner where all opinions are brought to the table!
Professor Shlomo Ben-Hur is an organisational psychologist and a professor of leadership and organisational behaviour with 25 years of corporate experience in multinational organizations. His areas of focus are the psychological and cultural aspects of leadership and the strategic and operational elements of corporate learning.
Prior to joining IMD, Professor Ben-Hur was Vice President of Leadership Development and Learning for the BP Group based in London England. Previous to that, he spent eight years as Chief Learning Officer of DaimlerChrysler Services AG in Berlin, Germany where he headed-up the corporate academy overseeing performance management, succession planning, assessment, technical, management, and leadership training and the internal consulting and coaching unit.
Earlier in his career, Shlomo was Director of Leadership and Organizational Development for the Mercedes-Benz Credit Corporation and an organizational Development manager with Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the United States. He held previous positions with consulting firms and the Ministry of Education in Israel, focusing on leadership, organisational development and the promotion of democracy and co-existence in the Arab and Jewish school systems.
Professor Ben-Hur received his doctoral degree in Psychology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He holds a Masters degree in Industrial/Organisational Psychology and a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Political Science from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He was a founding member of the steering committee for corporate learning at the European Foundation for Management Development and a member of the Awarding body of the EQUIS Accreditation System for business schools.
Meyler Campbell trains and develops senior business people to coach in demanding contexts through its fully accredited Business Coach Programme. Meyler Campbell also hosts Europe’s most dynamic learning community for business coaches and leaders.
This is the sixth Meyler Campbell Annual Lecture, an opportunity for business coaches to listen to new thinking by a world expert from a related field. Past speakers include Professor Carol Kauffman of Harvard University and one of America’s leading academics and thinkers on coaching; Professor Paul Babiak, a leading industrial and organizational psychologist and co-author of the highly acclaimed book Snakes in Suits – When Psychopaths Go to Work; and Professor Felicia A Huppert, Director of the Well-Being Institute at the University of Cambridge.
Praesta partners coach CEOs, main board directors, leaders in professional firms and in the public and third sector to help them to rise to challenges and to be at their most effective. Praesta coaches leadership teams and conducts Board reviews. All of the coaches have had senior level careers before becoming coaches and understand firsthand the business context of their clients. Praesta operates locally in 15 countries and across continents and cultures, as well as in the UK.
