Collusion to preserve corporate ideology contributed to the credit crisis. Could critical coaching prevent such thinking, asks Dr Angélique du Toit, of the Coaching and Mentoring Unit at Sheffield Hallam University
The notion of ‘groupthink’ is not new – we were first introduced to the concept by Janis (1972;1982). One of the major symptoms of groupthink is collusion and the lengths to which individuals and groups will go in order to protect the ideology of the group – in its extremes, leading to fundamentalism (Sim, 2004).
The pervasiveness of groupthink in the corporate world is symbolised most strikingly by the recent credit crisis. And there is little to suggest that the behaviour and practices that brought this on have been modified to any great extent. ‘Business as usual’ seems to be prevailing in many of the financial institutions that brought the economy to its knees. It’s an event that posed very interesting dilemmas for coaching (du Toit and Sim, 2010).
Could coaching have prevented the development of such a destructive incidence of groupthink? There is a need for deep reflection to understand the forces that have driven the demise of many key financial institutions and the impact on the world economy. Coaching is well-placed to challenge business leaders to help prevent such a situation occurring in future.
One of the main tenets of coaching is that the client is accepted without judgment, a belief adopted from person-centred psychology (Rogers, 1967). A challenge to coaching is whether the absence of judgment may lead to collusion with the client in maintaining their status quo – and then to groupthink. A healthy dose of scepticism about the cultural ideals and the very values that have tipped the economy from the edge of complex creativity into chaos may be provided from the unlikely direction of philosophy (Hume, 1739).
If coaching is to act as an antidote to groupthink, it has to satisfactorily answer some challenging questions. The coaching literature is dominated by tools and techniques, rather than an underlying philosophy with which to support them (Clutterbuck and Megginson, 2011). The danger of being too driven by models and tools is that coaching becomes mechanistic – and vital clues from the wider context or belief systems are ignored (du Toit and Sim, 2010).
The credit crisis taught us some very disturbing things about organisational culture: that it is dominated by groupthink, encouraging greater and greater risk-taking that undermines the very concept of corporate social responsibility.
What was in dreadfully short supply throughout the whole episode was scepticism – both the ability or the desire to ask awkward questions of management about what was happening. This is what coaching can help to amend.
Conclusion
It is clear from the evidence (Janis, 1972; 1982) that it is near impossible for group members to query their group norms themselves. Instead, it requires an external source, such as a critical coach, to provide the impetus for this to occur. Business as usual is not an option – coaching has the potential to step into the breach to ensure this does not become the default position.
Radical coaching based on sceptical principles offers individuals the chance to break from corporate groupthink and question policies. They can become the internal critique that all organisations need if they are to steer clear of a stultifying dogmatism.
References
D Clutterbuck and D Megginson, ‘Coach maturity: An emerging concept’, in The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Coaching: From Theory to Practice, (Ed.) L Wildflower and D Brennan, UK: John Wiley & Co Ltd, 2011
A du Toit and S Sim, Rethinking Coaching: Critical Theory and the Economic Crisis, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
D Hume, (1739) A Treatise of Human Nature, (Ed.) D G C Macnabb, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1962
I L Janis, Victims of Groupthink, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972
I L Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, 2nd ed., Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1982
C R Rogers, On Becoming a Person, London: Constable, 1967
S Sim, Fundamentalist World: The New Dark Age of Dogma, Cambridge: Icon Press, 2004
Coaching at Work, volume 8, issue 2