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The Incompetent Committee
By Don Zillioux, Ph.D.

We spend many working hours at committee meetings. Many meetings turn out to be unproductive. A committee can cure its faults only after it has learned to recognize them.

HOW DO we get a committee or a management team to make the best possible decisions? It is not easy. Often, the attempt to reach a decision produces behavior that is self-defeating. Despite this, the aim of every committee or team is to make decisions that reflect the best ideas of everyone, and to which everyone is committed.

Most people with business experience will realize that a team or committee is often far less effective than it should be. Is it because optimum teamwork is a dream? Or because some people just do not get along? Clearly neither of these explains group failures.

What is needed is a sound diagnosis of the problem. A committee can cure its faults only after it has learned to recognize them.

British psychoanalyst W. R. Bion suggested as the result of research with therapeutic groups at the Tavistock Clinic that there are four modes of team behavior: flights, fight, pairing, and dependency. These four modes fit closely into the four basic ineffective management styles which the present research has defined and which are being used for management assessment: deserter (flight); autocrat (fight); compromiser (pairing); missionary (dependency).

The flight or fight mode assumes that the group has met together to attack an enemy or defend itself against danger. This assumption is the basis for deserter (flight) and autocrat (fight) committees. The pairing mode shows itself when the group splits into pairs which Dr. Bion believed have a sexual basis. This is the underlying cause of the compromiser committee. Finally, the dependency mode assumes that the group has met to obtain security from one individual on whom they depend. This is the influence behind the missionary committee.

The general message from Bion's work is that there are always unconscious group influences at work whenever people meet for a purpose and that these influences often conflict with the conscious aims of the group. This is the cause of the frustration and inefficiency of committee work in business.

Committee that Rejects its Job

When a committee or team is in a deserter or flight mode, it tends to reject the job it has to do. Team members withdraw in various ways. These are long periods of silence. Members sometimes start to tell jokes and sardonic humor is often present. Everyone waits for someone else to do something. More seriously, desertion in the committee generally takes the form of resistance to new ideas and avoiding the problem or parts of the problem.

This mode, more than any other, is revealed by non-verbal behavior: members look out of windows, doodle, lean backwards or push chairs away from the table. It is quite clear that no group could possibly function with the seating arrangement that the deserter team maneuvers itself into.

Late starts, long coffee breaks, an early close - all indicate the same basic problem. Often the deserter committee will try to hide its mode with these declarations: "Let's get a leader"; "Let's appoint a secretary"; "This doesn't apply to us"; "I didn't ask to do this"; or "Our group is different".

Some committees, unintentionally, drive one or more members to desertion. This is usually done by a too hasty rejection of a member's ideas. Teams as well as individuals should learn the right way to say "no", or the right way to tell members that they are off the track. A committee that has two or three members knocked off the team at an early stage in discussion will not function well.

When a committee is in an autocratic or fight mode, there is low performance. An open or disguised power struggle keeps the atmosphere charged. Sometimes the fight for leadership is hidden in requests for procedural changes; or there may be defensive behavior by some members. This may take the forms of withdrawal or personal counter-attack.

Autocratic teams sometimes look for scapegoats in or outside the committee. This is more likely to occur if the leader is too strong to be attacked directly. The scapegoat may be a non-participating member or a person with characteristics similar to those of the leader. This makes displacement of aggression towards the scapegoat easier. The parallel personal characteristics of the scapegoat could include manner, voice or similar cultural background.

The autocratic group always looks for an enemy either itself or in the form of another committee. Hostility within the group flows over the interactions with other groups. A small measure of tension generated by the team could encourage high performance, but the autocratic team usually generates too much tension.

An ongoing power struggle is a major feature of autocratic teams. Those who bid for leadership can be identified easily because they talk too much, disagree vigorously, attract attention to themselves, sit at the head of the table or in a commanding position, volunteer to act as secretary and then make notes on paper.

It is as a secretary that the leadership bid often is harmful to the committee. The secretary can control the team by simply not listening or by not writing down the things with which he disagrees. Most members tend to talk directly to the secretary, otherwise their thoughts are not put down. Cross-talk within the group is often eliminated.

Cliques or sub-groups being to appear as each side in the power struggle attempts to win converts and power. Unless a team resolves its power struggle it can never reach consensus.

A compromiser or pairing committee attempts to do two things at once as there is usually concern for something fairly different. This masked concern is called a hidden agenda.

Hidden agendas are out-growths of motives or desires of members. For instance, a committee is discussing the merits of a new accounting system, but underneath this task is the issue of who gets credit for it, or who has to explain to the subordinates why their ideas were rejected.

Hidden agendas usually conflict in some way with the group's task, or affect the way the task is handled. They may be held by an individual or by several members of a group. The seriousness with which they impede progress obviously varies with the people involved and the importance of the hidden agendas to them. Strong Member Takes Over.

When a committee or group is in a missionary or dependency mode, it tends to submit to any influence placed upon it. A missionary team sees its role as supporting whatever the appointed leader does to or for members. If this leader wants to set a time limit, it is done. If this leader wants a member to talk, he talks.

The missionary team is not a group of yes people; when one of them says "no" they all say "no". If no leader arises in the committee, it remains passive but tries to find outside direction, often through existing or imagined rules and procedures.

In missionary groups, nearly every member talks. They listen to good and poor ideas, and seldom disagree. They think that their groups are the best because of the harmonious way in which they get things done. To them, conflict is a negative quality: they believe that no ideas can result from conflict.

Often a missionary team is hard-working and tries to follow the rules to get the job done. But, on close inspection, it can be seen that everyone is careful not to rock the boat. No one risks a disruption of relationships in order to get sound decisions. To avoid hurting feelings, agreement on all issues is established quickly. Oil is poured over possible areas of disagreement so that the underlying causes never come to the surface.

Typically, the missionary committee has no internal tensions. It is relaxed, happy, complacent. It has no incentive to obtain high output or to analyze its own weakness. It appears cohesive, but that is only because all members are leaning on each other.

Examine Own Behavior

As a team becomes skillful in diagnosing and analyzing its behavior, it becomes less satisfied with surface explanations of team social phenomena. It attempts to explore and deal with the real causes of group behavior rather than just symptoms.

If you want to investigate these causes, ask all the members of your committee to make a review of their behavior as a team at a recent meeting. Ask yourselves:

• What are the main problems in working together
• Where do we under-perform?
• Do we use all the resources in the group?
• Are our decisions the best ones?
• Could other teams perform better than we? Why?
• Are all issues explored in depth?
• Is our team operating at peak efficiency?
• What obstacles must the team overcome?

Ask each team member to write out individual answers and then read them to the whole team. Then analyze them under the seven components of the committee function: purpose, contributions, listening, disagreement, leadership, decision, and evaluation. With the aid of the matrix in Figure 1, you will be able to recognize the kind of committee or group on which you participate. Acting on this knowledge the committee can begin to realize its work potential.1

News:

The Doctor is In:
The SDW Peak Performance Annual Physical

We would like to introduce you to the Peak Performance Annual Physical - a unique project we have designed in conjunction with National University and the San Diego Daily Transcript as a free offering to the San Diego business community both as a service to individual businesses and also as a general educational tool. The project is designed to work with a different business each quarter.

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The Arte of Motivation:

“In matters of principle, stand like a rock. In matters of taste, swim with the current.”
-Thomas Jefferson

I’d like to know how people like Jefferson came up with quotes like this – maybe without TV, NBA finals, movies, telephones, cars, air travel, instant communications, malls and the internet there was a lot of time to reflect on issues that affected daily life. Absent these modern-day distractions Jefferson had time to live and study in France and England, write the Declaration of Independence with his colleagues, and learn about Palladian architectural design for Monticello.

Today we’re not so lucky. The world of information comes to us at the speed of light and it’s all we can do to maintain our balance. All of the news each day –do you just let it affect you or do you use all that information to be a better person? All of the people you talk to each day – do you just let them pull you in all directions or do you learn from the best they have to offer and dismiss the rest?? All of the advertisements you see – do you want it all or wisely learn what you really need??? With this information overload you need to be your own person – with wants based on needs, ideals based on integrity, thoughts based on judgment, and taste based on good sense???? Know who and what you are and stick to it. Know what you want and be steadfast. Be like a rock in a stream today – be strong in the current and let the cool stuff wash over you!

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