Page 259 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

242 Chapter 9

Recap: A Quick Review

here are several factors that will help a group succeed if members carefully
T consider them early in the problem-solving process, and they must know how
a decision will be made:
1. Members must be clear about their charge and area of freedom, or limitations.
2. Members must know whether they are dealing with questions of fact, conjecture,
value, or policy.
3. Members must understand and agree on the criteria they will use to evaluate their
options. Whether members discuss criteria explicitly depends on evaluation clarity;
when clarity is high (meaning that criteria are already clear to all), it isn’t essential to
discuss criteria explicitly.
4. Members must know and agree about how the group will decide: by the leader,
by the leader in consultation, by majority vote, or by consensus. If this is not
understood at the beginning, misunderstandings and hurt feelings may occur.
5. The leader can choose, but members may resent it; they are less likely to resent it if
the leader consulted with the members first (unless the leader ignores their input).
6. Members can use majority voting, but those in the minority may not feel heard or
understood.
7. In consensus decision making, members believe the option they selected was the best
they could all agree to, but the process may be long and consensus may be impossible.
8. Many groups experience phases during decision making; Bales first identified phasic
progression with three phases he often observed: orientation, evaluation, and control.
9. Fisher described four phases, orientation, conflict, decision emergence, and
reinforcement; later, Poole noted three types of factors affected whether the
phases occurred and in what order: objective task characteristics, group task
characteristics, and group structural characteristics.

Promoting Critical Thinking

Earlier, we mentioned that the Functional Perspective emphasizes the importance of
Critical Thinking critical thinking to effective problem solving. Critical thinking is the systematic exam-
The systematic ination of information and ideas on the basis of evidence and logical reasoning, rather
examination of than intuition or hunch. Unfortunately, many groups do not encourage critical thinking
information and ideas skills. For instance, Meyers et al. found that group arguments in undergraduate groups
on the basis of consisted of simple assertions almost half the time and that members seldom cited
evidence and logic rules of logic or used criteria as standards. But to evaluate options thoroughly, you
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rather than intuition, must make critical thinking a team effort and assess both information and reasoning.
hunch, or
prejudgment.
Evaluating Information
Information— facts, ideas, opinions, data— is the raw material from which a group’s
decision is made. A group’s final decision can be only as good as the information
inputs used by the group. Members must evaluate information for accuracy, credibility,
and relevance to the group’s decisions.

gal37018_ch09_225_258.indd 242 3/28/18 12:37 PM