As an Organizational Psychologist & Talent Development Specialist our work moves in many different directions depending upon the needs of the employees and the organization in which we work for. Even sitting in a specific job role can look like one wears many different hats in order to focus on current trends, areas of improvement, and interest. In my role, I work with individuals to develop their talents and to build the skills that they carry through both their professional and personal journey.
More recently, I’ve found myself in many conversations around the value in focus groups and the development of focus groups for newly created projects. We recognize the importance of gathering different opinions and perspectives, however I’ve identified signs of group influence ripple through focus groups in past projects that calls for concern in the possible repetition to come. One-on-one feedback has show that individuals find themselves falling short of their own personal value because they fall into habits of groupthink.
In the need to understand this topic further, I found myself jumping back to my Social Psychology resources and looking deep into the influence, both positively and negatively, groupthink has on long existing teams, newly formed teams and the individuals that make up those groups.
The Principles of Social Psychology; 2nd Edition (2021), written by Dr. Lee Daffin and Dr. Carrie Lane was just one of the many resources I turned to when I needed to understand the deeper facets that live within groupthink. Here I was reminded of The Looking Glass Self. The concept coined from Sociologist Charles Cooley in 1902 states,
“The Looking Glass Self is based their sense of self on how they think others see them. This social interaction serves as a sort of mirror in which people use the judgments of others to measure their own worth, behavior, and values”.
This incredible book dives deeper into understanding how we think of ourselves, how we think of others, and how these two very different facets help shape the the way in which we perceive and present ourselves to the world.
We continue having conversations around what might be fitting for our teams, but as you continue to revise your focus groups, I encourage you to think through the many facets presented in this post.
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Dawn Xx
