Rules of Thinking, The

RULE 66

Question groupthink

I was in a work team once which was great fun because all of us were hugely positive and enthusiastic about what we were doing. We had all become good friends and sparked off each other beautifully when we were thinking together. I have to admit though that not all our fabulous and frequent ideas turned out to be as successful as we’d anticipated. They could sometimes be a bit hit and miss.

After a while we brought someone else into the group. We all liked him and were surprised to find that, although he was a very upbeat person normally, when it came to throwing ideas around he could be quite negative. We’d all get fired up about something and he tended to put a damper on our ideas a bit. It was slightly frustrating ...