Beware the saboteurs - derailing a project or a presentation
07:24, 27 December 2008
.. Posted in Communication, Outreach and General Mngmt.. Link
The December 19 broadcast of This American Life, called "Ruining It for the Rest of Us" (episode 370) featured an interview with Will Felps, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands. Felps designed an experiment to see what happens to a group or organization when a bad worker joins a team. Felps had volunteers working in small groups on a task. One member of some of the groups was an actor, unknown to the rest of the group. He acted like a jerk ("This is never going to work. This approach is wrong."), a slacker ("I don't feel like doing this. Let's just wrap it up and go.") or a depressive ("This is too hard. I just don't feel motivated at all to do this"). Within 45 minutes of the actor in his role, most or all of the rest of the group started behaving like him, and the group either didn't finish the task or didn't performed it as well as the groups without the actor.
I was hugely interested in this study because of my own experience in working with groups, face-to-face and online, either as part of a project team or in making a presentation to a group. I have often referred to what I call the saboteurs who sometimes show up in such groups, bent on derailing the effort or, at least, asserting some point of view that establishes them as a force to be reckoned with. These aren't people who just dissent or disagree (I'm one of those!) -- saboteurs enjoy bringing proceedings to a halt, particularly if the group has been working without them for some time, and often have a hidden agenda (for an unstated reason, they want the project or presentation to fail). In my experience, saboteurs often reveal themselves with this opening line, "Before we go on, I'd like to take a step back for a moment..." They then comment about how the project or activity or approach is unworkable or not appropriate, but with no real specifics about what is wrong. My favorite saboteur line: "This approach is too Western" -- without any specifics to back up the assertion, nor any specifics for what could make the approach more "Eastern" or whatever direction it is they prefer.
There are all sorts of business gurus touting the benefits of group work -- and people like myself touting online group work. There is also lots of information on how to deal with conflict in groups when that conflict is based on misunderstandings, cultural differences, lack of information, etc. Unfortunately, no one is talking about how to deal with saboteurs in group work, on or offline, except, apparently, Will Felps. I look forward to reading more of his research!
Jayne Cravens
