Situations / Group decisions and meetings
Group decisions and meetings
Deciding things together in a team, committee or meeting.
Traps you might be in
- No. 0012 Ad HominemYou question a friend’s medical claim, and the reply reminds everyone that you failed biology in high school.
- No. 0064 Authority BiasYou shelve your doubts about a risky purchase after noticing the recommendation comes from a famous professor.
- No. 0074 Bandwagon EffectYou join the long line at a food truck before looking at its menu.
- No. 0100 Bias Blind SpotYour colleague’s preferred candidate looks like favoritism; your own preferred candidate just seems obviously right for the job.
- No. 0124 Bystander EffectA passenger collapses, and you scan the faces around you before taking a step.
- No. 0367 False Consensus EffectYou choose a remote cabin for the group trip, sure everyone wants to escape the city.
- No. 0368 False DilemmaYour manager offers two options: approve the weekend deadline, or admit you don’t care about the customers.
- No. 0450 Halo EffectThe candidate gives a dazzling presentation, and you give their untested management skills a higher score.
- No. 0484 Illusion of Explanatory DepthYou tell your child you know how a zipper works, then run out of words after the teeth come together.
- No. 0490 Illusory Truth EffectBy the third time you see the same headline in your feed, it seems less like a rumor and more like something you know.
- No. 0635 Motivated ReasoningYou want the apartment, so you read the glowing reviews once and reread the complaints until they sound unreasonable.
- No. 0637 Motte-and-Bailey FallacyYou challenge a proposal to track every employee, and suddenly you’re defending whether managers should know what work gets done.
- No. 0650 Naive RealismYou leave a meeting certain the facts were obvious, wondering how your colleague could possibly have missed them.
- No. 0681 Not-Invented-Here SyndromeA colleague offers a tool that does the job, and your team starts planning its own version without even opening the demo.
- No. 0688 Omission BiasYou leave a dangerous machine running, relieved that any accident won’t come from a change you approved.
- No. 0979 Status Quo BiasYou renew the same phone plan again, with a cheaper offer still open in the next tab.
- No. 0990 Straw ManYou suggest fewer weekend emails, and your manager starts defending the need to work hard.
Tools to try
- No. 0069 BackcastingYou put a debt-free date on the calendar, then calculate what your balance must be three months before it.
- No. 0312 Eisenhower MatrixYou spend the morning answering messages, then realize the hiring plan due next month still hasn’t moved.
- No. 0754 Pre-MortemImagine the plan has already failed, then explain why. You’ll find problems you couldn’t see while hoping it would work.
- No. 0820 Red TeamingYour launch review is all green until a separate team tries to make the plan fail.
- No. 0980 SteelmanningBefore sending your rebuttal, you rewrite your coworker’s office policy proposal in a form they could recognize and defend.
- No. 1057 Two-Way vs. One-Way DoorsYour team spends three meetings debating a button label it could change back before lunch.
Patterns at play
- No. 0444 GroupthinkIn the budget meeting, you leave your warning unspoken as everyone nods along with the director.
- No. 0512 Information CascadeYou approve the supplier despite a bad test result, assuming the three people who approved it before you know something you don’t.
- No. 0554 Law of Triviality (Bikeshedding)Your team approves the migration plan in five minutes, then spends half an hour arguing about the launch email’s subject line.
- No. 0956 Social ProofYou walk past an empty restaurant and join the line outside the one next door.
- No. 1043 Tragedy of the CommonsYou stop watering your lawn, but the shared reservoir keeps falling while the sprinklers run next door.
- No. 1090 Wisdom of CrowdsYour team’s guesses for next month’s sales range widely, but their average lands closer than anyone expected.