Human, an animal that is adjusted to live in pack. Some of us can deny this statement but we are not able to live alone. We are always looking for other people society, acceptance and belonging. The reason is very simple – our life is easier in pack. Group allows us to solve problems faster and maybe what is more important it allows us also to survive during last centuries. And probably we will not win with our evolution.

Have you thought about how many times your decision have been driven by your instincts. They are taking control from us in very easy way. And they are making us a bit stupid. In such moments we are able to take decisions that are not coherent with our point of view. In such situation it is possible that we will became part of crowd that will convince other people to decision that we took moment ago.

As an example of such behaviour you can treat a meeting. Think about situation in which somebody with huge authority will share with audience his point of view. His idea will became an anchor for everybody else. Most of the people from meeting will follow the leader and will reduce theirs’ fears. Moreover they will block other people from talking about not popular opinion. Outsiders will be afraid that they will be seen as people that are against the group and the leader.

It is obvious that such behaviours are tightly connected with personality of people in group and leaders. I am always trying to not speak first in group where I am seen as leader. But sometimes it is not so easy.

We can solve this issue in other way. Please try to start meeting from such task:

Please try to imagine that one year have just passed. We managed to implement solution that we would like to discuss today and this solution became total failure. Please try to describe briefly how we manage to cause a catastrophe (in 5 – 10 minutes).

With this quite easy exercise you will be able to break pack thinking. Each of team members will be able to provide his own vision for mentioned scenario. It is quite often that people that have additional information will use them in theirs’ visions. This will lead to exchange knowledge between participants of our meeting. Moreover the biggest supporters will be encourage to stop and start thinking about other possibilities that have been not included before.

Please just remember that this exercise will not solve all your problems. It can be very useful but not in each case.