The power of group dynamics

When I was employed by Ford, they had a management seminar which used the movie Twelve Angry Men as a basis. They told us the basic plot of the movie and then had us watch the initial part of this great film. In the film, Henry Fonda is a jury foreman and he is the only one who thinks a kid may be innocent of murder. He slowly wins over each juror in a series of dramatic scenes.

After they paused the film, they asked us to individually put down the order in which the jurors changed their vote from the original guilty. All that data was collected. Next, we formed groups of six members and determined with group consensus what the order of the jurors changing their vote was. This group session was spirited and sometimes contentious. Each person had to give their reasons for their choice. When the group determination was collected, we went on break while the data was compiled.

The results were stunning. The best individual's performance was below the worst group's performance. One group got almost all of it right. As an example, one person in my group said, "Did you see the first jury vote? The old man started to raise his hand, but he quickly pulled it down when no one else seemed of like mind." That was indeed the first juror to change his vote.

My experience with group sessions have been extremely productive. There are only two rules that groups need to keep in mind. (1) everyone has input, and (2) there is no criticism of others' input.