Group Intelligence

Recently I was part of a meeting with a highly skilled, experienced and designated people of an organization. We started discussion with a very positive attitude. All were putting their individual thought process about the subject in an excellent way including myself. Gradually the meeting started heading towards nowhere. It all seems that each and every individual on that room was trying to convince his/her thoughts to the other without even thinking about what the other person is trying to say. Since all the participants were from top management and few of them were from middle management, most of the messy statements were passed by the top management band. I was also from the middle management group. I thought to keep my mouth shut and only observed how a meeting, which was planned for brainstorming, has converted into blame storming. This was a meeting where minutes were kept and hours were lost.

I am not saying that all the top management persons in that meeting were responsible for that meeting failure or they have no sense of business. And I am dam sure that each person has a capability to handle all the positive and negative views about the subject. The only issue with those guys was that they were not trying to understand what the other person is trying to say. Also every person was trying to convince the other that he has the right thoughts about the subject.

I must say here that each individual in that meeting have a great intelligence but there was no group intelligence in that team. This is a fact that if each individual has good intelligence in a group, there is a less chance of good group intelligence in that group. Each one has difference of opinion.

In an ideal scenario, the below written equation should be true.

Group Intelligence > Sum of Individual Intelligence

I.e. Group intelligence should be greater than the sum of its parts. But this can happen only when each individual is having a different mindset and everyone brings a unique thought about the subject. Listening and convincing characteristics are also required.

All the experts have full rights to have a difference of opinion but this can be resolved in a more graceful and amicable way with humility. All the experts should go for cooperation, not confrontation. Solo intelligence is OK, but the group intelligence is much richer.

-- Sanat Sharma