Both Irving Janis’s “Groupthink” and Jean Lipman-Blumen’s “Pushing Nontoxic Leaders Over the Line” address the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion and its role as an exemplary model of bad followership. The particular lenses through which each develops their analysis of the incident, however, come into conflict, inviting a closer inspection of the similarities and differences between the two.
One way to go about this task is by determining which of Lipman-Blumen’s three follower types Kennedy’s team represents. Looking in the chapter, we see that Lipman-Blumen categorizes them as typical of the “leader’s entourage.” Indeed, his quote illustrating Kennedy’s reaction to the failure of the invasion draws a clear us-them distinction typical of the close-knit framework of the leader’s entourage. Of course, this is what we would expect to find of Kennedy’s closest advisors. Interestingly, Kennedy’s entourage also seems to have taken on certain characteristics of benign followers – namely a submission to the leader’s “vision” for events.
What are we to make of followers like Schlesinger and Sorenson, members who held some reservations about the invasion? Surely, we would not think of them as malevolent followers, since their reservations were founded on good intentions. At the same time, though, they did not share Kennedy's vision, which Lipman-Blumen considers the defining aspect of benign followers.
They are indicative of a fourth kind of follower: a neutral group of followers who manage to retain autonomous critical thought that does not simply agree or disagree with the leader’s vision. This group of followers, as both articles discuss, is unable to express their opinions due to the larger group’s presumed unanimity and intolerance of dissenting opinions (the phenomenon Janis refers to as “groupthink”).
The Bay of Pigs fiasco, then, can be summarized in the following sentences. Kennedy’s entourage displayed qualities typical of dependent, benign followers who unyieldingly supported Kennedy’s vision for the invasion. Members who could have potentially convinced them to pursue another course of action, representative of a neutral group of followers that Lipman-Blumen does not discuss, were either thrawted by the entourage directly or were too discouraged to voice their opinions.
Questions:
1. Which of Lipman-Blumen’s followers are you?
2. Do you think malevolent followers could have an instructive role to play in the leadership-followership process? If so, what would be the nature of that role?
In this article, the author explores the dangers of groupthink, a phenomenon that occurs within strongly bonded group members. The argument essentially lies on the assumption that group members who agree on every subject matter are prone to blindness and inability to carry out the best action. The author, Irving Janis, believes that this groupthink mechanism is a dangerous threat to society because the decisions this group make affect almost every citizen. In group think, the problem roots back to the lack of agreement. With all the group members agreeing to a certain judgment, Janis writes that critical thinking is absent in this type of decision making. Consequently, the drawback of a decision cannot be seen, even if they outweigh the benefits. Using the Bay of Pigs as an example, Janis indeed confirms the possible flaws of group leadership.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this article, one aspect that I paid close attention to is the transformation of a group of individuals to an individual group. For example, in Kennedy’s cabinet, everyone agreed on every subject, while the opponents were silenced. At this point, we can assume that the agreeing party dominated the whole process of decision making, which makes the whole group a “individual.” Lipman talks about this issue in “The Allure of Toxic Leaders,” claiming that the “leader’s entourage has particular needs that can undo the leader” (150). The author even agrees that Kennedy’s group of advisors were so close that they even had the name “Irish Mafia” (151). From Kennedy’s example we see the potential dangers of merging the leader and the entourage, so the question then arises: is entourage necessarily a liability, or depending on the situation, can it be a valuable asset? In class, it would be nice to explore this new, different type of followers, one of which have more power than the regular followers.
Questions:
1) Can you think of any historical example that upheld the importance of entourage? How does that group differ from that of Kennedy’s?
2) In page 340 of Groupthink, the author states that Dulles and Bissell were “emotionally involved […] that they were no longer able to see clearly or to judge soundly. Do you agree with this argument? Do you think emotion is an asset or a liability in decision making?
Reading your blog posting, I can't help but feel that perhaps Kennedy's followers represent a more familiar type of follower that was already detailed in Lipman-Blumen's article, "Pushing Nontoxic Leaders Over the Line". Each individual in the group, whether consciously or not, acted to preserve their own "personal, economic, professional, or political well-being". By maintaining silence in an atmosphere of self-censorship and "groupthink", the Kennedy aides preserved their careers. This seems to fit in well with the actions of the "benign type P", or "pragmatic benign" followers.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, good point Martin. I got the sense from the article that the benign type p followers were typically in complete consensus with their leader (insofar as he preserved their interests, but there was not enough discussion on their mental lives to warrant that assumption. Thanks!
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