"Groupthink" and the Individual

The two articles on Followership demonstrate just how susceptible people are to outside influences. Concentrating on the article “Groupthink” by Irving Janis, it wasn’t at all surprising to me to see how people act in groups, but it is shocking to see how people “think” in groups. The socio-psychological theory known as the Group Effect or Bystander Effect explains that with the increase in the number of people in a group there is a decrease in the immediate action of the group to emergencies, however I would think that a group of people i.e. Kennedy and his administration, would act differently when lives of innocent people were at stake.

A main point this article brought up was the idea that a mutual enemy of the group is seen as immoral, weak, and stupid. The group has to unanimously agree to move towards some sort of decision, but this point also illustrates why disagreeing group members didn’t speak up. The disagreement of members could be viewed as a removal of the enemy’s weak title, and in turn giving them credit. This is obviously a fault in the system. A fault that if addressed may have changed history.

This article named silence as consent, but silence is more than consent. It is cowardly, it is lack of confidence, and it is a disappointment. Silence, in itself, is a crime. Take the murder of Kitty Genovese. The 38 witnesses all believed that someone else would help the screaming civilian, they all had a common enemy, but they all were silent. They all put their own shyness before human life. Secretary of State, Rusk, may have spoken against the Bay of Pigs plans to his state department, but when it came time to tell the people who mattered he fell through.

Groupthink is more than the group; it is every individual whom allows it to happen. The shallow psychology of human nature may state that humans are supposed to be less willing to act in groups, but how much is truly known about human behavior.

Questions:

1. A group is a collection of individuals, how truly responsible are the individuals for the acts of the group, and how much credit should be given to the subsequent “leader” of the group? How is this balance achieved?

2. In terms of a leader, is having a “leadership entourage” take the blame truly beneficial in the end? How much credit should a leader give himself?

The Bay of Pigs in Terms of Followership

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?

Should Universities Teach Followership Skills?

Colleges and universities have traditionally placed emphasis on students’ developing strong leadership skills. Many institutions have joined the leadership band-wagon by teaching leadership in the academic curriculum, developing co-curricular leadership programs and certificates, and including leadership as part of mission statements. In many university mission statements, there is an explicit focus on building and fostering leadership among its students. For example, in Washington University’s mission statement, leadership is mentioned as central to preparing students to become citizens of a global society. According to Washington University’s web site, “Central to our mission are our goals, which are to foster excellence in our teaching, research, scholarship, and service; to prepare students with the attitudes, skills, and habits of lifelong learning and with leadership skills (emphasis added), enabling them to be useful members of a global society; and to be an exemplary institution in our home community of St. Louis, as well as in the nation and in the world” (http://www.wustl.edu/university/mission.html).

Because leadership has been deemed such a desired quality to nurture and foster, the focus on followership on college campuses pales in comparison. Nevertheless, emphasizing the value of followership benefits universities as well as the greater society. According to Ira Chaleff, “’Follower’ is not a pejorative. It is a legitimate and necessary role. Sometimes we lead and sometimes we follow. Both roles are honorable if they are performed with strength and accountability” (p. 72). While higher education’s focus on leadership is understandable, its neglect of followership as central to the mission of the institution presents a gap in student learning. This missed opportunity to teach followership skills at the university level negatively impacts students and ultimately society. By not focusing on followership, colleges risk excluding critical lifelong learning that could contribute to a more positive global society and a more responsible citizenry. Thus, catapulting courageous followership to the core of a university’s mission will not only enhance individual college students’ abilities, it will promote more positive contributions to society.

Chaleff, I. (2008). Courageous followers, servant-leaders, and organizational transformations. In R. E. Riggio, I. Chaleff, & J. Lipman-Blumen (Eds.), The art of followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations (pp. 67-88). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

What are ways that universities can effectively teach followership skills?

Leadership Excuses

Hindsight always seems to be twenty-twenty. I can write a story about how the Steelers lost the Super Bowl because they lack the unit cohesion and the esprit de corps that the Green Bay Pakers have. I could also probably make some fairly compelling arguments too. There was bad coaching, general management was terrible, and the players just were not motivated. This could all be true or false, but believable none the less. To say the Bay of Pigs invasion failed because of a psychological process known as “group think” is one possible reason the John F. Kennedy authorized Cuban exiles to fight against a force over one hundred and forty times their size. It is possible that the President was convinced the plan would succeed because there were many smart minds in the room and they all reinforced each other’s confidence. However, it is also possible that Kennedy sent the exiles in because they were expendable people willing to fight for a cause. It is a lot more politically tolerable to claim that many factors led to a bad decision and everybody was blinded by something, than to say that the President decided to send a bunch of people in to see what happened. This is not to say that group think is an illegitimate phenomenon by any means, but it does mean we have to be careful where we recklessly apply it. The failure in Cuba was definitely a result of miscalculations, but they may have just been caused by plain bad leadership.

Discussion Questions

1. How can we hold both leaders and followers accountable for failure? Should we hold both equally accountable? Do we need a system of checks and balances?

2. Is a "toxic" leader toxic during the time of leadership, or can we only see their toxicity in hindsight?

"Allure of Toxic Leaders": Compelling Yet Faulty

Several points crossed my mind while reading “Allure of Toxic Leaders”. While I generally agree with Lipman-Blumen’s reasoning that followers can push “nontoxic” leaders to become “toxic”, I have a few problems with his argument.

First, the issue of definitions got in my way while reading this chapter. How do we define “toxic” and “nontoxic”? Even more importantly, what is this “ledge” or “cliff” of toxicity (p158) that a leader crosses? How do we define it, and how do we know when a leader has crossed it? Is “toxicity” visible during the leader’s reign, or is it only apparent in hindsight? Perhaps some of this is discussed in earlier chapters, but I had trouble discerning the true definitions—or at least the author’s definitions—of some of these phrases.

I also felt that in some areas, the author disproves her own point. For instance, when discussing the “leader’s entourage”, she says that they are “the ones who take the blame for what goes wrong” (150-151). However, on page 159, she states that some “followers…escape any blame—from others or themselves—for failing to live up to the organization’s (or society’s) achievement norms”. While she may be discussing different “types” of followers, the author does not differentiate which group she means in the latter statement, and in this way seems to contradict herself.

Though I believe this piece was a refreshing look at bad leadership from the party not often considered (the followers), I do think the author’s argument had several flaws.

Questions for the Class

1. In Irving Janis’s article, Groupthink, many of the negative consequences of groupthink are thoroughly examined. Can groupthink ever have positive outcomes?

2. Why do you think President Kennedy did not distribute the writings of Schlesinger, Senator Fulbright, and Joseph Newman, which clearly displayed the flaws of the invasion proposed by the CIA?

Chance Events Leading to the Bay of Pigs Invasion

These two articles on followership presented several intriguing concepts. One of these was the idea of “groupthink,” which was explained in the context of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Irving Janis’s article, Groupthink. I agree with the article in that Kennedy and his followers exhibited many characteristics of groupthink, such as a feeling of invulnerability, an overoptimistic outlook, and a desire to maintain a unanimous outlook within the group. However, I also believe that a few chance events allowed for groupthink to become deeply established in Kennedy’s circle, and that these events helped lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion. For example, it was by chance that the two CIA agents who had been developing the Cuban invasion project, Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell, were also closely affiliated with the Kennedy team. This relationship encouraged Kennedy and his inner core of followers to accept the CIA’s invasion plan despite its many potential consequences. This is because it would have been harmful to the unity of the group if members of the group began questioning the closely affiliated CIA agents. I think that if the agents had not had a connection with the Kennedy group, then groupthink would not have been as strong of a factor in the ultimate decision to go through with the plan, as members would feel less obligated to agree with the CIA’s beliefs. Another chance event that may have affected the final decision of the group was the fact that one of the last meetings ended before all of the members could vote on the plan. This is significant because Schlesinger, who was strongly against the plan, did not get to place his vote and express his opposing viewpoint. Also, I think that it is important that McNamara happened to be one of the first to express his final opinion on the matter since he was a prominent leader in favor of the operation. As a result, pressure was placed on subsequent group members to agree with McNamara in order to maintain the peace and unanimity of the group. I believe that if a member of the group who was vehemently opposed to the plan, such as Schlesinger, expressed his viewpoint first, subsequent members may have voted differently or at least reanalyzed the situation more critically. Thus, groupthink was able to flourish partially due to chance events, ultimately encouraging the acceptance of the CIA’s proposal.

Leadership AND Followership

Since we are discussing followership tomorrow in class, I was thinking about the role of followership in fostering ethics on a college campus. Bad leaders do not operate in a vacuum. In other words, it takes both leaders and followers to dance to the beat of a cheating culture.

In “Creating New Ways of Following,” Ira Chaleff writes, “Large organizations, both commercial and public, are among the prime engines of contemporary culture. Every time we sow seeds among individuals and groups within these organizations, we are sowing seeds for a culture in which people stand up for what is right” (p. 70). Universities represent large organizations that can sow the seeds of ethical leadership and courageous followership. Developing a curriculum that teaches both ethical leadership and followership will enable colleges to influence the moral fabric of society.

How can universities do this? Colleges can sow seeds through formal mechanisms such as curriculum-based courses that focus on ethical decision-making, first-year experience programs that address leadership, and capstone projects that promote citizenship. Moreover, utilizing informal methods such as peer mentoring programs, advising relationships, residential-based programming, and retreats will plant the seeds of leadership and followership, which ultimately enhances growth and

development in these areas contributing to an ethical climate on campus.

Cheating- Becca Raftery

Several points in the two articles really jumped out at me. Both articles discuss the idea of collaboration, and separately reflect on whether or not this is cheating, or at what point it becomes cheating. This idea was particularly interesting to me because it is something I have struggled with in my years as a student. While the McCabe article only touches on this idea, the Weldy article goes quite in depth with it. I have always, like Weldy, enjoyed editing friends’ papers, but I wondered how much I could do without it being considered cheating. I really enjoyed reading Weldy’s perspective, especially as a tutor.

The McCabe, Treviño & Butterfield article also mentions a motivation for cheating which I find especially important: the growing pressure to succeed which is placed on the student body, and the idea of “leveling the playing field”. On page 220 of the McCabe article, the authors mention that “students who might otherwise complete their work honestly observe [other students cheating] and convince themselves they cannot afford to be disadvantaged…” (McCabe, Treviño & Butterfield, 220). This is an idea that I can truly relate to, for I have had much experience with it, especially in high school. On several occasions, especially before the college acceptance process, I was in a difficult class with difficult exams where I knew—and I am convinced the teacher knew as well—that almost the entire class was cheating (by way of copying answers during tests). I was frustrated because I am not a dishonest person and never had the desire to cheat, but I definitely felt like it was unfair, and sometimes wished I could “level the playing field”. I really agree with the light that is shed on cheating in the McCabe article, especially this idea of “peer behavior” causing cheating.

WashU in the Cheating Arena

Reading these two articles was both an enlightening and confirming experience. I learned about some very important factors that play into cheating on college campuses as well as realizing a few things about WashU. I would like to note here that though the articles made no mention of any particular schools, I still learned quite a bit about the dynamics of our WashU community in terms of cheating.

“Ten Years of Cheating” deems a culture that encourages academic integrity as the most appropriate prevention of cheating. Yes, we have an honor code, but how often is it explicitly pointed out by faculty and students? How often do we have in-class lessons or applications of this policy? In my experience here, very little. In most of my classes, teachers have taken care to include the academic integrity policy within their syllabi, but they cast aside that paragraph under the heading “University Policies,” presumably thinking that their students are familiar with it already. However, as “Degrees of Cheating” argues, students have differing opinions about cheating and its consequences. Some base their cheating on the fact that their peers do it, others feel that the faculty has little to no control over their actions, students want to “level the playing field” (McCabe, Treviño, Butterfield 220), etc. I agree with the evaluation made by “Ten Years of Cheating:” universities should strive toward creating ethical communities, handing over more responsibility to students in relation to academic integrity, and making a consistent effort to enforce communication among students and faculty. We must work to make this “largely unaddressed problem” (Weldy 1) one of great importance, for the continuation of this practice greatly hurts the university but more importantly hurts the moral standing of its students.

Dillon Schafer's Response

Various forms of cheating occur on practically all college campuses, although the extent of cheating varies widely. In the article, “Cheating in Academic Institutions,” it was made clear that schools that consistently reinforce honor codes demonstrate less acts of cheating. Interestingly, the article noted that there has been a minor decline in the relation between honor codes and cheating in recent years. I think that this relationship has deteriorated slightly due to an increased pressure to succeed in today’s challenging economy, which serves as motivation for cheating. Furthermore, students at competitive schools, such as Washington University, often feel the need to cheat in order to do as well as their peers. Nevertheless, I believe that less academic dishonesty takes place at Wash U than other colleges because of its deeply embedded honor code and severe punishments for cheating. Also, as “Cheating in Academic Institutions” mentions, it is important for a school to give rewards for academic integrity, such as unproctored exams, self-scheduled exams, and student judicial courts, all of which Wash U seems to do at times. The article also states that peer behavior most significantly effects student cheating. While I agree that peer behavior has a large impact on the presence of cheating on a campus, I think that the existence of an embedded honor code ultimately has the greatest effect on student cheating, since it directly affects the behavior of peers. In other words, a deep honor code discourages a student’s peers from cheating, and thus deters the student from committing academic dishonesty. Furthermore, I believe that bad leadership directly enhances the cheating that occurs on campuses. Not only can students act as bad leaders by cheating, but also faculty members can be equally bad leaders by allowing cheating to occur in their classes. Only when students accept an honor code and see faculty reinforce it can campus cheating be reduced.

Cheating - A Response

Cheating and plagiarism are very human behaviors. That is to say, most of us have participated in one or the other during the course of our academic careers. That they are so prevalent on college campuses (McCabe, Treviño, and Butterfield, 2001) is simply a testament to this fact. Observation of this will inevitably lead some to conclude that fostering a safe environment for peer-to-peer collaboration and attribution(Weldy, 2008) can effectively combat our tendencies to cheat and plagiarize. While something about this notion is indeed attractive, one must be wary of its potential shortcomings.

The findings of McCabe, Treviño, and Butterfield suggest that the university is largely responsible for the ethical community it fosters, cheating being dependent more on contextual factors than individual ones (McCabe, Treviño, and Butterfield, 2001, pg. 222). A strict university academic integrity policy might discourage collaboration (and consequently peer-to-peer plagiarism), the rules being so strict and pervasively enforced that students are hesitant to test its limits. It seems to me that such a policy carries with it undesirable consequences – surely we should want to encourage at least some collaboration amongst peers.

Yet, if the hypothetical restrictions are lessened, we find students in an almost as undesirable situation. Instead of being too afraid to test the policy, students are now precariously balancing on the tightrope between not collaborating enough, thereby putting themselves at a disadvantage, and committing plagiarism. This is generally considered to be the more favorable option, though, especially in a society that adopts the phrase “innocent until proven guilty."

The dilemma that faces us when we consider the university as solely responsible for enforcing academic integrity leads us to conclude that the individual student must also have a role in enforcing the policy – for him/herself and for others students. College students are, after all, young adults. An integral part of their college experience should be learning how to assume the responsibilities they will later have as adults.

Cheating, Not my problem

The line between cheating an collaboration is finer than I had once thought. Like Martin I think that sharing ideas in conversation can get complicated when it comes to who owns an idea. I agree with Amanda Weldy’s argument that proofreading can go beyond guidance and begin to violate academic integrity. I’ll remember this for the future. However I feel rather apathetic to cheating as a whole. A lot of the disdain for cheating seems to arise from the feeling that people who cheat are pulling of a 3.7 GPA and graduating into the arms of some firm, while the good, hardworking student graduates with a 3.0 into their mom’s arms. I doubt this is the case.

Let’s say a student gets an idea from an outside source and portrays it as their own in a piece of academic writing. If the essay is awesome and the cheater gets an A, they are the losers in the equation, other students aren’t being robbed of their grades. Graded assignments function as assessments, they inform students and teachers of how well the information in the class is crystallizing. When someone cheats the grade is useless in determining their grasp of the material and they often betray their own education by circumventing the learning process.

The GPA is important but when the cheater walks into their interview an A in Finance won’t help them much if they are unable to intelligently examine case studies, which they would know how to do if they hadn’t cheated in class/ themselves out of a very expensive education.

Cheating can only get you so far.

Ben Rader's Response

In response to both these articles I would like to point out that from the beginning, each author makes and absolutely ludicrous presumption; cheating is a bad thing. Take for example the following situation, I am taking an anthropology exam and the person sitting next to me looks at my paper for question six. Sure, the guy will never learn the concept that question six was meant to test, but he has in fact done something more important, practiced a skill necessary to succeed. College isn’t about the facts we learn, if this was true savants would be in control of the world. College is about the skills we develop. One of the most important of these skills is the ability to use all available resources. In the real world, no one asks you to rattle off the names of the four most famous ethnographic studies, but when you’re asked the answer to something you don’t know, then it’s the person who cheated that is most likely to possess skills to find it. Cheating is looked down upon as immoral and shameful. However, if we removed the veil of dishonor that comes along with cheating and instead worked in a truly collaborative environment, society would benefit. Instead of everyone having to learn everything, people would be able to specialize in what truly interested them, and know where to find everything else. This is how a good marriage works. The husband may know the famous family pie recipe, and the wife may know where the cheapest place for ingredients is. In this case “cheating” is mutually beneficial. Cheating is only bad in an academic environment because we vilify it.

Today's Cheating

I obviously believe cheating is a huge problem on college campuses. Coming from personal experience, the pressures to do well are unbelievable. Be it the pressures from parents, the overall benefits of a high GPA, or just an overall competitive atmosphere. With this known, some students believe that the benefits of stealing a literal and/or figurative answer here or there seem to out way the consequences.

The reasons for this may be the seemingly laid-back attitude campuses have towards cheating. They may have an academic honor code, but when it comes down to enforcement there strength greatly decreases. Take Washington University. I have witnessed countless episodes of cheating, be it outright copying answers when it comes to labs or just plain plagiarism. I myself know about Wash U’s honor code from my Writing 1 class, but as far as the specifics of it, I am clueless. One would think that a school that prides itself on academics might want to try a little harder in the academic integrity department. The enforcement of an academic honor code has to be a team effort. It is not just bad leadership on the part of one; it has to be good leadership on the part of many.

An interesting issue that I thought was brought up in the articles was the concept of collaborative cheating. The idea of having someone proofread your essays is engrained in you from a young age; you learn having a different set of eyes read your paper can be very beneficial. However teachers never seem to explain the line at which everyday peer proofreading becomes outright cheating- this is one of the major things that needs to be change. Teachers and professors just need to be frank with their students as to what is okay and what is far from okay. Too much trust is placed in the students to do the right thing.

Shades of Gray

Martin Lockman

Cheating, plagiarizing, and other types of academic fraud are unquestionably and unfortunately a deeply ingrained part of the academic system. As a student, I can’t count the number of friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers that have asked me for help on tests. (Actually, I can. The answer is three.)

Facetiousness aside, I agree with most of the suggestions in “Degrees of Cheating” and “Cheating in Academic Institutions” regarding methods to prevent cheating and create an atmosphere hostile to dishonesty. However, the definitions of plagiarism leave a large gray area - the accidental plagiarism of ideas.

The issue of peer-to-peer plagiarizing in the classroom is complicated by the simple fact that a shared intellectual environment will often result in similar thoughts. My sister and I share many political opinions, but I doubt anyone would claim that those beliefs arose from intentional intellectual mimicry. In any healthy intellectual environment there will be debate, discourse, and discussion, inevitably leading to an exchange of ideas.

Faced with this complication, the question then becomes “What can we, as students and educators, do to correct the problem?”. There is no simple answer, but in general I think that educators should encourage introspection in their pupils. Students should be taught to inspect their own thoughts and identify the main idealogical sources behind their arguments. As well as preventing accidental plagiarism, such self-examination would result in a well-rounded, reasonable, and self-aware student body, creating an environment hostile to plagiarism of every kind.

Jake's Response to the Cheating Article

Cheating is definitely a problem on college campuses. Being so difficult to catch, a huge percentage of students partake in cheating. I think this is mostly due to the increased pressures to do well and have a high GPA coming out of college. The job market is extremely tough to enter, so students believe that, if they can have their GPA be as high as possible, by any means necessary, they will have a better chance to get a good job and make more money. After all, money is the basis behind anybody's reasons to cheat. There is a huge amount of people who, in my opinion, do not have their priorities straight. They believe money is the most important thing in life, and that money will automatically make you happy if you have a lot of it. It is these people who believe that cheating is justified and that having a high GPA is going to get you the best job. However, if you are not truly smart, and do not have the skills that you may have gotten if you chose to take the honest route through college, there is a good chance you will fail to pass through the first stages of interviewing for a job.
And, while I agree with the articles that bad leadership has something to do with cheating on campus, I also believe that it is going to happen nonetheless. Even with our strict honor code here at Wash U, and multiple professors saying how they will go out of their way to get you the worst possible punishment if they catch you cheating, I have seen multiple people cheat anyways. It is also extremely difficult to catch cheating if it is not in class, like for a homework assignment where most of the papers that people turn in will be extremely similar no matter what.
While I believe that it is technically the faculty's responsibility to enforce cheating, I think that students should take it upon themselves to realize that, in the long run, there are many more benefits to being honest and learning the material. If you do not understand something, instead of asking someone who knows for their answers, ask that person for help and guidance so you can learn to answer the question yourself.

Welcome to Bad Leadership 2011!

Greetings and welcome to the Bad Leadership 2011 Blog. Please post your blog entry (250 words) and respond to at least one other classmate's blog. I look forward to the conversation.

Cheers--Dean Stratton