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Leading Ideas: Issues and Trends in Diversity, Leadership and Career Development

Issue 8, June 1999

Issue 8

Revisiting the Abilene Paradox: Is Management of Agreement Still an Issue? by Kathryn Deiss, ARL Office of Leadership and Management Services Program Manager Decision Making: Facilitating Group Dialogue and Agreement Processes, Selected Readings The Significance of Race by DeEtta Jones, ARL Senior Program Officer for Diversity Leading Opportunities

Editor's Note

Group Dynamics and Cross-Cultural Communication

This issue of Leading Ideas focuses on communication, from working group dynamics to the cultural implications of race. The first article, "Revisiting the Abilene Paradox: Is Management of Agreement Still an Issue?" written by Kathryn J. Deiss, ARL/OLMS Program Manager, reintroduces a concept that attempts to make sense of managing agreement: the simple parable of the Abilene Paradox. This article uncovers some of the hidden variables that affect group processes and recommends tools that have been successful in adding structure and clarity to library groups. As an additional resource, a bibliography of selected readings on effective management of group decision-making follows the article.

I contributed the second article, "The Significance of Race," as a complement to the discussion of managing group processes. The "Abilene" article points out various factors that affect group dynamics, and diversity is one of those. It is, however, often engaged as a cursory issue. This article explores the significant role that race still plays in U.S. culture, describing the attached meanings and beliefs about race that influence our language and actions. Many managers feel that they have less than adequately addressed the diverse needs and perspectives of their working group. Even more intimidating is the discussion of race specifically. The United States is very sensitive regarding race–our political stance is in flux, our demographics are changing rapidly, and our history is oppressive. This article legitimizes "hidden" variables and underscores the complexity of managing these dynamics. What does this mean for us personally? How does this relate to us professionally?

This issue of Leading Ideas deals with only two communication issues. It is not meant to be definitive, but to reintroduce ideas and possibilities to our imaginations.

Sincerely, DeEtta Jones, Editor ARL Program Officer For Diversity

ARL Diversity Program

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Leading Ideas:

Revisiting the Abilene Paradox: Is Management of Agreement Still an Issue?

by Kathryn J. Deiss, ARL Office of Leadership and Management Services Program Manager

In 1974, Professor Jerry Harvey of George Washington University developed a parable from a real-life experience to describe the issues surrounding how individuals reach agreement, or, more specifically, believe they have reached agreement. Twenty-five years later the lessons and insights his parable generates are still valid and provocative for organizations and the individuals who work together in those organizations.

The Parable of the Abilene Paradox1 Four adults are sitting on a porch in 104-degree heat in the small town of Coleman, Texas, some 53 miles from Abilene. They are engaging in as little motion as possible, drinking lemonade, watching the fan spin lazily, and occasionally playing the odd game of dominoes. The characters are a married couple and the wife’s parents. At some point, the wife’s father suggests they drive to Abilene to eat at a cafeteria there. The son- in-law thinks this is a crazy idea but doesn’t see any need to upset the apple cart, so he goes along with it, as do the two women. They get in their unair-conditioned Buick and drive through a dust storm to Abilene. They eat a mediocre lunch at the cafeteria and return to Coleman exhausted, hot, and generally unhappy with the experience. It is not until they return home that it is revealed that none of them really wanted to go to Abilene–they were just going along because they thought the others were eager to go. Naturally, everyone sees this miss in communication as someone else’s problem!

Dr. Harvey used this wonderfully simple parable to illustrate what he believes is a major symptom of organizational dysfunction: the management of agreement–as opposed to the management of disagreement or conflict. This unique perspective has much to teach us about how we do or do not engage in deep inquiry and in self-disclosure when attempting to come to agreement with others.

How Do We Know When We Are Headed for Abilene? Harvey points to six characteristics emblematic of a group failing to manage agreement effectively:

. 1 Members individually, but privately, agree about their current situation. The group in Coleman knew individually that they were satisfied with just sitting on the porch.

. 2 Members agree, again in private, about what it would take to deal with the situation. In this case, the members privately agreed that staying on the porch was a good way to spend a hot and dusty day.

. 3 Members fail to communicate their desires and/or beliefs to one another, and, most importantly, sometimes even communicate the very opposite of their wishes based on what they assume are the desires and opinions of others. People make incorrect assumptions about consensus. In the Abilene case, one suggestion (offered on the assumption that the people wanted to do something besides sit on the porch) began a domino-like sequence of individual agreement with the concept in spite of each person’s private misgivings about the desirability and wisdom of making the trip to Abilene.

. 4 Based on inaccurate perceptions and assumptions, members make a collective decision that leads to action. It is in the action that it becomes apparent that the decision is contrary to individual desires. They thereby arrive at a destination they did not want to go to in the first place. Our protagonists in the parable do not actually discover their unanimous disagreement with the action they took until someone says, "Well, that was a nice trip." Another person is then moved by frustration and exhaustion to blurt out the truth, "It was not a good idea or a nice trip!"

. 5 Members experience frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction with the organization. Often this leads to the forming of sub-groups that take combative or blaming positions toward each other. The Abilene group begins asking themselves immediately, "Whose crazy idea was this anyway?" and thus starts the blaming cycle.

. 6 Finally, members are destined to repeat this unsatisfying and dysfunctional behavior if they do not begin to understand the genesis of mismanaged agreement.

Sources of the Paradox It is provocative to ask why people would actually speak against their own desires. What psychological reasons are there for doing something that is bound to result in both individual discomfort and in a lack of full and valid information for the group and our organizations? It is believed, according to Harvey, that people behave in this manner because they are afraid of the unknown. His hypothesis, quite different from others, is that we know what we are afraid of and that it generally has to do with loneliness, being left out, separation, and alienation. To avoid these, we will actually act against our best interests, hoping to be "part" of something, members of the whole.

We also tend to believe that any decision or action is better than no action at all. The problem is that there is incomplete information in individual minds. The need to act together, to be seen as cohesive, overrides the need to be explicit about group assumptions, desires, opinions, and even facts. Harvey calls this "action anxiety" and he believes it works in close conjunction with another piece of the paradox puzzle:

negative fantasies. These are fantasies each individual harbors of what they think would happen if they actually spoke their minds and offered their desires or opinions to the group.

Breaking the Cycle of Wrong Assumptions and Fear Breaking the cycle that so often leads us to blaming each other for decisions and actions that we "knew" we did not agree with in the first place is critical to the health and effectiveness of an organization or work group. It can only be accomplished by building new communication habits and getting beyond our fears.

Harvey believes that collusion motivates us to accept decisions and actions with which we fundamentally disagree or question. We submit to becoming victims by our own collusion with thinking that we believe to be wrong-headed or, at the very least, headed in the wrong direction. Avoiding "making a trip to Abilene" in our organizations takes the courageous act by each of us of both refusing to be victims and refusing to victimize others.

One of the modern-day problems we have revolves around something called "teamwork." Teamwork is a problem insofar as we do not define or carefully delineate behaviors related to effective teamwork–particularly those behaviors related to questioning and inquiring into proposed group decisions or acts. Team members often feel that if they do not agree with the group, particularly when they seem to be the only ones not agreeing, they will suffer by being alienated or "wrong." Helping team members learn how to question assumptions, their own included, can develop strong decision-making powers within the team. The team will then become much better at managing agreement.

Practices That Develop Agreement Skills Building new behaviors and working against personal fear can only go so far in helping groups or teams avoid needless "trips to Abilene." However, there are some practices that, if developed, can help individuals, groups, and teams become more proficient. The following practices and exercises can be found in Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook.2

The left-hand/right-hand column exercise was conceived of by Chris Argyris, Harvard University professor and consultant. It requires individuals to draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper. At the top, right-hand side, the individual writes, "What is said," and at the top of the left side he or she writes, "What I’m thinking." Individuals can do this exercise after a meeting or simply reflect on previous situations to access their thinking and interaction process. Rick Ross and Art Kleiner, in their description of the tool, suggest some guiding questions to ask oneself during this reflexive exercise:

What has really led me to think and feel this way? What was my intention? What was I trying to accomplish? How did my comments contribute to group decision, action, confusion, or difficulty? Why didn’t I say what was in my left-hand column? What assumptions was I making about others in the group?3

This tool helps to develop a better awareness of one’s reasons for speaking or for not speaking thoughts, and gives a format for sharing thoughts in a non-accusatory, nonjudgmental way with others. This tool is designed to be used as an individual discipline and awareness tool, not as a meeting management tool.

Another practice is that of balancing advocacy with inquiry.4 Put simply, advocating a position, decision, or action needs to be balanced with genuine inquiry into the positions or opinions of others involved. An example that might have helped the Abilene group: the wife’s father could have left the door open to discover others’ real feelings by directly asking what the others were thinking, and by revealing why he was making the suggestion to go to Abilene. Doing so would have allowed others to understand his thinking pattern, and thus allow them to respond in a like manner.

The Ladder of Inference, a tool also developed by Argyris, lets us see how we "infer" from someone’s actions or words what they really mean.5 Although we naturally make inferences all the time, knowing that we are doing it allows us to stop and ask others why they came to certain conclusions.

Finally, a little-practiced tool that groups can use is dialogue.6 Dialogue, as used here, is a term that was developed by a group of people working on organizational learning. It describes an open-ended exploration and discovery process that has no decision point. The point of this is to understand the subject, the data, the assumptions, the lack of information, etc. as deeply as possible. This technique allows groups to actually think together more effectively. The dialogue process and its contents (individual thoughts and feelings) are shared such that any future actions are more likely to be owned by the group.

Building strong dialogue and advocacy/inquiry skills, as well as building confidence that one will not be alienated if one speaks one’s mind, are necessary for making the decision not to go to Abilene.

Conclusion Libraries and other information service agencies make decisions and take actions every day. Often these decisions and actions are based on a false sense of consensus within the group. To better avoid this, we need to have a clear definition of consensus and how it is reached. At ARL, our definition is:

Consensus occurs when all key stakeholders build the decision, accept it, and support it, even though the final decision may not be the

first preference of each individual member. In other words, consensus is not about voting!

We need to raise individual and group consciousness about the problems of not testing early and often for consensus. We need to build strong dialogue, inquiry, and advocacy skills and learn how to use them as is situationally appropriate. And, finally, we need to learn how to avoid true loneliness by giving our thoughts and opinions voice and trusting the group with which we are working.

An undesired and frustrating trip to Abilene in 104-degree heat should be a compelling image in our minds of the critical need to attend to how we manage agreement in libraries.

Endnotes

1Jerry B. Harvey, The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management (San Francisco: Jossey -Bass, 1988). The original publication of the Abilene Paradox appeared as: "The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement," in Organizational Dynamics (Summer 1974).

2Peter Senge, et al., The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1994).

3Rick Ross and Art Kleiner, "The Left-Hand Column," in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 246-50.

4Rick Ross and Charlotte Roberts, "Balancing Advocacy and Inquiry," in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 253-59. This process is based on the Advocacy/Inquiry Matrix developed by Diana McLain Smith.

5Rick Ross, "The Ladder of Inference," in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 242. This tool is based on extensive research done by the Harvard scholar and professor, Chris Argyris.

6William Isaacs, "Dialogue," in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 357-64.

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Leading Ideas:

Decision Making: Facilitating Group Dialogue and Agreement Processes

Selected Readings Argyris, Chris. "Good Communication that Blocks Learning." Harvard Business Review 72.4 (July 1994): 77.

Barber, Steve. "Navigating the Emerging Decision Making Paradigm." Journal for Quality and Participation 18.2 (Mar. 1995): 56-62.

Bradford, Leland. Making Meetings Work: A Guide for Leaders and Group Members. La Jolla, CA: University Associates, 1976.

Burleson, Clyde W. Effective Meetings: The Complete Guide. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990.

Burley-Allen, Madelyn. Listening: The Forgotten Skill. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995.

Fisher, B. Aubrey, and Donald G. Ellis. Small Group Decision Making: Communication in the Group Process. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw- Hill, 1990.

Fisher, Roger, and Scott Brown. Getting Together: Building Relationships as We Negotiate. New York: Penguin Books, 1988.

Fisher, Roger, and William Ury. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Hart, Lois B. Faultless Facilitation: A Resource Guide for Group and Team Leaders. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, 1992.

Kelly, P. Keith. Team Decision Making. Irvine, CA: Richard Chang Associates, 1994.

Manning, George et al. "The Miracle of Dialogue." In Building Community: The Human Side of Work. Thomson Executive Press, 1996. 127-54.

Rees, Fran. How to Lead Work Teams: Facilitation Skills. San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer, 1991.

Senge, Peter, et al. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building the Learning Organization . New York: Doubleday/Currency, 1994.

Tagliere, Daniel A. How to Meet, Think, and Work to Consensus. San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer, 1992.

Weaver, Richard G., and John D. Farrell. Managers as Facilitators: A Practical Guide to Getting Work Done in a Changing Workplace. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1997.

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Leading Ideas:

The Significance of Race

by DeEtta Jones, ARL Senior Program Officer for Diversity

The Abilene Paradox describes some of the difficulty in properly identifying and managing agreement in group processes. Kathryn Deiss’s article, "Revisiting the Abilene Paradox: Is Management of Agreement Still an Issue?" discusses some of the variables that affect group decision-making and suggests several facilitation tools. One of the more subtle variables involved in human interactions is cross-cultural communication. I’d like to discuss one particular cultural characteristic and share some of my recent thoughts and experiences on the true significance of race.

In my work as a diversity educator, I often present ideas about the definition of diversity from a U.S. perspective, a definition that changes with the social and political climate. I present a circular model of human characteristics to describe the Association of Research Libraries’ broad definition of diversity. In the center of this pictorial representation are equity issues. Issues of equity are the core diversity issues–those that have a context of past and present oppression. And though I understand the centrality and deep historical context of race in the U.S., many perceive it as an uncomfortable, even unsafe, topic for public discussion and choose not to move beyond the more general concept of diversity.

Race is an incredibly volatile subject. We, as a nation, want to believe that our playing field has been leveled and that it is time to put our discrepancies behind us. We want to start with a blank slate. We can’t understand why racial group identification and awareness is necessary in a world filled with so many unique individuals–each to be celebrated for our contribution to human diversity. Meanwhile, our societal memory lives. While some of us are desperately trying to put the issue of race behind us, others are discovering the power of self- and group-knowledge. Some know that this critical examination of self and group are necessary for healing. Some believe that overt racism has merely converted to covert racism, making it even more difficult to identify and push back against oppression. An even more painful realization is that, in spite of our desire for societal self-actualization, our culture has an order of classification built into its fabric.

It is fair to say that every culture has an order of classification built into it. This is the way the human mind works. We gather data, accurate or not, and we cluster it into manageable and accessible units. This allows us to know, implicitly, who is where in the scheme. It is a kind of common sense code that is tied to language and culture. When our experiences contrast with our internal classification system, we then experience something anthropologist Mary Douglas describes as "matter out of place." For example, you expect to see fire in a fireplace, and when you do, it doesn’t contrast with your classification system regarding fire. But when you see a fire in the kitchen, outside of its classification stratum, you immediately act to put it out. Regarding race, clustered into the classification system itself are historical and unconscious messages of what we know to be associated with the concept. More specifically, we have different clusters of information for different races that have, over time, assigned meaning to our words, and thus manifest through our language. This process of clustering historical and cultural meaning around language keeps one from having to ask, for instance, "Are Black folks smart?" Stuart Hall, in his video, "Race the Floating Signifier," says that this classification system has unconscious meanings tied to it that gives us some information about the intelligence of Black people.1 The word "Black" is tied to historical and cultural circumstances and beliefs, accurate or not, that invoke meaning communicated through language.

The discussion of race as a socio-historical and cultural phenomenon that is manifest today through language is introduced as an alternate to thinking of race as purely physiological. All attempts to ground race scientifically have been unsuccessful. It is a fixed biological characteristic. Other variables, ones that are more subjective, are socio-historical and cultural variables. This cultural context identifies race as a system of classification within a societal context.

The conduct of society is shaped by our socio-historical and cultural classifications. These appear in day-to-day life. I am a multi-racial woman raised in a Black community. I am not a librarian by profession, though I have a challenging and visible position with a respected organization in the library and higher education communities. When I deliver diversity workshops, I am often perceived as "matter out of place." I can feel and have even had expressed to me people’s concern upon meeting me in person that I wouldn’t really understand racial oppression at a personal level. People from underrepresented groups are often perceived as "matter out of place." Our response, and challenge, is to push the boundaries of place, transforming our matter-out-of-placeness by proving our competencies. This is our effort to expand Matter (me) beyond the categorical confines of a predetermined Place that history and oppression have created around us.

The struggle to expand our individual and group identity is not always a walk in the park. I have been perceived as "matter out of place" by angry people who harbor more conscious beliefs and meanings associated with race, such as bigotry. Another spin on this negative reaction is that the inability or unwillingness to expand one’s socio-historical and cultural classification system is a function of one’s own identity development process–individuals who are struggling through their own understanding of themselves are less able to understand and embrace "otherness." This is true not only in interactions between people from majority and minority racial backgrounds; sometimes otherness looks just like me. As long as I don’t know and embrace my own identity, anything or anyone can be perceived as "other."

These issues are significant to expose, to reflect on personally, and to discuss with others. They are significant in the workplace because our

internal processes, based on our historical context, inform our actions. Our actions in the workplace include who we invite to lunch, how we evaluate our peers for tenure review, and what criteria we create for making hiring decisions. These subtle interpersonal and group variables relate directly to the previous article on the Abilene Paradox. In that article, the author describes ineffective group decisions and actions as based in fear of the unknown. In that article, we are challenged to break the cycle of wrong assumptions and fear, liberating us to act deliberately.

I chose to write this article because, as managers, as colleagues, and as allies, it is important to recognize all those people who have fought long and hard to minimize racial inequities. The library community struggles to maintain the centrality of race within the broader, safer discussion of diversity. Our self- and organizational-examination will help us to advocate appropriately around issues of race. It is also important for us to remember that some of our colleagues exist as "matter out of place" and have no language or outlet for expressing this burden. We, as a library community and as a society, must be willing to face our socio-historical and cultural assumptions about race. Individually, we can examine and push to expand the beliefs and meanings that we ascribe to ourselves and others¾ these unconscious lenses through which we see and evaluate the world are significant.

Endnotes

1Stuart Hall, Race: The Floating Signifier (Media Education Foundation, 1996).

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Leading Ideas:

Leading Opportunities

Explore Residency Opportunities at the ALA Diversity Fair

Academic libraries with residency programs are working with ARL to share information and resources about residencies at the ALA Diversity Fair being held June 26 in New Orleans. These programs have been very successful in attracting professionals from minority backgrounds to academic and research libraries. Residency programs offer post -master’s positions in libraries, exposing new professionals to an individual library setting and to the profession and encouraging professional development.

For more information about specific residency programs, visit ARL’s Research Library Residency and Internship Database at: <http://www.arl.org/careers/residencies.html>. The database collects and makes available information on a broad range of career opportunities for future and new professionals who are interested in academic and research libraries. ARL hopes that this easily accessible and current compilation will encourage new professionals to explore the dynamic and diverse career opportunities available in academic and research libraries.

The Diversity Fair is held in conjunction with the ALA Annual Conference. If you have comments or questions about residency programs or internships, contact DeEtta Jones, ARL Senior Program Officer for Diversity: <[email protected]>, or Trish Rosseel, ARL/OLMS Visiting Program Officer and the Residency and Internship Database manager: <[email protected]>.

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