Being a leader is challenging as it requires many skills ranging from having empathy to giving credit to the team members. The most challenging part about being a leader is balancing the control given to the team members to operate in independence and adhering to the organization’s rules. This is where things start to get tricky.
Everyone is different when it comes to being managed. Many love their independence and flexibility, while a handful of others thrive when rigid structures are put in place. Congruence is one such important term that is used in corporate institutions. Congruence collectively stands for — “values, goals, vision, self-concept, and leadership styles.” Once such organization that values collective congruence is NASA.
NASA is well known for its strict rule of adhering to the guidelines and procedures. Especially when it comes to proving a point with data, if there’s no data to bolster a suggestion/recommendation, then it’s discarded. This turned out to be a huge problem in the way NASA operated as an organization. Things came into light when under the leadership of Morton Thiokol’s Managers, mission Challenger was a colossal disaster leading to all seven astronauts’ death.
The disaster could have been avoided if the leadership had considered the warnings from Roger Boisjoly and Bob Ebeling (chief engineers). Instead, they were ignored due to the lack of data and unity for the standard procedure. The history repeated when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in Feb 2003, because of a technical issue identified by few engineers but was not considered due to their inability to make a quantitative case.
Here’s where conformity bias comes into the picture.
Conformity bias or group thinking is one of the most commonly observed phenomena. The tendency to pick up queues from the surrounding environment and act in a subservient way for the sole reason of “not breaking the harmony of the group” is conformity bias. In simple terms, it’s the main reason behind us trying to “fit in” a particular environment.
Why do we conform?
It goes back to when humans were hunter-gatherers, where one’s survival depended on living in accord with the group. Being individualistic would essentially mean no food and less chance of reproductive success in the tribe.
Additionally, Deutsch M and Gerard H.B in their research paper titled “A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment,” concluded that — “the norms of a group could strengthen an individual’s resolve to express his personal views or they could pressure him to conform to the majority opinion.” And, the reasons for conforming are classified into two types:
- Information Influence: Conforming by the fear of being labeled as “foolish” and “dumb.” For example, agreeing with the topper of the class without knowing if the answer is right or wrong.
- Normative Influence: Conforming by the fear of being punished. For example, not expressing your opinion in fear of being singled out and targeted by higher-ups.
Chances are, most of the time, you fall into the trap of it often without consciously noticing it. Conformity bias is a double-edged sword. In the right environment and settings, conformity bias helps in mimicking and learning from others. However, in toxic environments, the influence can make you unethical and hinders your ability to communicate individually.
And that’s what happened in NASA when mission Challenger and Columbia were a colossal failure. Unquestionable loyalty to hierarchal leadership structure and toxic data-driven culture hindered the employees from articulating and notifying issues to leadership team.
So, what must the leaders do to avoid this in their workplace?
Establish and embrace incongruence like the way Rex Geveden had done.
Rex Gevedan was the program manager for the project Gravity Probe B at NASA, a high profile mission due to its enormous budget and its purpose of testing the theory of relativity proposed by Einstein. Given the past failures of NASA, this was a big launch, and everyone was eyeing them.
However, in the last months before launch, Gevedan found out about an issue in the shuttle. This was possible because he was able to differentiate and create two separate chains of influence in NASA.
- Chain of Command
- Chain of Communication
Chain of Command is the official hierarchal leadership structure where all the official communication happens as it previously was.
Chain of Communication is the unofficial communication channel where employees could speak up and report any issues and recommendations to the leadership team. Dissent was encouraged. Gevedan’s ideology was to promote incongruence and healthy tension in the organization.
He later went on to become the CEO of BWX Technologies, where he implemented the same and issued a memo stating how he wanted to listen to everybody’s voice and not just the ones at the top in the leadership positions.
Ergo, teams need the right mix of individualism and hierarchy in the organization. This balancing act is an art that’s developed over time intuitively. Using conformity bias to one’s advantage and fostering an informal culture where incongruence and ambiguity are celebrated should be normalized.
Note: This article was based out of my recent read “Range” by David Epstein. You can check out the book here
Feel free to share the article and comment your personal anecdote with regards to leadership and conformity bias :)
