The Sociobiology of Meetings
Sally Stowe
In the course of more than a decade spent developing an open access microscopy facility, I have encountered a number of forms of group decision making and would like to share my confusion. My curiosity became piqued years ago when I needed a particular decision from a committee, and worked very hard to get it by what I thought were the rules as we all know them…have an unanswerable case, do the homework, prepare the ground in one-to-one discussions with individuals so there are no surprises and you know you have the numbers, take account of any opposition and alliances – I had it all covered, this one was going to be a shoo-in, this was fun, I thought I was Graham Richardson. (For readers under thirty, Richardson was a somewhat colourful ALP numbers man).
Well, it blew up in my face more comprehensively than anything before or since. When a conflict arose everyone got very agitated and my unanswerable case was dust. Sure, I got the result a few months later – but only by breaking just about every rule in the book, which is not something to do too often. It left me realising that I did not understand the behaviour of the group, the book was unreliable, I was not Graham Richardson and I should definitely never try to do that again.
But I’ve always wondered why I got it so wrong.
These days any city bookshop has shelves of trendy recipes for success in the corporate world. My less than exhaustive research has not uncovered a treatment based on evolutionary psychology - but it’s a promising line. Whether we are pushing ourselves or pushing an idea, we manoeuvre within large institutions using psychological tools developed in small groups engaged in gathering, hunting, co-existing, merging or fighting with other tribes. The results are far from ideal - while the world is making some progress towards cooperative behaviour, it often seems as if our forebrains are having to fight the rest of us at every step.
So – in a spirit of idle curiosity – can an evolutionary approach shed some light on the behaviour of the committees that are the preferred sub-unit of university administrative structures?
For the sake of argument, let’s make the assumption that the behaviour of men in interdependent but not necessarily close familial groups, such as hunting parties and warbands, was for much of human history under pretty heavy selection pressure for teamwork, differentiation of roles and a clear behavioural difference between leaders and followers. Let’s make the further assumption – why not? - that over the same period many of women’s group activities were focused on gathering, weaving, and suchlike activities where the group provided company and safety, and an opportunity for transfer of knowledge, but there was less emphasis on concerted, cooperative effort or hierarchy.
Most decision-making in universities is still controlled by men, even if women are beginning to approach a critical mass. If committees mimic a grouping men tend to find comfortable, this helps to answer the most obvious question -why committees are so ubiquitous, when nobody admits to liking them. Certainly they are a superb mechanism for diffusing responsibility. If there is no real conflict of interest, and hence no difficult decisions to be taken, a committee can serve a worthwhile bonding role as a communication and consensus mechanism, and at any rate is likely to do no harm. But while it is almost always true that several informed people concentrating on a problem can make a better, quicker job of it than one person, the committee is rarely the best means to perform a task. If the desired outcome is an action, then a team or taskforce with a defined job, resources and time frame is the way to go. If the desired outcome is a report assessing a situation, then one person taking responsibility, seeking advice from others and producing a synthesis is much better – and is usually used when a higher authority is serious about getting an answer. Notice how an influential report or commission will be referred to by the name of the Chair, even if it is formally produced by a panel.
So what actually happens in a committee, framed in terms of group dynamics? It’s worth examining the possibility that the accepted wisdom of the way to go about getting decisions made by a group doesn’t necessarily work well for women, because it may depend on interactions that are intrinsically male-to-male.
One of the most obvious factors in a male dominated group is that a pecking order is quickly established, usually mirroring status outside the committee. The business of the meeting proceeds in parallel with constant subtle affirmations, courtly or irritable, of relative status. University committees are almost always structured so that this is straightforward – the Chair will be of higher status outside the context of the committee. Otherwise things can get very complicated.
Solidarity can of course be very important, particularly if there is any sense of crisis. If a group feels threatened, they will tend to become defensive and make safe rather than innovative decisions. This makes sense in many ways –in an immediate crisis, indecision is the worst option, so taking a decision that nobody violently opposes may be the only way to proceed. However, it may be that heated argument over an issue is itself seen as a threat to the cohesiveness of the group. Unless the Chair is skilled enough to keep things cool, a feedback situation preventing almost any action can develop whenever an argument becomes emotive. This can include not only innovative issues, but also actions that disadvantage any member of the group. In a really dysfunctional committee, it can include actions that would advantage any member of the group.
The take home message – I think – is to keep the anxiety level down so that the forebrain has a chance. So if you want to engineer a “bold” decision, you may do better from a state of close to absolute boredom than by trying to fire up enthusiasm!
Dr. Sally Stowe is Head of the Electron Microscopy Unit at the Research School of Biological Sciences, ANU, Canberra.