Life outside the ‘Consensus Group’: The Danger of Team Rejection

by Curt Friedel

No one wants to feel like an outsider. When someone new joins a team – either in the workplace, or in a recreational environment – they might feel like the odd one out.

Perhaps the existing team already has a clear system for completing tasks, and could resent anyone who tries to shake things up a bit. Or, maybe there is a noticeable difference between the main group and the new member – such as race, religion, gender, age, thinking style, or something else leading to discrimination.

Even though it comes with its challenges, bringing in a new team member to increase diversity is often an excellent idea. When you integrate them intelligently, it can be essential for improving results. But how can you avoid the dangers of team rejection, and ensure a productive problem-solving environment for all?

Keep reading to find out.

What causes a person to be rejected from a group?

Research completed within different organisations and cultures, over decades have all identified the same key factors that impact whether an individual is rejected from a group.

In many situations, team rejection is caused by diversity, which may include:

  • Ethnicity
  • Race
  • Gender
  • Age
  • Status
  • Religion

The work of Dr Michael Kirton suggests that there is one more important aspect of diversity to add to this list: thinking style.

When your current team’s range of problem-solving style (reflected by their KAI results) is narrow, it can be risky to bring in someone who is significantly different to the ‘average’, because it is likely that the team will reject them. Likewise, the person that comes in may feel unheard and uncomfortable, due to their preference for solving problems being different from their peers.

Having a thoroughly considered onboarding system is therefore crucial to avoid team rejection and focus on creating a highly effective team. In part, this onboarding system should include calculating the cognitive climate of the team, and determine the consensus group. Then, help the consensus group recognize the need for cognitive diversity.

Identifying the Consensus Group

To assess the ‘cognitive climate’ within a team, you must first identify the consensus score range. In Adaption-Innovation terminology, this can be described as the range found 10 points more adaptive and 10 points more innovative than the average KAI score of the team.

Individuals positioned on the KAI continuum within this 20-point span is often where we find 40% of team members, which form the Consensus Group. It is this group who tends to hold the most power in making decisions, because they think the most alike and typically have strength in numbers. This consensus group will see the problems faced by the organisation through the same lens, and anyone outside of this range subsequently becomes an ‘outsider’.

Dr Kirton’s research also noted that the power of the positional leader (respective to the group) is equally important, as they provide positional leadership to the creative space. The positional leader should consider if their preferred problem-solving style is more adaptive, more innovative, or within the consensus group. To increase one’s capacity to lead with consideration of one’s preferred problem-solving style, it is good leadership practice to work with the consensus group while including the perspectives of those outside the consensus group. Balancing and maintaining a wider range of problem-solving styles is the role of the leader in faster changing environments.

Making All Individuals Feel Comfortable

It is critical that team leaders helps members of the consensus group, along with any ‘outsiders’, feel respected and heard. No one should feel inferior because of how they prefer to solve problems. One’s problem-solving style is not related to intelligence, learned skills, values, or motives. Thus, one problem-solving style is not better than another, in general.

In many cases, the highest employee turnover within an organization comes from those found in the outsider groups. These people often have their ideas rejected because they are not positioned in with the same perspectives as the consensus group, and therefore feel undervalued and unheard. One of the notable exceptions to this is when the individual is doing a job that no one else wants to do, and doing the job well (thus are subsequently being left alone and respected) – in which case, they may hang around because their job is safe and their peers appreciate their contributions.

Simultaneously, a team leader must ensure that the consensus group does not feel threatened by the presence/arrival of any outsiders. One method of achieving this is by ensuring that in problem solving, any suggestions are evaluated on the merits of the idea itself, and not the person who has suggested the idea.

Teams can become stagnant if they do not incorporate the ideas of individuals outside the consensus group – but if the majority of people in the team feel threatened, it can cause enormous disruption. Treading the line between these two scenarios is the responsibility of any effective leader.

How Leaders can Build Effective Teams

Your new team member needs to feel comfortable and accepted in the new team – and while it’s not always possible to make this happen straight away, you can take steps to ensure a smooth onboarding process.

Three significant steps that can make these individuals feel valued include:

  • Inviting them to have a say in meetings
  • Respecting them at all times
  • Providing protection and reassuring them that their job is safe

More often than not, it is the responsibility of the leader to build a cohesive creative team in which these actions are carried out. If mutual respect for differences in problem-solving style is lost, conflict ensues, and it becomes likely that team members will bring in other unrelated differences (age, gender, status, etc.) to the problem, which multiplies the conflict even more. As humans, we tend to attribute conflict to the differences that we see, not what we don’t see. Because one’s problem-solving style is not observable to the common eye, it isn’t typically considered as a source of conflict.

Get in touch with the KAI Foundation today

Cognitively diverse teams with knowledge of their problem-solving styles have better cohesion and higher levels of respect between team members. These collaborations can result in lots of enjoyment within the group and team members sticking together for longer, because they achieve more success than if they had a narrow range of problem-solving styles.  When your onboarding process is smooth, considered, and outlines the ‘why’ for everyone involved, it results in a more successful team collaboration.

If you want to learn more about the KAI Foundation and how we kickstart effective problem-solving teams, get in touch today.

Meet The Practitioner:

Dr Curt Friedel is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Co-operative Problem Solving at Virginia Tech in the USA, where he is also the Director of the KAI Certification Course. Click here to visit his LinkedIn profile and click here to see his profile on the Virginia Tech website.