40. Collective Thinking (group dynamics)

Introduction

Collective thinking is sometimes called social mind, group mind, collective mind, social thinking, think-together, etc.
"...it involves a meeting of the minds where each person retains their individuality and contributes to a lively and diverse group discussion..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

NB This is not everyone thinking the same, ie group thinking!!!!

This is looking at every day practice in groups, teams, committees, organisations, communities, etc, ie understand elements of thinking together in your daily interactions.

There are hidden complexities occurring that delve beneath the surface of the interactions whenever people meet to collaborate, co-create, co-design, co-operate, co-ordinate, plan, review, innovate, learn, teach, facilitate, etc.

Need to look beyond the collection of individuals exchanging views and co-operating to a achieving a shared goal.

However,
"...there is a blindness to the social nature of thinking that arises partly from over-emphasis on the individual and individualism and partly from resistance to acknowledging the inherently social dimensions of the mind..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

If collective thinking works well, the result goes beyond what any one member could achieve themselves as individuals, ie collective spark (something that ignites 'a fire', if conditions are right).

"...Group having a capacity to think is not emergent but recombinant. We recombine our group nature with each new group, bringing what has been formed in us, including group traumas and group skills, and reconfigure it..."
Martin Roger et al, 2022

Collective thinking is the product of how the group's communication processes are organised; this includes all forms of communication like verbal, non-verbal, emotional, unconscious or indirect (background), conscious or direct (foreground), etc.

NB Most of our thinking (individually or collectively) is done automatically and unconsciously.

"...this saves a great deal of time and energy because the conscious brain is slower and more energy-hungry than unconscious parts of the brain..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

The unconscious aspect includes intuition, feelings, dreams and fantasies, etc
"...There is an unconscious dimension to our social life part of our being that is inherently an inescapably social unconscious......which contains many thoughts, values and practices that exist in society and impinge on its members. These influences occur not only through history and the traumas of past generations but also provide social dimension to the unconscious life that as yet is lacking an adequate language..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

(for more details on this, see other parts of the Knowledge Base)

This taken-for-granted nature of collective thinking is sometimes called collective blindness.

There are 2 main modes of thinking, ie

i) rational (involves goal-directed thinking and sharply-focused attention)

ii) non-rational (involves exploratory thinking, associative connections and free-floating attention)

NB the non-rational is not irrational.

"...movement between the two modes is an essential part of high-quality thinking space..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

One of the challenges of collective thinking is to get past your brain's preference for an autonomy and individuality. These preferences need to be relinquished as the collective goals are more important than our individual ones, ie
"...submit your individual interests to the collective interests..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

Emotions are important to collective thinking despite the perception that emotions can restrict clear thinking.

Emotional connections can provide gateway thinking:
"...it provides signals to the thinker about the importance of each thought and structures the relationships between speakers, often showing a reality even if it has not been grasped yet..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

"...there is no clear boundary between the 'external' social world and the 'internal' world of the brain and mind as there is for the body. The establishment of a facilitating social environment is a foundation for the capacity of groups to think collectively, beyond the capacity of any individual......in some cases, the thinking required is not solving problems or planning and executing tasks. Using different thinking to come to terms with stress, trauma and organisational difficulties..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

Some symptoms of good collective thinking:

- participants are interested, challenged and engaged

- most people have positive expectations about participating (they
"...have a positive expectation that what they will say is held in the mind by others and will be considered, even if their ideas are eventually discarded; they are contributing to the overall conclusion..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

- despite varying degrees of participation, most have a positive attitude (they
"...are confident that they will not be attacked. They are curious about what others say and prepared to 'play' with ideas - to let their minds go in unexpected directions that are not necessarily logically related to the topic under discussion. Nevertheless, they still hold in mind the intention of the discussion..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

- erratic conversation (intense bursts followed by silences
"...May feel full and rich because participants are immersed in intensive thinking about the topic under discussion..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

- conversations are punctuated with emotional expressions of interest, enjoyment, humour, etc (used to lift the conversation, generate enjoyment and a common feeling, especially humour)

- conversation follows its own path ("...the conversation is not always logical and weaves around the main topic of discussion, with sometimes exciting new ideas occurring to participants, that these apparent diversions end up adding something to the overall exploration..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022)

- encouragement for constructive disagreements (participants assert their opinions strongly and passionately but are willing to shift ground as they gain a better understanding:
"...The goal of discussion remains central rather than inter-personal conflict or rivalry becoming the focus..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

- coherent patterns emerge in the conversation (this evolves into decisions and commitment to action)

- acknowledge agreement (willing to accept new agreement that had previously eluded them)

- commitment to common goals (a mature individuals, they are willing to accept others' ideas that better fit the common goal)

- shared understanding (around what is being discussed and why)

- participants are curious (it is 2 directional, ie
"...participants are curious about what is going on in the group ('outwards' curiosity) and at the same time they are curious about what is going on in themselves ('inward'curiosity)..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

Usually the self reflection is done silently.

Some symptoms of poor collective thinking:

- lack psychological safety (people do not feel safe enough to think or speak freely; thoughts of a member do not become a stimulus for the thinking of others)

- group assumptions, norms, beliefs, etc restrict topics for discussion, being addressed or questioned (some topics are 'taboo', ie undiscussable; sometimes called 'forbidden zones' or 'forgotten zones':
"...This results in a kind of 'blindness' that cannot be addressed until the taken-for-granted patterns are brought into the awareness of the group often by an external person..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

- leader's actions and words discourage differing ideas, points of view, etc (this results in people 'going through the motions', ie appear to be agreeing with the leader)

- unsuitable type of thinking for the situation (divergent thinking is good for being creative to explore more options; while convergent thinking is narrowing the identified options to the most suitable ones that are best for decision-making; need to understand which thinking is required, otherwise confusion and ineffective collective thinking occurs)

- some people continually act in ways that impedes collective thinking (some examples include hostility, vanity, big-noting oneself, being hurt by what others say, being dogmatic, being opinionated, questioning everything, etc; need to be aware of the destructive nature of these activities and handle with care)

- group awareness is low (people don't realise that everything they say and do in the group impacts the whole group:
"...In normal group functioning all members witnessed all interaction and used it as information to predict how they themselves will fare when they actively participate. Additionally, leaders often underestimate the psychological and emotional power of what they themselves say and do. In general, every move made by group leader is noticed by members and these 'data' have a powerful influence on 'how we do things around here' - ie, group culture..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

- feelings are discounted or over-emphasised (research has shown
"...Thinking is integrated with feeling and denial of feeling diminishes the quality of thinking. Much group activity occurs at an intuitive level - resulting in feelings, flashes of intuition and half-formed thoughts - but if no one voices this material the richness of this collective non-rational effort cannot be harnessed to solve group problems..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

However, being swamped by strong feelings rounds out thinking, ie excessive focus on feelings associated with the topic can prevent thinking.

Need to get an integration and balance between thinking and feelings.

Be emotionally competent, ie
"...participants look to the leader to signal 'what is OK' in terms of balance between thinking and feelings..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

- lack of curiosity (replaced by blame and attack, ie blame others for anything that goes wrong; need to discourage blaming behaviour and encourage curiosity instead;
"...There may be a dull energy-sapping tone to interaction where participants are disengaged or uninterested......'dynamics of dullness'
Martin Ringer et al, 2022)

- time restraints (conversations are driven by time restraints; need to be careful that you do not value decisiveness and closure above high-quality thinking; time restraints
"...forces closure and curtailing potentially useful inputs. Furthermore, the anxiety generated by being hurried diminishes the quality of thinking.... False economies can be created by talking briefly about a multitude of topics rather than thinking in more depth about a few..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

Additionally, adequate time is needed to review experiences and digest tensions.)

Collective thinking is not

- conformity (where group-think or mindless conformity for everyone to think the same way)

- concurrence (where one person is imposing their thinking on the others)

- harmony (everyone must agree; everyone must be feeling good)

- absence of conflict (no disagreements allowed)

- democratic decision-making (everybody gets a vote on everything)

- togetherness or 'one-ness' (all sharing the same view)

- smooth functioning (absent of conflict, disagreements, differing views, etc)

- a sense of order or predictability (absence of uncertainty, ambiguity, volatility, turbulence, etc)

- continual team member satisfaction (everyone is satisfied all the time)

The quality of collective thinking will suffer if any of the above prevail.

Summary

Collective thinking
"...Depends on the topic, culture, context, setting and urgency. Members of the group thinking effectively together are likely to experience swings in feelings and interactions. Effective group team thinking is expressed in patterns of interaction observed over a period, rather than being evident in the 'snapshot' of team interaction. Hence, the overall question that we need to ask when we are assessing effectiveness of thinking in group level discussion is 'over the period of this meeting/interaction, how well is this group of people making use of the intellectual resources and knowledge that exists in this group or team?'..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022

"...effective collective thinking may at times involve elements of conflict, tension, diversity, confusion, divergence and insistence on difference between team members. Collective thinking may be at times rough, clumsy, diverse and unpredictable. Often the emotional and psychological strain on team members may be greater when involved in high quality collective thinking...... members of the thinking group retain their awareness of why they are debating, disagreeing on the way to a goal, and even if they do not reach universal agreement, the conclusions can be supported and they can get on with the task..."
Martin Ringer et al, 2022