Professor Eligah King
BA 3300
4/19/2017
City Council Project
This project was very insightful, we had never sat down to really think about the pressures that City Council goes through in order to pass or deny motions. In this exercise, we find ourselves needing to make a decision within a very limited time frame. We gave the community a chance to voice their ideas on the use of donated land and ways in which it would benefit the community the most. After reviewing the 6 ideas we as a “team” decided that idea 3, moderately priced retirement condominiums was the best way to go for the community. As a group it took us 16 minutes to decide that the community would benefit from …show more content…
I think we exhibited three norms that are common in groupthink. 1.) First was devil’s advocate, someone who will come up with the opposing viewpoint of the rest of the group. This helps find the flaws in the brainstorming being had by the group. This position should be changed with each new groupthink to keep the topic safe from bias. 2.) Another norm is to allow for everyone's ideas to be expressed and to make sure that the members are aware that all ideas can be expressed and are up for debate. This allows for everyone's thoughts to be discussed and is used as a preventative measure in groupthink. 3.) The leader of the group should stay impartial as to not show favorites. This way all ideas can be heard with the same level of attention. I believe that we as a team exhibited signs of these three groupthink norms. One of us inadvertently played the role of devil’s advocate by asking if the decision we were contemplating would really benefit the community if we had strung out drug addicts hanging around our community. The second norm that we succeeded in was making sure that all of our ideas were heard and that they were shown importance. As a team we decided which ones to strike from the possibilities. Lastly, I believe that we all stayed impartial and we made sure not to side too quickly with someone that may have had the same idea as us. We continued to ask questions and make sure that the decisions we were narrowing down were going to benefit the community …show more content…
justine- A few assets our city council discussed included the different alternatives provided through community ideas. All ideas were thoroughly discussed as we all gathered as much information as we could to have the best understanding for the best outcome for the community. We were able to commit to a decision as a team with any council member conforming to the options presented. We were limited on the time to make a decision, but once all ideas presented by the community were thoroughly discussed and understood, we did not face any pressure for time because the answer was easy for all council members to make. (Please let me know if I have errors or can add/delete things) I added a comma after understood