Why is it that teams in organisations (especially large ones) often make decisions that seem far worse than the sum of their individual brilliance?
If you’ve spent any time working in corporate environments, you’ve likely sat in meetings where something like this happens:
One person, often the highest-paid or most senior in the room, shares an opinion. People start nodding. Others add supporting arguments. Everyone seems to agree, at least on the surface.
Some team members, however, have quiet reservations. But they don’t voice them. They don’t want to be seen as difficult, or risk falling out of favor with colleagues, and especially not with their boss.
All of this is very human and entirely understandable.
Conformity can feel safe. Yet in reality, it’s often anything but.
History is littered with examples that show how this kind of groupthink, as psychologists call it, can have disastrous consequences.
A well-known example for those of us who grew up in the 1980s is the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Engineers’ warnings about safety were downplayed under pressure to proceed. Seven astronauts lost their lives as a result, leaving their families in shock as they watched the shuttle break apart shortly after takeoff when a key component failed in the freezing temperatures.
Thankfully, the consequences of groupthink are not always so tragic. But when concerns go unspoken, decision-making inevitably suffers, leaving teams exposed to avoidable risks and missed opportunities.
Could neurodiversity in teams help reduce groupthink?
Research suggests it might.
And that’s not just because a greater diversity of thinking styles helps teams see more, though that can certainly help.
There’s another factor at play.
As cognitive scientist and neurodiversity expert Maureen Dunne outlines in The Neurodiversity Edge, neurodivergent people tend to maintain independent judgment more easily, even when facing peer pressure to conform to the majority view.
While every neurodivergent individual is of course different, this tendency to prioritize voicing the facts over being liked appears especially true for many autistic people. One interesting study, published two years ago in Autism Research, found that:
- Autistic employees were more likely to report that they would speak up about organizational dysfunctions.
- Autistic employees were less likely to be influenced by how many other people had also witnessed the issue.
Sadly, prioritizing honesty over conformity can come at a cost for autistic and non-autistic people alike. I’ve been fortunate to work in places where I felt mostly free to speak up. But when psychological safety is lacking, raising concerns can lead to subtle forms of exclusion. For those who already find themselves in marginalized positions, including many neurodivergent individuals, the social cost can be even higher.
That’s why it’s crucial for people leaders to:
- Surround themselves with people who think differently (what Maureen Dunne calls neurodiversification).
- Create the psychological safety for them to express their views and concerns openly, without repercussions.
Building that psychological safety means:
- Acknowledging your own fallibility: signal that you don’t have all the answers, and that you value everyone’s perspectives. This requires setting aside ego and prioritizing curiosity over self-validation. Not always easy, I know, but absolutely necessary.
- Actively inviting counterarguments: ask questions like “What might we be missing?” or “Does anyone see this differently?” When I lead meetings, I often try to let others speak first, to avoid unintentionally steering the conversation. It’s so easy to fall prey to confirmation bias.
- Responding appreciatively when someone speaks up: thank people for sharing their views, especially when they challenge the consensus. This is particularly important for neurodivergent colleagues, who may feel a heightened risk of being ostracized when voicing a dissenting view.
Under those conditions, your autistic and other neurodivergent team members can be among your greatest assets, because many of them care more about expressing what is true than what is popular.
As Maureen Dunne notes, sometimes a single dissenting voice is enough to nudge a team to reconsider its assumptions and explore alternative paths. And that may be exactly what prevents a team from slipping into groupthink – or staying silent when it’s one step away from a disastrous decision.
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