How Team Building Could Have Helped the Failed Congressional “Super Committee”

Today’s announcement by the bipartisan “Super Committee” that they had failed to reach an agreement on reducing the national deficit is disappointing for sure. But regardless of your politics, are you surprised?

After all, we’ve got 6 members of both parties thrown together, neither side willing to budge on their positions. After nearly 4 months of wrangling, the group has announced failure, with each side blaming the other. Nobody wins, and everyone comes out with egg on their face.

Not exactly a beacon of teamwork and productivity.

Now, what could have been done differently to change the outcome here? First of all, how was the group assembled? Were the members chosen based on their seniority and eagerness to do battle, or on their likeliness to negotiate fairly and reach consensus? When running corporate team building events, this is the first thing to look at – the team itself! With congress becoming ever more divided along party lines, finding those moderates who are willing to put themselves in the other guys’ shoes must be getting harder.

How about setting expectations? Reports that expectations on a deal were low have been circulating for a long time. When attempting to get a group to solve an issue, how can you expect success if the expectation of failure abounds from the onset? A team building approach here would have clearly defined both the lofty goals of the group’s mission in advance, as well as set measures of success. The “we failed, and it’s that guy’s fault” result we saw today makes it clear that neither of these were put into place.

Finally, a sense of loyalty and placement of the organization’s well-being – in this case, congress and the nation – above all else seems to have gone out the window. When strengthening groups in a corporate setting, among the most important goals are to bolster individuals’ commitments and dedication to the mission and the work, to learn the importance of helping one another in that effort, and to make the necessary sacrifices when called upon to do so. Perhaps if members of the committee had taken a step back they could have seen the gravity of the situation we are in, and thus more seriously committed themselves to the task they had been requested to undertake.

There’s a lot that goes into group dynamics, whether in the high-pressure competitive environments of politics or business. Today we have seen a case of group decision making gone bad; however, perhaps tomorrow’s outcome will be better.

Let’s hope so…!