The Red Hat and The Fallacy of Teamwork

“In a normal business discussion you are not supposed to allow your emotions to come in. They come in anyway – you merely disguise them as logic.”

“The traditional view is that emotions muck up thinking. The good thinker is supposed to be cool and detached and not influenced by emotion.”

“We are brought up to apologize for emotions and feelings because they are not the stuff of logical thinking.”

These ideas are all found in Edward DeBono’s book, “Six Thinking Hats.” The comments are all found in the section on the Red Hat, the hat representing emotion. While each of the hats represents an influence or process that goes into thinking and decision making, the Red Hat has the most obvious link to the Fallacy of Teamwork.

As is the case with thinking, teamwork is filled with complexity, which makes it difficult to do well. In my experience, underlying emotion and feelings – anger, jealousy, pride, fear, happiness, retribution, etc. – are always present in team interactions, but are either not acknowledged, or treated as a barrier to success.

The first quote above refers to a “normal business discussion.” The second refers to “the traditional view.” The third mentions that we are “brought up to apologize for emotions.” On business teams, the three are stacked on each other. Because we have been raised to believe that emotions and feelings are a sign of weakness, they have no place in successful teamwork. That’s the traditional (perhaps male-driven) view and it constitutes what is accepted as normal business behavior.

This manifests itself in several ways, but in two that are most readily identified. First, when emotions freely enter into team activities, they are often interpreted as threats, challenges, disbelief or worse. Second, though emotions are always present, it is common practice to suppress them, for the reasons mentioned above.

This traditional, apologetic attitude toward emotion (and often toward its cousin, intuition) is accepted as normal in business discussions and teamwork. And it is detrimental to both. A case could be made that such suppression of emotion is at the root of the Fallacy of Teamwork.

(As an aside, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, commented on the upcoming confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Of President Obama’s nomination, he said, “With [Obama’s] view, that a judge should use his or her personal feelings about a particular group or issues to decide a case, it stands in start contrast to the impartiality that we expect in the American courtroom…Do I want a judge that allows his or her social, political or religious views to impact the outcome? Or do I want a judge that objectively applies the law to the faces and fairly rules on the merits?”

Sessions is asking for the impossible. We are all shaped by our social, political and religious views – and more – and they impact every decision we make as humans. Sessions would seem to believe that the perfect judge is one without personal feelings about groups and issues. That person would not be human, let alone qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Further, he suggests that the conditions are mutually exclusive, that a judge will either allow “his or her social, political or religious views to impact the outcome,” or the judge will “rule fairly on the merits.” I guess Sessions wouldn’t have voted in favor of Thurgood Marshall. )

Let’s leave the black robe and get back to the Red Hat. And let’s get a little deeper, with DeBono’s help, on the two main examples of the denial of emotion – normal and traditional – contributes to poor teamwork.

When emotions come to the fore, it usually inflicts a degree of discomfort on the group. It’s unexpected, which catches team members off guard. They have not been brought up to accept emotion as a legitimate part of thinking, so it is immediately challenged. It’s also often misinterpreted.

“I think that’s a dumb idea” is an emotional reaction. The response seen most often is personal. The individual who brought up the idea feels challenged and personally threatened. He interprets the comment as “he thinks I’m dumb.” Depending on how vigorously the offended party reacts, the tone of the entire meeting is changed. It’s as if there’s suddenly an odor that nobody can ignore.

On the other hand, the person offering the emotional “dumb idea” comment could be articulating emotion of his own. “It’s not my idea, so I don’t like it.” “You’ve killed my ideas in the past, so now it’s my turn to kill one of yours.” “You’re not highly thought of, so I can’t be seen as taking your side.” All of this underlying stuff is real and it’s part of thinking, reacting and making decisions. But when it is not acknowledged as a valid part of those processes – as in the normal, traditional way of business discussion or teamwork – it is dismissed as weakness and hysteria.

Let’s look at the denial of emotion in the same team setting in the other main manifestation. If an individual suggests an idea, the first reaction of a team member may be emotional. It may be “It’s a dumb idea,” or it may be “I love it.” But because we’ve learned to suppress the emotion, nothing is said. Instead, we look for ways to disguise the emotional response – often present, always valid – in a context of logic, the more “accepted” way of thinking.

With that, I’d like to add the rest of the paragraph that started with the third quote above.

“We are brought up to apologize for emotions and feelings because they are not the stuff of logical thinking. That is why we tend to treat them as an extension of logic. If we dislike someone, there must be a good reason for this. If we like a project, this must be based on logic.”

So what happens in the example above? Team members look for ways that appear to be thoughtful, objective, and reasonable to support the emotion felt for the idea. As DeBono points out, this is especially dangerous as prejudices that come with a bodyguard of logic appear to be more legitimate than those naked with emotion.

This is artificial thinking and artificial reasoning used to overcome the negative connotations of emotion. In practice, those elements can be particularly destructive. In Six Hats thinking, there is a place for logic and objectivity. But in business teamwork, they are often accepted at the expense of emotion, not with equal validity.

Teams can’t function properly if members’ emotions are hidden completely, like the man behind the curtain, unseen but pulling the levers. At the same time, the team is no better served if the emotions are disguised as logic and reason.

Genuine teams acknowledge emotion for exactly what it is: a valid reaction and element of intelligent human thinking. It is no more or less important than logic, data, creativity, caution or any other of the elements represented by various Thinking Hats. Unfortunately, those teams are not normal or traditional, in business settings or elsewhere.