✍️ When Leaders Don’t Slow Things Down — or Say ‘Stop’
How groupthink undermines oversight — from Washington, D.C., to our communities
We are watching the U.S. federal government drift out of balance in real time — not because it lacks safeguards but because those safeguards are no longer being exercised.
The Constitution’s separation of powers was designed to prevent unilateral control. It assumed ambition would check ambition. What it did not anticipate was broad acquiescence across branches that were designed to restrain one another.
Once you notice that pattern at the national level, it becomes hard not to see it elsewhere.
It’s called groupthink. And groupthink doesn’t require unanimous agreement. It only requires that people with the power, authority, or influence to slow or stop something decide not to.
Looking back now, I observed it as a newspaper reporter covering school districts and city halls in small and mid-sized cities — and later while working in communications for nonprofit and local government agencies in major metropolitan areas. I’ve also seen it as a volunteer and resident in small towns.
The setting changes. The specifics differ. The mission changes. The people involved are often capable, well-meaning, and committed to doing the right thing. But the dynamics repeat.
Questions go unasked. Doubts stay private. Decisions gather momentum without much visible resistance. Silence is read as agreement or consent.
Decisions are shaped not just by who has authority but also by who carries power and influence — and those aren’t always the same people.
A short detour to history (for a reason)
This isn’t a new problem, and we’ve known about it for a long time.
I first encountered this pattern as a student of political science studying organizational administration. In graduate school, I learned about Victims of Groupthink, an influential book published in 1972 by Irving Janis.
He examined how cohesive leadership groups can drift into disastrous decisions when dissent is discouraged. They don’t lack intelligence or good intentions; instead, they value agreement over scrutiny.
Two examples from the Kennedy administration are still taught for a reason:
The Bay of Pigs Invasion, widely regarded as a failure driven by groupthink, where skepticism was muted, and alternatives were not seriously tested.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, where lessons from that failure led to deliberate changes in process — structured dissent, competing viewpoints, and slower decision-making.
The difference wasn’t intelligence or access to information. It was whether disagreement was invited or quietly suppressed.
That distinction turns out to matter everywhere. And the theory stuck with me because real life kept confirming it.
Groupthink isn’t loud consensus. It’s quiet reluctance. It’s the unspoken calculation that raising a concern might slow things down, upset the balance, or mark you as not being a team player. Over time, those small calculations add up.
What groupthink looks like in practice
In organizations, groupthink rarely announces itself. It sounds reasonable. Familiar, even.
You hear things like:
“We don’t want to slow momentum.”
“This is already pretty well settled.”
“We can revisit it later.”
“No one objected.”
“Let’s stay aligned.”
None of those statements sound unreasonable on their own. That’s the problem.
What’s missing is often more revealing than what’s said: Questions about authority. About process. About long-term implications. About whether a decision is being endorsed — or formally authorized.
When those questions go unasked, decisions gain legitimacy simply by moving forward.
Boards, councils, and committees may begin to see their role as supportive rather than supervisory. Oversight becomes something you exercise only when something goes visibly wrong.
By then, it’s usually late.
Authority, power, and influence (the quiet drivers)
This is where the theories I learned long ago still prove useful.
Organizations are shaped not just by authority but also by power and influence — and those are not the same thing.
Authority comes from position. It’s formal, defined, and written into bylaws, job descriptions, or law.
Power often comes from personality, confidence, effectiveness, or control of resources. People defer even when they don’t have to.
Influence flows from expertise, experience, institutional memory, or credibility. It shapes outcomes without issuing orders.
In healthy organizations, these forces are distributed and checked. In unhealthy ones, they concentrate.
Groupthink becomes most dangerous when authority, power, and influence align in the same people — whether they are elected officials, founders, executives, directors, or simply the loudest or most confident voice in the room.
No one needs to say, “Don’t question this.”
People figure it out on their own.
Not just a small-town problem
If this sounds familiar locally, it should. If it sounds familiar nationally, it should. The point is that scale doesn’t protect us.
It’s tempting to think of these dynamics as a small-town issue — something that happens where people know each other too well, where social relationships complicate professional roles. But that’s not true.
Groupthink shows up just as reliably in large public and private organizations with formal hierarchies, professional staffs, and thick policy manuals. In fact, it can be harder to see there, hidden behind process, professional language, expertise, and a belief that “someone else must have checked this.”
And, of course, we see it now in the U.S. federal government.
The common thread isn’t size. It’s how power operates inside groups.
Leadership isn’t limited to job titles. It includes elected officials, appointed executives, directors, and people whose voices carry extra weight — sometimes literally, sometimes because of reputation, tenure, or role. When those voices dominate the room, objections can be minimized without anyone explicitly saying, “Don’t object.”
And that affects people in other positions, too. No one has to shut dissent down. Often, it simply withers.
Why capable people go along
Groupthink doesn’t require bad actors. It thrives among people who care.
Trust, loyalty, fatigue, respect for experience, and fear of conflict all play a role. So does the understandable desire to avoid being the lone skeptic in a room full of apparent agreement.
We each may have been in those rooms. Sometimes we noticed the unease and didn’t name it. Sometimes we assumed someone else would. Sometimes, we might have thought the issue wasn’t big enough to justify pushing back.
And sometimes we may have spoken up.
Still, staying silent is not a failure of character. It’s a human response to social pressure.
Structure helps — but it doesn’t save you
Clear bylaws, defined roles, and shared governance can reduce risk. But structure alone doesn’t prevent groupthink.
Long-serving leaders often carry moral authority that extends beyond formal roles. Elected officials and executives may unintentionally discourage dissent simply by the confidence with which they speak. Informal norms can override written rules without anyone consciously deciding to ignore them.
The quiet cost of acquiescence
When boards and oversight bodies consistently defer, small exceptions become precedents. Temporary decisions become ongoing practices. Lines of authority blur — not through conspiracy, but through convenience.
Groupthink makes acquiescence feel reasonable.
Eventually, the organization pays a price: strained trust, public confusion, internal resentment, or decisions that no longer reflect the values people thought they were protecting.
By the time conflict surfaces, it often looks sudden. It isn’t.
What healthy oversight actually requires
Healthy organizations don’t end disagreement. They normalize it.
That means making room for skepticism before momentum builds. They separate support for people from scrutiny of decisions. They treat governance questions as neutral and necessary, not oppositional. They value the person who asks, “Can we slow this down?” as much as the person who says, “Let’s move.”
Oversight isn’t obstruction. It’s stewardship.
A closing thought
Groupthink isn’t rare, and it isn’t confined to any one sector or place. It emerges wherever people care deeply about a mission and want to get along while doing good work.
What makes this moment different is scale.
When groupthink takes hold in a club, a nonprofit, a small business, or a city council, the damage is local. When it takes hold across national institutions designed to check one another, the consequences ripple outward — quietly at first, and then all at once.
The danger isn’t disagreement.
It’s when people with the authority, power, or influence to intervene decide — consciously or not — that silence is safer.
History suggests otherwise.
At moments like this, oversight doesn’t begin with grand gestures. It begins when people who know better are willing to slow things down, ask harder questions, and say — clearly and publicly — “Let’s take another look.”
