Member-only story
6 or 9? You Tell Me
On arguments and different perspectives
“If you had only one consideration for who to hire, what would it be?”
This question came up in a group discussion in my Management class. Each group was expected to deliberate and agree on only one consideration. At the end of the exercise, the consensus position would be compared across groups. The task was designed to find out the most important hiring consideration. However, the underlying task objective was studying how groups interact in reaching an agreement.
In my group, there were two part-time students who ran their own real estate practices. I was a full-time student with considerable experience in an unrelated field. My position during the debate was that the most important consideration for a potential hire would be their ability to follow instructions.
My group members strongly disagreed with my position.
They were like … nah, we’d rather hire someone who can work independently to achieve their primary objectives.
I disagreed with them. A new hire that is unable to follow instructions, choosing to do things their own way would be a disaster to the organization. They disagreed with me. A new hire that can’t hit the ground running with limited or no supervision was going to be a liability. As a group, we couldn’t agree on a…
