Meet Jakob: The Group Member Who Keeps Saying GREECE
At 19:48 on a Sunday in mid-December, Jakob Reisinger texts the WhatsApp group from a restaurant in Vienna.
Best night. Same time next year? Or - let's plan a proper trip
Three minutes later: Yes please from Iona. An hour later: Iona logs off ("Guys I'm going to head off, tired"). Four days later, late, Ana catches up: Sorry just catching up - lovely to see everyone. The thread goes quiet for two months.
In February, Jakob: Trip planning when?
You reply: Soon. Let's talk in April.
In May, Jakob comes back hot:
Right team. Late August trip - who's actually in this year? Losing patience with the maybe-yes-maybe-no 😅
This is when the trip begins to take shape. Jakob runs the consensus. Yasmin, Iona, and Tobias say they are in. Tobias asks about dates. Jakob proposes 24-30 August. Tobias locks it. Two days later Ana catches up and confirms. Jakob, the next day:
🙏 GREECE
A few days later, Yasmin: Croatia would be lovely actually. Just throwing it out there. Jakob, twelve minutes later: Croatia is fine but Greece is better.
By the time you ask the group, on a Sunday afternoon two weeks later, what each person actually wants from the week, the answers are: I'm pretty open honestly. Same. Low-key but flexible. GREECE 😎. Fine with whatever.
Two days after that, Jakob sends a link to a villa in the Cyclades and writes: THIS is the trip. Iona: Looks beautiful. Tobias: Nice.
By Tuesday, Jakob asks: So Greece then? That place I sent? Four people say yes within hours. Nobody says yes with the energy of someone who chose it.
On Friday, you put the booking on hold.
What you are about to do
This is the scenario Where Are We Actually Going?, free throughout June on RolePlays.ai. You are six years out of your LBS MBA. Five friends from your study group are planning a week away together at the end of August. The WhatsApp thread looks democratic and is heading toward Greece. None of it feels right.
You have decided to call each of them one-to-one. Five conversations. That's what the scenario gives you.
What you do in each call decides whether the five conversations converge on the same answer or keep the WhatsApp thread alive at five private extensions. You are not facilitating a group. You are sitting with one person at a time, finding out what they actually want under all the I'm easy, and trusting that if you do that work well across five calls in a row, you will hear something the group itself never said.
What Jakob is, what he isn't
Jakob is the easiest person to read on the surface and the easiest to misread underneath.
He is 33, Austrian, lives in Vienna, Senior Manager in corporate development at a large Austrian industrial group. He drives the thread. He pushes. He makes a proposal, he sends a link, he uses the emoji 😎 on the word GREECE.
If you have ever been in a group where one person seems to be deciding for everyone else, you have met Jakob. The temptation in the call is to do one of two things. The first is to align with him, because he is the one offering forward motion and aligning with him is the path of least resistance. The second is to push back, because his caps-lock GREECE is annoying and someone should slow him down.
Both moves miss what Jakob is actually doing. He is filling a vacuum. Five people are saying I'm easy and fine with whatever, and somebody has to choose, and the somebody is him, because nobody else will. Whether his Greece preference is real, performed, or a frustrated default in the absence of any other signal - you do not know yet.
You will know after the call, if you ask the right questions.
The hardest question to ask Jakob is not "why Greece." It is closer to: what would happen if the group decided on somewhere else. Or: what would the trip need to feel like for it to be worth taking a week off for. Or - if you have nerve - what is it about being the one who keeps proposing.
He may or may not tell you. The scenario is calibrated to reward asking the question and to not penalize you if the answer is incomplete. Real groups work like this. The person driving the consensus is rarely the person who most wants the destination.
The four others, briefly
Iona MacAllister is a Senior Consultant at a top-tier strategy firm in London. She is the one who said Yes please ✨ on the reunion night and Guys I'm going to head off, tired an hour later. Her contributions to the thread are short, kind, and consistently easy.
Yasmin Mehra is an Investment Director at a PE firm focused on emerging markets. She is the one who, three weeks into a Greek-leaning thread, said Croatia would be lovely actually. Just throwing it out there. The "Just throwing it out there" matters.
Tobias Wagner is the Head of Finance at a German Mittelstand company in Frankfurt. He locked the dates. He says things like Whatever works. Something low-key would be nice end of a tough year. The phrase end of a tough year is doing more work than the rest of the message.
Ana Vásquez is Director of Strategy at a major French multinational, lives in Paris. She is married to Diego. Her messages arrive late and consistently. Sorry just catching up. Fine with whatever, just want to recharge a bit. The lateness is information.
Each of the five gives you a different surface. The scenario tests whether you can hear the difference between what people are saying and what they are choosing.
Why this scenario for L&D
This is the Abilene Paradox in conversational form. Jerry Harvey's 1974 paper described a group decision in which a family drives to Abilene, Texas, on a hot afternoon, and afterwards every one of them admits they did not want to go. Each had assumed the others did. The group decision contradicted the actual preferences of everyone in the group.
Organizations do this constantly. Teams set strategy this way. Boards approve initiatives this way. Cross-functional projects pick the path of least objection and call it consensus. The cost is everywhere and rarely calculated.
The skill being tested in this scenario is not negotiation. It is not facilitation. It is closer to hearing what people are not saying - and being willing to slow a group down long enough to find out what they actually want before the booking link gets sent.
It is the scenario you want if you facilitate, if you make decisions in groups, if you have ever sat in a meeting where everyone agreed and nothing got done. It is also a useful scenario for the person who suspects, sometimes, that they are the Jakob.
Try it in June
Where Are We Actually Going? is free throughout June on RolePlays.ai. Five conversations, around 15-20 minutes each. You do not have to do them in order.
One more thing. This month, the first person who gets all five of these characters to agree - freely and genuinely, in their own voices - on a specific destination wins two nights in a hotel of their choice, up to a value of €500. Details and rules in the contest post.
The booking is on hold.
Whose voice carries the room when nobody is willing to say what they want?