What you don’t know about making decisions
The purpose of this exercise is to help you understand the basic concepts of constructive decision-making.
1. In your own words, summarize your understanding of Inquiry and Advocacy?
2. Describe five (5) important things a leader can do in group decision-making? – DO NOT JUST PROVIDE A LIST
3. Explain in your own words how conflict can be used positively.
4. Explain why ‘consideration’ and ‘fairness’ are important in group decision-making?
5. Based on your understanding of Critical Thinking, explain what these terms mean to you?
· To be objective
· To develop Mechanisms to check cognitive biases
· To consider alternatives
· To challenge underlying assumptions
6. In your opinion, what could happen if a leader concludes a discussion towards a decision too late. How could that effect the outcome?
Conquering a culture of indecision
The purpose of this exercise is to help you understand the destructiveness of silence in the decision-making process.
1. Think of a time no one asked a question or made a comment after a presenter made a lecture.
· Explain how you would feel if you were the presenter, and no one responded?
· As a participant if you are totally quiet are you being fair and considerate to the presenter?
2. Silence reinforces an environment of indecision. In your opinion why is it important that people within a group connect and engage with each other?
3. In your own words, describe five (5) ways this culture of silence can be broken with in a group or in a virtual classroom. – DO NOT JUST PROVIDE A LIST
4. How can you turn communication and dialogue into action, where decisive decision-making happens?
5. In your own words, explain what these words mean in the context of good communication and dialogue.
· Openness
· Candor
How to avoid Catastrophe – Near misses
The purpose of this exercise is to help you understand the dangers of ignored near mishaps.
Near misses and changing conditions
1. Describe some near misses that you have experienced?
2. What conditions happened or changed to cause your near misses to surface as problems?
3. What were the consequences to you when the problem erupted?
Normalization of deviance
4. In your own words, explain what Normalization of Deviance means.
5. Describe something that you use to considered bad but is now considered acceptable.
Cognitive Biases (strong thoughts and ideas that prevent you from seeing the big picture)
6. Describe a time when you were so confident and focused on a perceived favourable outcome of something you what you want, and everything went wrong.
7. What biases did you have that caused you to only see a favourable outcome?
How (un)ethical are you?
The purpose of this exercise is to help you understand that we all carry biases that we are not aware of…and….they do influence us in our decision-making.
1. Explain why or why not you believe you are ethical – why or why not you are unbiased.
2. Would you describe yourself as a person who consciously works at reaching fair and rational conclusions or a person who unwittingly allows their subconscious thoughts and feeling to influence their objectivity? Explain.
3. In your own words, explain the following terms.
· Implicit forms of prejudice,
· Bias that favours one’s own group,
· A tendency to over-claim credit.
4. In your own opinion, where do think unconscious beliefs come from or how do you acquire them?
5. You find out that your cousin is stealing money from work. If you report him he will be fired. If you do not report him and the company finds out you did not report him, you will be fired.
· What kind of conflict of interest are you in?
· Can you be objective?
· Can you be unbiased?
6. Provide three (3) explanations on how you can reduce unconscious bias from having uncontrollable affect on your objectivity? [