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Showing posts from February, 2018

Collaborative Decision Making

Reflect on the role of collaboration and getting to resolution in the process of decision-making. Rarely, if ever, do our decisions affect only ourselves. Consider the importance of getting other stakeholders involved; how can they help you make a better decision for all?   Recall a specific situation where you are faced with making a decision; within the context of the information in this module’s reading, describe the process you went through and the outcome you were seeking. How did stakeholder involvement help you make a better decision?  If stakeholders were not involved, could they have been? Would that have led to a better resolution? Did you achieve your objective(s)? Identify 3 ways you may use this learning experience to make better decisions in the future. Perhaps the most relevant situation has been our involvement with recent church activities and fundraisers.   Although seemingly low stress and fun, having been tasked with running the bar during the annual cr

Really listening...really!

As you have read, much of Levine’s work depends upon having a keenly developed ability to listen. Often, we are so busy developing our own stories, we fail to listen actively to that which we are being told, intent only on verbalizing our own personal stories. Think about the last time you “really listened” to someone else and gave them time to “get their story out”. How different was that experience from your normal communications? What did you learn? Record your experiences in this RB. If you are unable to recall such a situation, find a time/place this week to practice active listening and report on that. Listening is a skill that is perhaps the most misunderstood in today’s business culture and culture at large.   Headlee (2016) provides some great points of what are common mistakes that people are likely to make while trying to listen.   Among the major points given are recommendations to not pontificate when responding or conversing on a topic, or not to launch into one’s

Protecting Protected Values

In the Hoch text, based on Irwin and Baron's discussions on Protected Values (PV) (pgs.251 ff.), reflect on three of your major protected values, support those values with at least three major beliefs and show the pros and cons of each belief in terms of trade-offs you are willing to make to support or not support that belief. How do these Protected Values potentially affect your own decision making? Do you feel as strongly about them as you did when you began this exercise? Irwin and Baron’s discussion in Hoch (2001) highlights an often-understated aspect of values, especially when considered in public policy terms.   They state that the “cost benefit” analysis can be challenging to determine how relative importance can be assigned to PV.   Sowell (2015) confirms this notion that values are not simply “put” upon items or objects, that in fact a cost does exist when determining relative importance.   The amount needed to obtain education, training, resources needed to achiev

Deception in Negotiations

During the course of negotiations, people often misrepresent information to gain at least a temporary advantage. For example, a seller may fabricate existence of another interested buyer or a buyer may misrepresent the price and availability of an item from a different vendor. Reflect on deceptions in negotiations and describe four ways to reduce your vulnerability to deception during negotiations. Relate an example of a recent negotiation in which you were misled and one in which you may have overstated a claim. In the case of the overstatement, how far would you have gone, or did you actually go, to leverage your position? The best example I can provide is when I was forced to sell on order car of ours.   I wanted to ensure it was sold to the right type of person, one who had experience in working with cars or who didn’t need to rely upon this as their primary source of transportation.   In the course of fielding several calls, I would make sure I would ask for what use or

Are We in Control of our Own Decisions?

In this general assignment, analyze three recent decisions in light of the Daniel Ariely discussion regarding the way in which decisions are presented to us. Use one example of a good decision, a second example of a decision that was neither good nor bad and a third decision that was clearly a bad decision. Examine them from at least two different perspectives using Dan Ariel's methodology or other sources. In either of these examples, were there influences present that caused you to think/act irrationally? Explain. Knowing what you know now, would you make the same decision, again?  Please address this in your assignment. Ariely (2009) posits that many decisions we make are greatly influenced by how our choices are presented to us. Further, he points out is that our preferences are not always obvious unless all choices are presented.   3 decisions that come to mind are when we purchased our car in 2010, when we purchased a washing machine, and finally deciding upon a