EXERCISE 6.1

Independence

Virtual Decision Making

Purpose

To practice making decisions more rapidly and to understand one’s own decision-making process and how it compares to those of others.

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25 minutes

Review the process for making good decisions quickly and consider its valuable as a business skill! Practice making quick decisions as initial questions arise. Acting with independence means that we can decide confidently when we have enough authority and enough information to do so.

Outcomes

Audience

Facilitator Competencies image

Easy

Materials

Time Matrix

Activity Estimated Time
Discuss independent and quick decision making 5 minutes
Individually work through handout and then discuss in pairs 15 minutes
Full group debriefing 5 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes

Instructions

1. Discuss the process of decision making, using intuition, and being able to act intuitively. When we talk about our intuition, we’re referring to understandings we have that come from instinct, feelings, or some other internal awareness that creates a sense of “this is how it is,” even though external evidence isn’t gathered to support the awareness. People often refer to a “gut” sense. If they make a decision based on that gut sense or on a hunch, they are making an intuitive decision.

2. Distribute the handout and the notebook. Explain to the participants that as part of the ongoing exercise described in the handout that they will need to record information in their virtual decision notebooks.

3. Ask participants to fully work through all points in the handout and then form pairs to discuss results and considerations.

4. Bring the full group together to debrief. You might explore:

VIRTUAL DECISION MAKING HANDOUT image

You are probably relatively clear about how much authority you have. Theoretically this is determined by your job description, but in fact it is determined by your ongoing relationship with your leader and other top decision makers. Independence is a critical skill in supporting your decision-making power because there will be plenty of times when you want or need to influence the people who are leading you. This certainly takes a blend of all the EQ-i skills, but self-regard and assertiveness stand out as first lines of support you may need to draw on to strengthen your independence.

In this exercise, you are encouraged to simulate making a variety of kinds of decisions early and often and to record brief notes on your thoughts about what you’ve decided to do and why. For example, you hear your boss talking about needing to fund some new tech support positions. Right away begin to guess at the optimal number, what skill and pay grade would be good, how soon you can bring them on board, and any other kinds of relevant decisions that will need to be made (whether you will be making them or not). Jot down your ideas, any thoughts or reasoning about why your initial thoughts seem to be the best decision at this point and stash it away.

Congratulations! You have made your first virtual decision. It’s mostly intuition and guesswork at this point, but your job is to keep updating your observations every time you receive new information or have a new insight. Reality testing is also an important part of this exercise because you’re going to follow your virtual decision through to the end, observing how it matures and develops to the final outcome. This is like a game you’re playing, and one of the rules is that you have to update the simulation every time you obtain more information. You have to record your changes in your virtual decision notebook or you will not be able to learn nearly as much as you need to from your efforts. The value of this is that you will be able to compare similar kinds of decisions over the course of a year or more at some point, noticing when you had it right early on, when others had better decisions than yours and how they came about, as well as noticing how accurately your intuition was operating on your behalf.

If the decision does become your real responsibility, you will be far better prepared. If your boss keeps the responsibility, you may be able to offer useful suggestions to him or her. If a colleague has the responsibility and it’s not appropriate to collaborate with him or her, it may be harder to obtain information for updates, but you can compare your process with the final result and whatever you can learn about how it matured to that end.

Be careful about kibitzing on other people’s responsibilities, as this will not be appreciated, especially if the person feels that you are constantly second-guessing him or her! This is a private practice in independent decision making for your professional development.