'Your destiny is being shaped while you are making a decision'                                        Polish

                                                                                                Anthony Robbins                                                                

 

Decision process: general information and prompts

 

We make decisions everyday. Some are easy and treated as a daily routine, while others are more complex and really need to
be thoroughly thought over. What appears during this process is hesitation resulting from complexity (mutually related factors), alternatives, risk and interpersonal problems. Decision making is a key skill both in private life and at workplace. Each decision is a challenge and  there are various approaches possible.

As it is a skill and as such it can be improved. How? Just gain more experience, learn the relevant tools and structures. Making
a decision happens to be exciting and stressful at the same time. In order to cope with these emotions, one should their approach to the process. They should devote some time to make an apriori evaluation of the factors for a successful choice. This way it is much easier to avoid coincidental decisions.

 

The process consists of several stages:

 

Learning and presenting different solutions. Often the most time-consuming, sometimes it takes so long, that it prevents from making a decision at all. To make this stage more effective, one should take into consideration only these factors which are relevant for this kind of analysis. They are:

- Risk – most of decisions can be risky, so all the dangers need to be discovered and analyzed

- Consequences – they cannot be predicted for hundred per cent, yet one needs to be careful

- Feasibility – often this factor is ignored, however it is crucial to consider the limits and make     

  sure whether the alternative is really better than the actual status quo

 

Another important element of the process is generating of as many good alternatives as possible, taking into consideration different points of view.

The last stage is informing about the choice and preparation for implementation. Nobody is authorised to force anyone to accept the decision. The only possible way to get the approval is the explanation of how and why the decision was made. The clear plan of implementation, information on its development, managing of potential changes is extremely helpful both for the decision-maker and for the decision-recipients.

 

Decision  - the mere decision making still is far from taking action in order to implement it. What you need is effective motivation and objective possibilities. Here the individual features of the decision-maker, like personality, sense of one's value. positive self-evaluation, knowledge and communication skills, play an important role. And how about a group? Functioning and understanding of a group is specific. The interpretation, no matter whether correct or not is often adapted by other individuals. Analysis of facts is exchanged for the generally accepted interpretation. It can be based on a suggestion articulated by one of the members, which is not created on realistic evaluation of facts. Teachers often deal with these problems when they face the situation when the students need to make a common decision. Searching the solution frequently may be time-consuming and very problematic as a potential source of conflict.

 

This attachment contain exercises that can be helpful both for adolescents and adults

Attachment 1 – Lesson scenarios

Nobody can afford making wrong decisions. Here is a short quiz that will help you to evaluate your present skills in decision making. It became accessible during the Erasmus+ course “Problem Solving & Decision Making”, as part of our project “Step By Step To Success”.

Attachment 2 - “How good is your decision making” quiz

Attachment 3 – Interpretation of the score to the above quiz