Solution 1

Better decision-making skills. Explore the processes by which individuals make decisions. Learn about effective decision making and experience making decisions by consensus. Use Decision Style Profile and The Acquisition.

Decision Style Profile and The Acquisition

• session is 3 to 3.5 hours
• requires pre-work for scoring Decision Style Profile
• works best with groups of 15 or more
• requires sufficient space for break-out groups to work separately, but not in isolation.

Here's the Discovery

• Examine with participants the barriers to making effective decisions.
• Help participants discover the critical issues to consider in reaching an effective decision.
• Reveal to participants the preferences individuals have for including and excluding others in making decisions
• Explore the implications of participants exercising their own personal preferences for inclusion of others in making decisions.
• Explore with participants a measure of their own effectiveness in decision making.
• Enable participants to experience first-hand the benefits and challenges of consensus decision making and when it is necessary to build support for implementation.

This coordinated design combines an assessment and a simulation.

Use Decision Style Profile in advance to have each participant choose what he or she believes is the appropriate Decision Style for each of ten cases posed. The report created from each participant’s responses scores them with regard to the appropriate inclusion of others in the decision process and consideration of the five critical Decision Factors. With the personal and confidential reports distributed to all participants, facilitate the group’s consideration of each case and collectively discuss the issues which affected their choices of decision styles. Help participants gain insights about the effectiveness of their decision-making practices. Explore the different ways of looking at issues taking into consideration other participant’s perspectives in support of their decision style choices.

After discussing Decision Style Profile, facilitate participation in the simulation The Acquisition. Challenge each participant to make individual decisions on a course of action he or she would recommend for his or her company to grow through acquisition. Divide the participants into groups of five (the ideal size) and have each group discuss the same challenge with the requirement that they come to a consensus on a recommended course of action. After reconvening all the groups, ask each group to share its recommendation and the group’s experience in coming to that collective decision. By comparing their individual and collective decisions to those of experts, the participants in each group discover the advantages and challenges of consensus decision making. The debrief of The Acquisition is enriched by the opportunity to include in the dialogue the language and concepts revealed through use of Decision Style Profile.

More Information

For more specific information about each product, see Decision Style Profile and The Acquisition.