I am no stranger to making mistakes through ill-advised and poorly researched decision making. I try to be reflective and learn from these mistakes by examining from a bird's eye view what pitfalls in decision making I fell into. I was a new manager position in the last few years and had to deal with an escalation between two members of the team over a weekend when I was not working. I was made aware of the situation by one of the parties and spoke with them about it, but I was in the middle of a personal situation and did not think nor make the time to consult with the other party, I would let things go until the start of the next week. I think the poor decision not to acknowledge and potentially deal with the situation was due to a lack of experience and my intuition turned out to be detrimental to the situation. I reacted reflexively and did not follow a Recognition-Primed Decision Model, I did not think to seek more information and reassess the situation before making and implementing a decision. This created some distrust from everyone on my team and required time and effort to make up. This, ultimately, was not super harmful to the team and I was able to learn some good lessons from the whole ordeal. When dealing with escalations, people want not only to be heard, but feel heard. Conflict is unavoidable and there are many ways to deal with it, but avoidance is not amazingly effective technique.

 

• What kind of plan would you suggest your peer put in place to prevent bad decisions in the future? Share the reasons for your suggestions.