Crafty Listening     

Decision Making

HOW DO THE FOLLOWING ISSUES INFLUENCE OUR DECISION MAKING DISCUSSIONS?

·         Inter-personal issues; Personal values/beliefs Race; Culture; Religion.

·         Inter-racial/cultural matching; same race/gender approval and matching, Sibling placements; Contact issues.

Each of these issues is complex, profound and significant!

Too complex and profound to pretend that they could all be covered in a single day, or do more than merely touch on them in a few hours. The systemic and dynamic process of communicating and relating has significantly more impact on the quality of debate and the wisdom of our decision making than individual beliefs, personal programming or cultural scripting.

Each individual’s capacity for clear and critical thinking will also play its part, along with time pressure, information overload, external demands and each person’s mood. Without a mutually agreed philosophy to which each person has expressed a personal commitment, egos might prevail when there is contention or disagreement about decisions that clash with personal beliefs, values, bias and prejudice.

People whose ego is not robust are often driven by the emotional, physiological and psychological pressures that ensue from low self-esteem or lack of Emotional Intelligence [EI]. Key elements of EI include self-awareness, self-management, self-motivation, social-awareness and relationship-management (in that order). And those elements directly impact on thoughts and discussions about:

·         Inter-personal issues

·         Personal values/beliefs

·         Race

·         Culture

·         Religion

·         Class

If people are unwilling to accept the validity of other people’s perspectives, or lack the will and the skill to explore different beliefs and values, discussions can turn into arguments, arguments into rows, and rows into all-out war – or long term sulking!

Consider how even just two people - child/adult; manager/managed; husband/wife; child/adult; social worker/panel member – can conduct themselves, covertly or overtly, in such a way that neither feels valued, respected or relevant.

Then consider how that will influence discussions on e.g.

·         Inter-racial/cultural matching

·         Same race/gender approval and matching

·         Sibling placements