MSLD632 - Module 7 - Collaborative Decision Making - Madeline Campbell

It is often easy to create a process to handle conflict. However, one must seek outside perspectives to often see what is going well versus what is occurring poorly. Individuals need to learn how to excel in collaborative decision-making. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to have collaboration without some form of conflict that arises.  I learned numerous beneficial lessons when collaborating with a team throughout my senior year of my undergraduate degree as we made countless decisions in an effort to complete a mock-campaign on our campus. The process our team was seeking was to operate smoothly together throughout our capstone project, to work hard and receive an A in the class in order to learn how to effectively create and run a marketing campaign. We were all extremely excited for this class and tapped into all the resources our school offered to make our campaign the best it could be.

We unfortunately had an individual in the team who did not do their share and who did not care to participate. This was a shock and caused stress and more work in the long run for myself and one other individual out of the 6 of us.  Little states, “We know collaboration is hard and takes time — to build relationships, to clear-up misunderstandings, to listen and to get things done. Past experience can hold teams back…” (2014). The setbacks this caused made us approach the individual regarding their lack of effort and in return made them recoil even more. From here, frustration and additional setbacks arose. Due to the unprofessional fashion in which we carried the conflict, stories were not told, heard or taken into account for the resolution (Little, 2014). As a team, we did not seek stakeholders perspectives or input to assist in the resolution thin this conflict. We first and foremost assessed the situation a bit differently since it was a school project and we thought we needed to hold all responsibility and find a solution on our own. Levine suggests to not jump to conclusions quickly and describes how, “a preliminary vision about the resolution will usually come up after everyone has a chance to tell their own story” (2009, p. 141). Levine has nine questions that assist in active listening from outside stakeholders to set a stage for an initial vision for a group. Specific questions that would have greatly assisted us to achieve our objectives would have been to ask the following four questions out of Levine’s nine questions:

1.       Does the preliminary vision fit everyone’s view of the outcome?

2.        Does the preliminary vision take care of all specific concerns in the situation?

3.       What do others say about your preliminary vision’s viability?

4.       What or who is missing?

If our team had the wisdom and foresight to ask such leading questions for the flourishment and health of our team and project, the project would have run much more smoothly. Levine’s questions would have helped to create an environment for each individual to be heard and create a unified vision.

The first way I will implement this learning experience to make a better decision in the future is to first simply approach collaborative decision making in an entirely different way. This is my first time being exposed to such research that dissects conflict and decision-making. Therefore, I will approach any future group project with hearing from the entire group regarding their vision for the decision we are attempting to make. The second way I will implement what I learned from my experience is to have collaborative decision making flourish instead of dissolve due to conflict would be to implement stakeholders opinions of the situation. As it relates to my previously described example, I would have gained other team’s perspectives on the individual in our group that was having a challenging time with the course work. This would have provided us with an outsider’s perspective and would have given us a professional perspective on the situation. Since it was our project and our grade, I believe our emotions were tied very close to this individual’s lack of work and negatively affected how we handled the situation. The last way in which my personal situation on collaborative decision-making will have me make better decision in the future would be implementing Levine’s third question: “What needs correcting or adjusting? In what ways is your vision off?” (2009, p. 133).  From what Levine relays in his text, conducting small “check-ups” during the collaborating decision making will greatly contribute to less conflict and a smoother end result. This also would aid in each individual within the group feeling sought out, heard and cared for throughout the project.

There are much more than three key takeaways that I learned from my collaborative decision-making. My situation could have been held very differently, with much more thought and care. Levine has very beneficial insight and steps to assist in collaborative decision-making. In the future, I will implement all of Levine’s nine questions before working with a team and can expect much better results than previously experienced.

References

Deutsch, R. (2014, February 4). How We Can Make Collaboration Work. Retrieved from https://www.di.net/articles/how-we-can-make-collaboration-work/.

Levine, S. (2009). Getting to resolution: turning conflict into collaboration. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.