Positive Psychology at Work:

Decision-Making

In the same way that organizations often treat communication as an exercise in semantics, so they treat decision-making as an exercise in logic. Just as we have found that emotion plays a huge part in communication patterns and consequently performance, so shall we find that emotion plays a huge part in decision-making and consequently in performance. Before we explore this, let's remind ourselves of the dominant model of good decision-making. Damasio (2005) summarized the prevalent model as ‘the supposedly clear process of deriving logical consequences from assumed premises, the business of making reliable inferences, which, unencumbered by passion, allow us to choose the best possible option, leading to the best possible outcome, given the worst possible problem’ (p. 167). Decision-making is thus characterized as essentially problem-solving and so is seen as an exercise in logic.

Supplement 4.3 Giving Corrective Feedback in a Positive and Supportive Way

• Describe what happened, or what behaviour needs to change.
• Describe the consequences, or the reaction of the person, to the event or behaviour.
• Suggest alternative ways of behaving.
• Keep ideas about personality, or a dispute between alternative versions of what happened, out of the discussion.
• Be sincere in your desire to help.
• Stay problem rather than person focused.
• Be specific about the behaviour under discussion.
• Respect the other person's perspective. Don't get into arguments about whose perspective is right. ...