Problem Solving and Decision Making in Diverse Cultures - Essay Example

Reflection 4C: Collaborative Consultant in Diverse Cultures with Skills in Problem Solving and Decision Making Problem solving and decision making are essential aspects of a managers duties in any organization. Within healthcare, this can mean that problems and decisions can appear at any time; they can also appear suddenly and without warning. Problems can happen during an average day for a variety of reasons. In fact, problems can be a part of what a manager deals with routinely. One way to make sure that problems are not the central focus of an organization is to build effective teams. These teams must be granted the ability to resolve problems at their level and the must make sure team members are skilled at problem solving. Problems can begin with misunderstandings that begin with miscommunications. Clear written and oral communication is essential to making sure that problems are minimized. Problem solving often begins with the managers ability to lead. Characteristics of Strategic Leadership Byrd (1987 as cited in Schulz and Johnson, 1990) gives five characteristics of a strategic manager. These characteristics are: 1. Anticipatory skills -- the leader must be able to anticipate the future needs of an organization because they understand that the world is constantly changing. They also understand that their organizations and their employees are also constantly changing. 2. Vision skills -- strategic managers understand how to get people to take action and how to envision the future. 3. Value-congruence skills --managers help employees understand the values and beliefs of the organization as well as how their own values and beliefs fit into the organization. 4. Empowerment skills -- the strategic leader is able to unleash human potential by empowering employees and sharing power. By sharing power they are able to motivate employees to do their best for the organization. 5. Self-understanding skills -- strategic managers take time to reflect and develop their own skills. They develop frameworks that help them understand themselves and what they can expect from others. These skills relate to problem solving and decision making because they allow the manager to delegate duties to others so that they are not the only ones making crucial decisions. Sometimes decisions need to be made that cannot wait for the highest authority. By empowering others to also make decisions, the organization can be more effective. Managers do not automatically understand how to make decisions or resolve problems so they must be trained to do so. Managing people can be difficult if a manager has little experience in this area. Making decisions will impact the organization on every level and not making decisions can also have an impact. Managers must help understand how employee evaluations also impact the organization in both hiring and firing. The Role of Communication in Decision Making and Problem Solving Communication becomes essential for clearly relaying goals and objectives and for understanding the needs of employees. A challenge with communication is that it is not always understood. Often leaders assume that the communication that is given, either in writing or in conversation, is understood by the receiver; this is not always the case. In order to have an effective team, all communication must be clear and understood by both the sender and receiver (Schulz and Johnson, 1990). Most conversations are positive but there are times when conversations can be difficult. As an example, an employee can be doing well in an organization but have areas where they need improvement. Managers must be able to communicate the needs of the organization and be able to motivate the individual to improve. At other times, conversations can leave the manager and/or the employee feeling vulnerable and out of control. Patterson, Grenny and Switler (2002) give advice on how to make crucial conversations effective when the stakes are high. They define crucial conversations as interactions that happen on a daily basis that "could have a high impact on the quality of [ones] life" (p. 1-2). There is no doubt that crucial conversations are difficult to approach and to get through. Human nature can dictate that these conversations should be avoided or ignored and often they are handled poorly. Patterson et al. state that in organizations, these conversations must be addressed and the place to start is within the managers understanding of themselves. They call this strategy, "start with the heart." In other words, when confronting a crucial conversation, the manager must have a clear goal in mind of what they want to accomplish, and work towards that goal. Patterson et al. acknowledge that these conversations can be risky so managers must make the environment safe for all employees to give input in them. Miller and Gorman (1994) point out that problems are most often people problems and they take a manager who understands people to resolve the problems. They propose that there are five strategies that high performance people use to help them in problem solving. These five strategies are: 1. Call upon a deep understanding of human nature--they understand people at the deepest level and know that human nature means they will make mistakes. They see people problems as opportunities to "learn more about people while applying what they already know to the situation" (p. 258). 2. Observe people accurately and objectively--they have the ability to read people accurately because they are discriminating observers. This means that they can look at people objectively without bias, and without their emotions getting in the way. 3. Interpret their observations in a realistic, objective manner--their interpretations give them insight into the situation but they see the bigger picture. Their insights are based in the real world and are free of "subjective coloring" (p. 258). 4. Envision future implications and possibilities usefully -- they reflect on what they have learned about people in the situation and about the future possibilities for the people involved. 5. Develop strategies for changing behavior--they are able to take action quickly by seeing the needs of people and finding ways to address these needs as they are "appropriate" to the needs of the business. They are also able to change their own behavior as necessary and use "guidance, modeling, and reinforcement" (p. 258) to help change other peoples behavior. These problem solving skills are often developed after years of working with people and sorting out the problems that can occur any time people come together. Decision making is a large part of a leaders job and they may be the last person in a chain of decision making in many situations. Schulz and Johnson (1990) suggest that there are four roles that a manager takes in decision making: 1) the entrepreneur role in which the manager constantly looks for and receives information about changes in the organization so they can initiate projects to deal with them; 2) the disturbance handler role in which the manager takes charge when there is a major crisis or disturbance in the organization and creates ways to deal with the problems that come because of it; 3) the resource allocator role in which the leader decides who gets specific projects inside the organization, establishes priorities and authorizes the important decisions; and 4) the negotiator role in which the leader takes charge with difficult issues arise and when they enter into "crucial negotiations with other parties" (p. 111). They are present in these negotiations because they have the information needed for them. These four roles are important to all leaders and they must be able to discern when different decision making skills are needed. Cultural Differences and Decision Making Working in an environment that is diverse will provide times when there may be conflicts. The manager must understand the underlying cause of these conflicts which may not be the presenting problem. Scarborough (1998) points out several differences between cultures that can impact an organization. These have to do with the way different cultures understand the world around them. As an example, there are some cultures that see masculinity as the most important aspect within their culture. They may perceive that men are more important than women in the organization. These cultures are considered "doing cultures" and are "highly male dominated." (p. 258). For managers in the United States, the "being" culture is difficult because the United States is a "doing" culture. The doing culture lives for their work while being people work to live. This means that being people are more interested in their family life, having a satisfying home life and living for their own comfort. These people will be less likely to work long hours or take their work home. This and other factors must be taken into consideration when looking at all employees and their needs. Cultural issues are brought to the table by many factors. Values come with the culture and not all values are the same. Values can create behaviors that come into the workplace that can result in conflict (Hopkins, 2009). The manager who works with a diverse group must understand the differences in culture. As an example, when sending information, the manager must understand that their way of perceiving information may not be the same way that their employees perceive it. In this example, they must identify their own ways of receiving information, consider the preferences in the workplace, and then design the information in a way that everyone can understand it (Hopkins, 2009). In working with the various cultures inside the organizational culture, the manager must understand that they need to think clearly and carefully about where their ethics lie in each situation in order to make appropriate decisions. When they find themselves involved in a conflict, they have to use their ability to think clearly without letting emotions take over. Theories that Fuel My Approach The Scientific Model states that employees will do exactly what they are told to do and it supports a very formal structure (Chima, 2005). Under this model, employees are dictated to in terms of the changes and only the manager has a say in what is done. I have worked for organizations with this kind of model and found them to be demeaning. They showed me that this was not the model that I wanted to use. The Human Relations Model was created from the Hawthorne studies and created several tenets that helped set this model in place. As an example, social norms create a level of productivity in this model and employees act as members of a group rather than as individuals (Chima, 2005). This model is closer to the one that I use but it still does not portray the way in which I want to lead. I see that the cognitive theories are important because they give an understanding of how employee behavior affects an organization and I feel these are important to my leadership. I feel that leaders gain an understanding of the big picture through watching employees and this gives them a way to see employees at a deeper level. The cognitive theories also provide descriptions of motivation, self-direction, decision making, and problem solving. This allows both leaders and employees to think in more positive frameworks. With the cognitive approach, I understand that my employees have different learning style sand they will also have a variety of different problem solving styles. As mentioned many times before, Maslows Hierarchy of Needs is essential when looking at problem solving because an employee who does not have their basic needs met may not be able to function well on the job. On the job, they must have their needs met also. As an example, if an employee enjoys some level of autonomy and they have a supervisor that wants to know every move they make, the employee will not like working within that environment. Their need for autonomy can be met by letting them make simple decisions and by helping them devise a plan for promotion. There are many ways that a manager can help the employee get their needs met on a regular basis if they understand how to work well with them. ] My Personal Approach to Problem Solving and Decision Making I believe that every organization needs the ability to solve problems in a way that helps the organization move forward. The best way to resolve problems is to gain an understanding of what the problems are and what can be done to resolve them. This information should come from not only the managers, but from other employees who work within each unit. Managers should have a series of tools that they can use that help them understand how to work with problems in large and in small groups. I use several tools to assist me in trouble shooting problems in my organization. I use employee surveys to garner employee satisfaction. These are valuable because they describe employee satisfaction in real time. They allow me to find problems that may be brewing and deliver strategies to resolve them before they fully start. We also incorporate patient surveys to gain an understanding of how we are meeting patient needs. We send these out frequently to our patients to keep the flow of feedback to us on a regular basis. As I look at my leadership and how I approach problem solving and decision making, I know that I rely on the Bible to help me when I am dealing with uncertainty, when there is a challenge or when there is a risk we need to take but I am not sure about taking it. I realize that the Bible gives the spiritual guidance that I need. I also talk with other managers to gain their feedback and stress that "we are all in this together." I believe this to be true and because I include the other managers in my process, they are less likely to ignore changes or to be upset when decisions are made; they may not like them, but they know they have had input into them. I can see that I take many things from my personal leadership style in my way of problem solving. I am prone to supervise through some of the educational models and my decision making process works within the Constructionist model. This means to me that I am always teaching as I lead and my decision making and problem solving styles reflect my teaching. Healthcare is a people business and it is important to make sure that decisions reflect this fact. This means to me that if a decision is about people, I need to think ahead of time, I need to think about how the decision will impact the individual, the patients and the organization as a whole. We have a variety of different people working in our facilities and I have take all people into consideration when I am working on decisions. I also like to think that I do well with diversity. I attempt to understand a variety of issues that can occur when different cultures clash. I attempt to always be fair with everyone. I also attend classes and workshops that help me understand cultures as well as some community events. References Chima, F.O. (2005). Integrating traditional organizational behavior theories and issues for employee assistance practice. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health. 21 (2) p. 59-77. Retrieved October 12, 2010 from EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier. (AN: 2241652). Hopkins, B. (2009). Cultural differences and improving performance: How values and beliefs influence organizational performance. VT: Gower Miller, P., & Gorman, T. (1996). Big league business thinking. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMilllan, R., & Switzler, A. (2002). Crucial conversations. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Scarborough, J. (1998). The origins of cultural differences and their impact on management. Westport, CN: Quorum Books. Schulz, R. & Johnson, A. (1990). Management of hospitals and health services. (3rd ed.). St. Louis, MO: C.V. Mosby Company. Read More