Influencing Skills, Decision Making, Reasoning - Research Paper Example

Through an influential skill, someone will do some work on behalf of another and in a more intellectual and committed manner without applying any forceful authority. The use of influencing skill is usually aimed at making people say “Yes” and get what they want in the process. Therefore, the same skill is used to know a person as well as the situation that makes him formulate the “Yes” proposal. In other words, the technique is the sure way of knowing what a person wants, as well as eradicating the situations of forceful imposition of ideas to people.

Additionally, it forms the basis of creating trust with clients in an attempt to influence them (McRae, 1998). The technique of influential skill encompasses entry, diagnosis, intervention, contracting, and transition. The most influential technique is the Entry: building trust with the client after building trust with the two; then other influential skills can easily be applied as the need may demand. However, the general application of the influential skills criterion is not good because the client has no freedom of mind since the interviewer’s aim is to influence and buy his trust as well as directing him towards his (interviewer’s) desired response (McRae, 1998). . More often, the error in judgment may result from some thinking that is considered fallacious as it is defined by cognitive bias.

Cognitive bias defines a pattern in judgment that leads to deviation in judgment in certain circumstances that might lead to perceptual situations, illogical interpretation, inaccurate judgment, or irrationality (Zeidler, 2005). The pattern of deviation usually depicts comparison standards against the normative expectation, which leads to cognitive bias. Notably, cognitive biases are biases contributed by an individual’s state of mind. Some of these biases are due to making fast decisions; this applies when the fast decisions are regarded of high value, and these are what are termed as heuristics.

Other errors in judgment do develop due to lack of appropriate mental mechanisms. However, there are mechanisms that may be employed to evade erroneous judgments including evading framing, fundamental attribute errors, self-serving bias, and belief bias among others (Hoag, 2008). Framing is the use of too-narrowing description and approach of situations in decision making: this problem can be evaded when one uses extensive information to pass judgment or in decision making. Belief bias is a situation where a person bases his evaluation or judgment on logical strength of the argument as opposed to reasoning within the argument (Hoag, 2008).

In such a situation, one should usually apply the reasons within the argument, as opposed to the strength of the argument. Despite the numerous disadvantages of errors in decision making, such errors have certain significance. Ideally, numerous biases demonstrate that people usually fail to