Trade-Offs and Letting Go: Dealing with the impact of our choices

Session 5: YL6 Leadership ClassJanuary 20, 2010

Objectives of Session 5

•Provide a space for the students to review and integrate their learning and insights from the past sessions and connect these with session 5

•Provide the students with important information that could enable them to deal with the effects of their trade-offs in decision-making

•Enable the students to articulate their trade-offs and the effects of these given the inputs provided in session 5

Structure of Session 1. Review of important concepts and insights from previous

sessions (1 hour)▫ Concept mapping

2. Introduction to Session 5 (1 hour)▫ Workshop: Identifying trade-offs of an important decision

3. Input 1: What are Trade-Offs (45 mins)▫ Plenary discussion (application): What could help you say “no”

so you could completely say “yes”?4. Input 2: Letting Go of what you said “No” to and fully

accepting what you said “Yes” to (45 mins)▫ Triad Sharing: What were letting go moments in your major

decision?5. Final Words: Assignment and Journal

▫ Topics and dates

References• The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. Barry

Schwartz (also see http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

• Making Life Decisions According to the Ignatian Method of Discernment. Hans Zollner

• Positive Psychology. Synder and Lopez• Organizational Change. Barbara Senior• Blink. Malcolm Gladwell• Motivating People. Harvard Business School

Press

Review of Important Concepts and Insights: Concept Mapping• Review and connect the different concepts below. Create a

visual concept map that can clearly show the relationship of the concepts with each other and how they are all related to Decision-Making▫Discernment▫Hungers and Yearnings▫Motivations▫Personality Traits: Attachments and Self

Regulation▫Psycho-social contexts▫Values▫Personality Preferences▫Clinical Decision-Making

Review of Important Concepts and Insights: Concept Mapping•Process:

▫45 min. Discussion and Concept mapping ▫Gallery Viewing, Big Session 10 mins

Post your map outside, corridor walls•Total time for this session: 1 hour•Get your materials: Easel sheets, crayons,

pens

Introduction to Session 5• Group Sharing: Identifying trade-offs of a major

decision made (current and future trade-offs)• Choose a major decision that you have made in the

recent past:• Major choice: with short-term and long term

implications, e.g., not getting into a serious relationship while studying medical school; saying “no” to a business opportunity

• Situation presented several or a number of options to choose from

• OR you can consider a current situation where you are in a process of making an important choice

Introduction to Session 5• Group Sharing: Identifying trade-offs of a major

decision made (current and future trade-offs)▫Process Questions:

In choosing your major decision, what are you saying NO to? Concrete trade-offs in your current situation Important and probable trade-offs in the future

What made it difficult for you to say “No” to other options and their benefits?

What helped you in saying “No” to other options? What mental and emotional processes did you go

through while choosing which to say No to, and when you finally said No to other options and their benefits

Introduction to Session 5 Plenary post sharing:

What were recurring and unique insights about saying “No”?

What are we learning about making choices, especially with regard Trade-Offs?

Input 1: What are trade-offs•Simple definition:

The desirable things you said NO to

when you made a final choice.

Input 1: What are trade-offsKey points:

▫Current dilemma of the information and highly globalized world: Presence of too many options, choices that can immobilize one from making any choice at all How does this affect you? This situation has plusses and minuses

Input 1: What are trade-offs▫Disadvantage of many options to choose

from: Stress: delaying necessary decisions, actions Not making a choice: stagnation, depression,

misery Not making an active choice by letting

external factors make the choices for you: dependence, blaming, no ownership

Constant state of “floating” or confusion: absence of an anchor amidst all “busy-ness” of life

Other disadvantages if you are a leader? (encourage participation)

Input 1: What are trade-offs▫Advantages of having options

Increase sense of control and feeling of empowerment: I have choices

Sharpening analysis and discernment competencies Clarifying and re-affirming values: what is truly

important for me Re-evaluating the meaning of “sacrifice”: options

enable us to see what we have to let go and to sacrifice

Character-building: acceptance of one’s limits – humility; transcendence; psycho-emotional strength from letting go

Input 1: What are trade-offs▫Why is it difficult to say no to the other benefits of

other options? Instant gratification Need to have more: power, info., benefits Fear (if you are ENFP, a 2, 6 or 7 or similar profile)

Of losing out on opportunities Of letting go what “what could be” Of what you are saying yes to (e.g., responsibilities) Of displeasing those who will be affected by the ‘No”

Need to control consequences of all possibilities (a perfect J or a 1 or 8)

Too absorbed in the thinking or cogitating process: the “What if’s” (INTJ’s, 4 or 5)

•What are difficult moments in dealing with trade-offs▫Making the best choice from undesirable

options (best of all evils) Think of examples of this in your life and in

our society? How can this happen in the life of a doctor?

▫Making a choice between good options (defining moments) Have you experienced this?

Plenary Discussion• What could help you say “No” so you could completely say “Yes”?

Plenary DiscussionWhen we cannot say NO, when we do not

want to say NO, we cannot also fully say YES to our choices.

What will be the consequences of this situation, especially as you live out your decision?

“The point where your deepest happiness meets the world’s greatest hunger”

Frederick BuechnerOur calls to leadership are...

Where does your passion & happiness meet other people’s desires & hungers?

Your deepesthappiness, passion &desire

Context’s hunger/needyou resonatewith

Call toLeadership

Self Context

TalentNatural gifts & strengths

Passion

Those thatnaturallyenergize &motivate you

Need

What the worldneeds enough toreward you for

Conscience

Inner voice that assures you what is rightand prompts you to do it

VOICE

Your uniquepersonal significance

Steven CoveryThe 8th Habit

“The best inward sign of vocation is deep gladness…if the work is mine to do, it will make me glad over the long haul, despite the difficult days.

“Courage to Teach”, Parker Palmer

If a work does not gladden me in these ways, I need to consider laying it down. When I devote myself to something that does not flow from my identity, that is not integral to my nature, I am most likely deepening the world’s hunger rather than helping to alleviate it.”

“Courage to Teach”, Parker Palmer

•We are not what we do. We are who we are. The rigors of trying to be faithful involves being faithful to one's gifts, faithful to other's reality, faithful to the larger need in which we are all embedded, faithful to the possibilities inherent in our common life.

▫Palmer

Some more Tips:•Consciously limit your choices to those

relevant to your life goals, values

“We need to be free to choose; we need to be free from endless choosing.”

Limiting choices does not mean limiting or losing freedom. The trick is to seek balance; to know when enough thinking and info getting is enough.

Some more Tips:•Know the difference between

inconveniences and sacrifices: which choice will bring immediate, temporary inconveniences, and which will require a degree of sacrifice that can take a longer time▫ Not all “no’s” bring heart wrenching

sacrifices, some can bring inconveniences: realistic (versus exaggerated, dramatic) appreciation of consequences

▫Find the value behind the sacrifices: Why am I doing this? What value is it serving?

Some more Tips:•Assess how long-term gains of the “yes”

can outweigh or compensate for the short-term inconveniences and sacrifices: temporal perspective▫Enables you to delay gratification▫Gives meaning to your current sacrifices ▫Help deal with inconveniences

•Reverse: Assess what you will lose in the long run if you let go of the “yes” now

Some more Tips:•Find time to grieve over what you have

given up and will give up because you said NO

•Constantly celebrate the promise/s of your “yes”: what you will gain, the values you will affirm, the impact it will create in your life and in the lives affected by your “yes”

End•15 minute break

Input 2: Letting Go

What do you mean when you say “let go”? What do you go through in this process?

Input 2: Letting Go

•Letting go -

saying goodbye, entering a grieving process, dealing with psycho-emotional issues related to “death” or loss, giving up, surrendering

Giving way to something else, something new, allowing the transcendent to take over (having faith), trusting something positive will happen after

Input 2: Letting Go• Process of letting go in dealing with trade-offs:

▫Necessity to make a choice▫Seek alternatives, options▫Assessing consequences and trade-offs

Use of different competencies and strengths Rational mode: information, evidences, facts Intuitive: imagination, noticing inner movements and

deeper reactions, sensing signs, gut feel Affective: naming feelings and emotions, discerning

patterns of emotional reactions associated with options

Identify negotiables and non-negotiables in temporal perspective: now, future

Input 2: Letting Go•Process of letting go in dealing with

trade-offs:▫“Mulling over” period sets in

A choice is beginning to shape up Doubts may surface; need for calm and

patience Test the waters, further consultations,

prayers Going into your inner life: silencing, seeking

grace Seeking reactions of significant people Growing inner alignment or connection with

a particular choice▫Movement toward a choice

Increasing certainty, leading to a quiet disposition

Input 2: Letting Go• Process of letting go in dealing with trade-offs:

▫Grieving over the trade-offs and the what if’s Acknowledging what will be lost: naming it/them Recognizing the psycho-emotional reactions

associated with loss Pain can be felt and expressed in different ways Being mindful of body/physical reactions: they tell the

truth Using imagination as a way to say “goodbye” (Ignatian

imaginative journey) Patience over the period of doubt, bargaining,

depression and anger as a way of dealing with the psycho-emotional pain

Paying tribute to the past, to what you have given up

Input 2: Letting Go•Process of letting go in dealing with

trade-offs:▫Accepting and witnessing the choice

Anticipating the possibilities and responsibilities

Declaring the choice publicly Being enthused by the gains and promises

▫Acting on the choice Developing concrete plans Building, learning new competencies and

networks▫Sustaining and nourishing the choice

Celebrations and renewals

Input 2: Letting Go•Triad Sharing

▫What were letting go moments in your major decision? What did you go through (or are going

through) in letting go of other plusses and benefits of other options?

What helped you in letting go? What were not helpful?

•Plenary▫What were touching/moving points in your

sharing session?▫How did letting go affect your final choice?

Final Points• Application Paper:

▫ Case Analysis: House, Season 3, Episode 21: "Family”▫ Process Questions:

Driven by the clinical situation, what is the dilemma of the parents and the medical team (analyze individually: Drs. House, Wilson and Foreman)?

What decisions must be made by the parents, Drs. House, Wilson and Foreman? What were the options and what were the trade-offs for each

option? Whose approach did you resonate with? House, Wilson or Foreman?

Why? If you were the attending physician, what would be your approach

in dealing with the parents? How would you help them in their decision making? What are your justifications for your approach?

If you were the parents, how would you make the decision? Please justify your approach as parents.

▫ Date of Submission: November 26, 2010

Final Points•Journal

▫ Review how you have made major choices in the last 5 years. Analyze your patterns in decision making, especially in dealing with trade-offs and in letting go. How did your hungers and yearnings manifest in the

way you deal with your trade-offs and in letting go? How did your personality profile, your strengths and

values influence the way you deal with trade-offs and letting go?

What areas can you improve on in dealing with trade-offs and letting go?

▫ Date of submission: January 14, 2011

Final PointsNext Sessions:Magis & Transcendence: January 21Integration (orals): March 11