A632.6.3.RB_McNerneyLeighAnn

When I graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2007 I was full of dreams and aspirations of where my future would take me. It wasn’t until I tried finding a job with a Bachelors in Psychology did I realize I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of options. Every job description within the Psychology field required a Master or at least 3 years of experience in the area of expertise. I always anticipated getting my Masters; however the requirement to get into graduate school was to score at least a 450 or above on the Graduate Record Examinations Test (GRE) and that scared me into taking time off from school. I was never a good test taker so I failed myself without even trying. Looking back I realize I fell into this degree program on accident. I enrolled in my required core classes when I was a freshman; however taking my first Psychology class caught my attention like no other classes ever had. I actually “fit in” with my Professors and I was no longer considered weird, but more of unique in my ways of understanding things. Helping people is my passion.

Facing the dilemma of being unemployed my Dad offered me a position as the secretary at his company he was part owner of, and I reluctantly said “Yes!” Working as a secretary bored me to tears. I knew I was capable of more than the job required, but I was just grateful I had a job. Conveniently I worked with my Dad and his two partners were brothers that we had known all of my life. In fact one of the partner’s daughters is still my good friend. Deland is a very quant small town where everyone knows everyone’s business so working at the company was never dull. I began to fit in and really liked my job, especially the benefits of being able to take time off whenever I wanted. I got engaged about a year after working there so I was in the midst of planning my wedding which was very convenient as my Dad was just down the hall, so we were able to accomplish a lot together. The wedding came and we went on a 10 day honeymoon to Ireland and Paris. It was an amazing trip full of memories to last a life time. Upon my return I was ready to get back into the swing of things, but the day I returned was a day I will never forget.

That day, my dad and his partners were very tense and they abruptly called a meeting that morning to go over some things. I didn’t understand what was going on so I tried to stay quiet and get started on my daily routines. Around 10am I heard shouting and I was very nervous because I couldn’t understand what could be happening to cause them to yell at one another because that had never happened before. Next I heard my dad calling my name over and over so I ran into his office where they were, and that’s when he told me he was out and no longer going to be working with the company. I was dumbfounded. Before I could completely comprehend what was going on he was boxing his desk up. I didn’t know that two partners could kick another partner out and treat him like he was an employee being told to leave. I could not believe what was going on. I felt like I was having a horrible dream or being fooled, but then my dad got up and walked out the door and never came back.

Fear told me to go back and do my work because I recently purchased a house and my husband and I depended on my income to pay our bills. I was shaking and my eyes kept watering up, but I refused to let them see. They came back in and acted as if I wasn’t even there, talking around me about what they were going to need to do next. Before the day was over the locks were changed and they asked me to come talk to them before I left for the day. They promised they would treat me the same and if I wanted, I still had a job. I had no choice at that time because I needed the job. From then on everyday was a rollercoaster of emotions. I was in constant fear of losing my job and I was now promoted to manager of the office doing three people’s jobs. I was working long days with the same measly secretary pay I started at. When I asked for a raise they simply reminded me of my position and told me I made good money considering my job responsibilities. The way they treated me and talked to me as if I was not educated infuriated me, as I was the only one working with a college degree! Eventually I was able to find a job that would fit me and that was here at ERAU.

This overall experience taught me a lot about myself and hindsight has provided me with the errors of my ways. The conflict that led to this was my inability to believe in myself and my capabilities. Had I had the confidence to take the GRE I would have avoided what unfolded, and scares me to this day. Stewart Levine’s 10 Principles of New Thinking make up the attitude of resolution which is the foundation step in the overall resolution process. It is important to internalize these principles in order to change your ways of thinking to become a better, healthier and happier individual who does not carry burdens of past experiences. Had I internalized these principles long long ago I might have avoided some of the unnecessary stresses such as my experience working with my dad and his partners.

Principle 1 is believes in abundance. Had I believe in my abundance of knowledge and possibilities I might have not waited to go to graduate school. Principle 2 is creating a partnership. :At the beginning, when you are excited about the new venture or relationship, our traditional way of doing things asks you to focus on all the things that can go wrong” ( Levine, 2009) and that is exactly what I did to myself! I imagined failing the test to the point I failed it without even taking it. I protected myself form the idea of failing I wasted resources such as my great study habits, as I just graduated from UCF with a great GPA. I know now I had the necessary skills to study for the test and I know I would have past it, if I had  at least tried. Principle 3 is being creative. I was not creative in my decision making, instead of trusting myself and researching for GRE study groups I shot the idea down completely. I needed to change my ways of thinking. I had a “difficulty accepting that life is filled with surprises, conflict, disappointment, unmet expectations and change (Levine, 2009).

Principle 4 is fostering sustainable collaboration, which encourages taking steps to resolve the conflict before it gets worst. I believe this means in my situation I should have sought advice from someone such as my professor on my fears of taking the GRE so that they could have empowered me to move forward and take it. Principle 5 is becoming open by being vulnerable, honest and authentic. In my situation I should have allowed myself to take the test and fail it, so I could then deal with it and worked to better myself. I instead protected myself. Principle 6 is forming long-term collaborations which means thinking in long-term versus the here and now. Allowing me to fail would have been OK, but I didn’t allow it to actually be OK. Principle 7 is relying on feelings and intuition, which mine were confused at the time. My emotions were all over the place and my intuition was telling me to just try and take the test, but I let my emotions get the best of me. Next time I will trust my intuition because logic alone is not a reliable factor when resolving conflicts when you factor in emotions. Principle 8 is disclosing information and feelings. When I faced the conflict of deciding to take the test I stopped talking and thinking about it because it was easier than dealing with it. However, had I disclosed my fears with a professor from my previous university I might have resolved my conflict.

Principle 9 is learning throughout the resolution process. My resolution is finally attending graduate school here at ERAU in a degree program I feel fits me entirely; The Science of Leadership. Deciding to enroll last October has provided me with bittersweet feelings of relief to finally be accomplishing my goal in obtaining a masters degree. Although I am not going to have a degree in Mental Health Counseling I have learned more about myself and what I truly want out of life within this degree program. The final principle is becoming responsible. This principle is all about taking charge of your life being held accountable. Enrolling in my first class at 6 months pregnant was not by any means an easy task as I delivered in the middle of my second class. I finished my class with a little help from my very supportive Leadership professors which in return empowered me to continue to push forward. I have to admit I am not sorry I waited to enroll in graduate school as everything happens for a reason. I do however regret lacking the belief in myself and my strengths of accomplishing anything I put my mind to. I have learned who I am and where I am going and now with these 10 principles I believe I will be able to resolve future situations that might have prohibited me from moving forward.

Levine, S. (2009 ). Getting to resolution: Turning conflict into resolution. (2nd edition). Williston, VT: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

A632.5.5.RB_McNerneyLeighAnn

We all have protective values that influence our decision-making; I feel the most protected values are displayed in what most people would consider a “natural reaction”.  I know personally the decisions I make that affect my daughter Olivia, come with virtually no thought or consideration for alternatives they are strictly a reaction to the situation. But as I step back and think about reactions I have had they are based off of my protective values which revolve around spending as much time as possible with her because I know that if I am the one with her then I feel secure because I will do everything possible to keep her from harms way. After reviewing the characteristics of protective values I thought of different situations that I have been faced with where my decisions were directly related to my protected values towards my daughter.

Even when it comes to spending alone time with my husband on a date night I have found myself making a decision that was independent of the consequences. I have always been a big fan of basketball and attending the Orlando Magic games, and since I was pregnant I hadn’t been to a game. Back in November at the beginning of basketball season my husband was offered tickets to the Magic versus the Knicks for free and the tickets were 5 rows off the floor. Typically in a situation like this I would have cancelled all other plans to go, the problem I had though was it was a Friday, I had worked all day long and Olivia hadn’t seen me and the game started at 8 which is when we put her in the tub then get her to bed. I quickly declined the tickets even knowing Olivia was now 10 months old, I hadn’t been on a date since we had her and that the tickets would be given to someone else if my husband had not accepted them. My rationale to him was that I had to much homework and the timing wasn’t good, but turned out that I didn’t do any homework that night instead we went for a walk and played with Olivia until it was bed time.

I can also associate this situation to the characteristic that protected values are insensitive to quantity. Even being that the game was on a Friday night and I had all weekend to spend with Olivia, I still couldn’t sacrifice the few hours that evening to spend with her to go do something that I had loved doing for year’s prior. The reaction was just natural, if I sacrificed my time then I would not be able to get the time back and worst of all I would have to think the entire time whether or not whoever was watching her was giving her the same attention I would to ensure she wasn’t going to get hurt.

The final characteristic that solidifies my protected value is the fact that my decisions are applied to acts. I do recognize that Olivia at the time was 10 months old and she would not remember me leaving her on a Friday night to spend time with her dad, and the chance of her getting hurt while being watched by a grandparent was minimal. However, “natural reaction” of declining the tickets show that even the relevancy of the situation did not matter, I was not going because my most protected value is not sacrificing any time with Olivia and ensuring her safety by being with her at every given opportunity.

A62.4.5.RB_McNerneyLeighAnn

Deception is tricky because it can be used in a number of ways. People can deceive intentionally by lying about a product’s reliability or simply only tell half the truth or omitting information when recommending something to a consumer. People can deceive by bluffing and they can deceive by misinterpreting information. People deceive for different reasons such as greed, to compete, for social reasons and for reasons unknown. If the deceiver will benefit from the deception then they will typically deceive in order to obtain their incentives. I feel a lot has to do with the mood of the deceiver and the same for whose being deceived. Typically when I am dealing with car salesmen I am already on guard because I know they are in a competition with other sales men and they will do anything they have to in order to get their incentive, which is money.  Going in I have a defense mentality and they can pick up on it through my responses and they tend to become pushier with me because I am being so aloof. However when I usually go shopping at the mall I tend to have a great experience because I am open and friendly with the sales associates and that behavior is reciprocated. I know they typically don’t receive any incentives for sales and they just want to help me. These experiences are usually pleasant and I almost always end up purchasing products, thus everyone is satisfied.

Recently I have been deceived by my cable company At&t Uverse. When we signed up to receive their service we were promised a number of things such as better customer service overall, better channels and better prices. The first 6 months after switching were fantastic. We recommended them to all of our neighbors, friends and family members. However after the 6 months ended we noticed our bill jumped by about $100. I was stunned and very confused. I actually thought they messed our bill up so I called to complain. Once I waited 30 minutes on hold after going through a prompt five different times I was finally connected with a lady that barely spoke English. She explained to me that we were sold a promotional package and she was sorry we were never made aware of that. If we wanted to cancel our service it was going to be an additional $200 dollars on top of our bill. I as immediately irate I could not believe a company as large as At&t was deceiving their customers like this in order to increase sales in a new area. It appeared that we were the first in the area to be able to connect with the company and they installed a line especially for us. After going back and forth between her and the manager I was finally offered a resolution of the same promotional package for the rest of the year and they discounted our bill.

Flash forward 6 months we are still with At&t however our contract is terminating this time. After calling around to the other companies it would be more beneficial for my family to remain with At&t but only if we continue to have this discounted rate. Knowing we were deceived by them we never developed a trusting relationship. We look at them as deceivers and actually have the same mentality calling this time around. I get on the phone with a representative and explain to them that I am now highly dissatisfied with my service and I am cancelling since my contract is ending. I told them I had already contact the local competitor and planned on switching that week. Although I was bluffing I noticed I was treated much differently. I negotiated with the lady and she presented us with a full year for the same price we were already paying on the current promotional rate except now she through in a couple movie channels as an incentive to stay. I was of course satisfied and signed the contract for another year but I knew I had lied to get what I wanted. The original communication between the company and I left me with a bad experience and taught me to get what I wanted I was going to have to become a deceiver. I was positively reinforced with the same price for my cable for the year plus I was rewarded extra movie channels I was originally receiving. They reinforced by bad behavior.

Going forward I will become a better investigator when negotiating. I will establish trust, shift the frame, ask direct questions, listen carefully, pay attention to nonverbal cues and keep records and get things in writing. In the very beginning of the negotiation I will look at my partner directly in the eye and make small talk about something personal like family or something I am familiar they are interested in. I will then shift the frame of my point of view and try to be open to theirs. Seeing things from others frame of minds will help me be more flexible and willing to develop a balanced agreement. In my doing this it will allow them to reciprocate this type of behavior. During the negotiation I will continue to look at them directly and I will also ask them direct questions. Asking direct questions allows engagement to occur and people usually feel more connected to the other. Once I have asked questions I will open my body language up to listen and I will be attentive in hearing what they have e to say. Paying attention to their use of vocabulary, verbal cues, non verbal cues and visual cues will allow me to perceive if they are trying to deceive me. Once we have come to a conclusion and an agreement has been reached I will be sure to document it in writing as this will guarantee that they cannot manipulate or change anything.

Hoch, S. J., & Kunreuther, H. C. (2005). Wharton on making decisions. (1st edition.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

A632.3.4.RB_McNerneyLeighAnn

In life we go around thinking, perceiving and understanding people, places and things completely differently then all of the people around us; we see them through our frames. Frames to me are like points of view and in order to have a clear point of view you need to be open and willing to accept the unexpected and always questioning why? In Wharton on Making Decisions the definition of a frame is a stable, coherent cognitive structure that organizes and simplifies the complex reality that a manager operates in. A lot of frames are developed from experiences, these experiences and or memories develop into mental representations and we use them to distinguish, understand, judge, choose and act. In my lifetime I have been a victim of frame blindness which is the inability to recognize my frame of mind. There are three different traps that can result in frame blindness and they are the illusion of completeness, overconfidence and frame conflict.

The illusion of completeness is where someone believes they are fully aware and has the complete picture; however they are actually unaware of the shadows that are lurking. My husband is a golf course superintendent and he loves his job. When we first got together I was aware of his responsibilities and felt comfortable going forward into our relationship. When we got married he was working 12 days straight with two days off and then 12 days straight again. This type of schedule was tough on us through our first year of marriage. Then he took a position in Orlando at another higher end club that allowed him to be off two days every weekend, but the hours were longer throughout the week. I was overjoyed as we just found out we were expecting our first child. I pictured how our next year would be with a baby and I was ecstatic! It was not until I had the baby and he returned back to work that I realized how much harder life was really going to be. Sean works 50 plus hours not including the three and half hours he spends commuting back and forth. He wakes up at 3:30am everyday and sometimes earlier not to return home until 6:30, 7 or later every night. I do not have to be at work until 8am and I am off every day by 5pm so I am solely responsible to take care of our baby from the time she wakes up, gets dropped off and picked back up to feeding her dinner alone. It’s tough and makes me realize I was not fully aware of the toll his career choice would have on every one of us. We all make sacrifices for success and I realize now that my frame of mind had blinders. I imagined how our lives would be but that picture was not complete as I am experiencing it now.

Overconfidence is the second frame blindness and it is where you overestimate what you know, which can result in a tendency to overvalue one’s own frame and undervalue another person’s frame. I have experienced this type of blindness in my current organization. Working as a Financial Aid Counselor can be a very intense career. There are always lessons to be learned and new regulations to follow so it is a constant challenge to stay up-to-date with what is going on. I started in January 2011 with no experience in financial aid; however after an extensive training process I was fully confident I was 100% ready. I was warned by my fellow counselors how rough the beginning of a new academic year can be, but I sailed through it with flying colors. I felt like I could conquer anything until that next January. January is the beginning of a new semester within the same academic year and enrollment numbers are usually similar to the beginning of the academic year with the exception of new FAFSAs starting to roll in for the following academic year. When my emails, phone calls, tickets, sparks and reports started to pile up I was overwhelmed and freaking out. I had no idea that I could receive over a 100 emails in one day! I was blind and unaware that I was so comfortable in my current frame of mind that I lacked the much needed preparation for the beginning of the January term. It was absolute chaos. Had I listened to my coworkers and developed a plan of action I would have been better prepared and less stressed. The lesson only needed to be taught once. The following year I changed my frame of mind. I emailed all of my campuses prior and gave them a plan of action of how I would assess the student’s accounts and I also started preparing students who were going to be completing their FAFSAs with what they should do. Having a standard response helped me save time and remain in control of my region.

The last frame to avoid is frame conflict. Frame conflict can occur when two or more different confident frames go head to head causing hostility, accusations and questions to formulate. In my opinion this is probably the most difficult frame blindness to avoid for me. I am a passionate person and I tend to believe strongly in my frame or point of view. If I have made a decision it is very tough for me to be open to another person’s frame of mind. I will honestly take their frame into consideration but deep down I know I have my blinders up. An example of my experience with frame conflict was between my sister and I about something I am extremely passionate about and that is breastfeeding. I am a firm believe that mothers should breastfeed their children if they are capable of it. My sister however does not believe in it as strongly as I do because she believes that it’s too hard. One day we were discussing the issue and she started preaching to me that formula was as good if not better than a mother’s milk. I of course became very tense, as I have done a lot of research as well as consulted with different mothers and doctors about the benefits of mother’s milk over formula. Our debate turned hostile and we started to scream at one another. I knew I was right and she thought the same way about her beliefs. After we cooled down a bit we finally were able to discuss the issue at hand like sisters and I tried to hear her out. Her frame of mind was that formula offered the mother freedom, the child nutrients and it was a guarantee the baby would have a meal no matter what because you could always go and buy a can a of formula at the store. After hearing her reasoning I agreed that formula made life easier however that necessity wasn’t as important to me as it was for her. We have sense stopped talking about this topic and I now can respect her opinion as she made some valid points. My inability to even hear her out and acknowledge her frame of mind in the beginning of our conversation created an all out war.

In the future after recognizing the challenges and consequences that can occur with frame blindness I am going to take a second, third and fourth look at my frame of mind more often. Next time I feel close minded or confused I am going to try and identify what frame I am in and then I will work to change it. If I can ask myself why I am looking at it this way? What caused me to feel or see it this way? What are my assumptions? Once I have these answers I can start to change my frame and reorganize my thoughts. Framing is much like critical thinking. In order to be good at it you must continue to do it. Looking at the world with tunnel vision is like seeing in only black and white, once you take the blinders off you start to see the colors and the beauty.

Hoch, S. J., & Kunreuther, H. C. (2005). Wharton on making decisions. (1st edition.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.