Cubbs Week 2 Individual Assignment

In our reading this week, Tubbs wrote (2012): “Small group interaction must include decision-making techniques, discussions, an outlet for quiet members, time, and values to meet the needs of all different types of decision makers” (p. 285). My greatest take away is the reminder that we are all different and we should respect and embrace those differences. I am not sure how many times I have to cross this point for it to finally sink in my head.
Just like we all have different behavioral types, we also use different techniques to make decisions. In our Myers-Briggs preferences, the third letter explains how we decide and come to conclusions: Thinking or Feeling. Hirsh and Kummerow (2016) describe Thinking preferences as people who “base their decisions and conclusions on logic, with accuracy and objective truth the primary goals” (p. 1) and Feeling

preferences and people who “base their decisions and conclusions on personal and social values, with understanding and harmony the primary goals” (p. 1). I found it interesting that even though our group has a variety of MBTI preferences, and we each use our own logic and preferences to provide input into the group discussions, we have individually come to similar conclusions.
The previous point is reflected in this week’s group assignment.

As I look back at our thread, I can start to see the way our member’s brains unfold to solve problems and how it relates back to our preferences. For example, I am a Feelings preference and wish to start the problem-solving process by brainstorming. I prefer to throw out all the ideas in my head and then start sorting through them; so that is what I naturally did. As a Feelings preference, most of my ideas involved uniting the community to solve the issue. Not everyone else followed the same pattern; some members of our group took their time and posted one or two ideas they felt were the most impactful; many thoughts were much more logical than my own ideas. Our different problem-solving processes were wrong nor were the ideas and solutions that stemmed from those processes; we are all different, but together, we successfully worked well as a team and came up with some wonderful ideas to solve the issue at hand. I really enjoy being part of our group, we are always supportive of each other’s ideas and are able to build off of one

another.
Besides the fact that we problem solve differently, there was one very small idea that will make a huge impact on my future creative problem-solving skills: asking why five times. Tubbs (2012) states “this technique derives from the Japanese and is designed to get to a deeper level of understanding of both the problem and its possible solution” (p. 286). I am very stubborn and usually stick to a conclusion once it is made. It sounds so simple, yet, asking why five times forces me to dig deeper and really analyze if I’m really solving the issue or if I am just putting a band-aid over it.