Nowadays, on the Internet, in newspapers, books and magazines, we can find the latest trends in management and leadership. Many authors focus their articles discussing the key elements of being a good manager. Throughout my experience as a student in the module "Thinking about thinking" at the MBA, I learned a new dimension of being a leader. Now, I feel I have acquired improved decision making skills and balanced management approaches by being aware of the four factors that affect how we think: social identity, emotions, unconscious and certainty.How my social identity has biased my decisionsIn 2009, I was hired by Cardenas Lawyers (CL) as a Marketing and Communications Manager. The F ...view middle of the document...
These two jobs appeared appropriate for my new team since I planned to develop communication channels similar to those I used in the consulting firm. Throughout this process of selection and recruitment of personnel, my social identity as a person with education and experience in marketing influenced the data that I selected. I was confident that my years of experience gave me the authority to choose the "right people" in order to get the intended results. I also believed that marketing for both companies would have similar requirements. Understanding that my position was new in the company, my other deduction was that I had the authority to determine the best or most suitable for the new Department.While the recruitment process progressed, I started the development of a marketing plan. I based my plan on some of the models I learned in my Masters program, and I incorporated elements that I considered useful from my previous experience. Furthermore, I had private meetings with the managers of the different areas of service in order to obtain relevant information to my plan. My priority was to understand the key elements of each department within the company. After collecting these data, I included new ideas in the draft of the plan. Once again, based on the model of "The ladder of inference," I quickly selected the information that was more valuable for me. I remembered that I included more strategies based on my previous job, assuming that my knowledge would bring more credibility to the plan, however, I omitted making a self-assessment exercise - or "The Reflexive Loop" according to "The ladder of inference" model. I talked again with the managers and validated my proposal with them. Subsequent to this, I decided to present my plan directly to the CEO of the company. I could not answer many of the questions he made because of a gap in the information I presented.Similarly, analyzing my performance from the perspective of Roger Martin (2009), I based my process of thought on a traditional model, in which I tried to simplify the complexity of my task. My responsibility was clear: I had to develop a marketing plan for the company. My logic was to separate the task into small, not integrated processes. In this way, I decided to make individual meetings with each area manager, rather than one large presentation. It would be more complex trying to bring together the needs of the firm as "a whole." In this way, I finished developing marketing strategies for each department. I believe a brainstorming exercise with all the managers would have given me more substantive input to my strategic planning. As Roger Martin (1999) explains, "integrative thinkers understand that they are engaged in a creative process that avoids easy, pat, or formulaic answers."Another consequence of the influence of my social identity as a person with education in marketing was the confidence I felt when I interacted with my new team regarding advertising and promotion issu...
