Monthly Archives: January 2018

From your own experience, describe a type of group decision making that you participated in.

I usually choose professional examples to illustrate on this blog site.  However, I often wonder if my behavioral style in work situations is different than my style at home.  Therefore, I’d like to share an experience involving a decision making process that involved my sisters and parents a few years ago.

I entered into an investment opportunity with my family several years ago when we decided to purchase a home at the beach.  Altogether, there were 4 families that entered into this decision- my husband and I, my 2 sisters and their spouses, and my mother and father.  We had been going on vacations to the beach for many years, so this was something that we were very interested in.

The decisions that were required were extremely critical for us to make as a group.  Whereas I would have thought that this would be easier to do with my family vs. work team, I underestimated the amount of order that was really required.  Big decisions (i.e. how to handle expense) to small decisions (i.e. what color to paint the living room) were required in short order.  All of the “investors” had their own ideas for how to handle these things, and we experienced a level of conflict that we never had before.

I decided that we needed to start functioning very similar to teams that I have been on at work.  We needed to treat this as a formal business arrangement.  I called a meeting with all of the “investors”.  I started the meeting by establishing ground rules and norms. These were the “rules” that would outline how we would function as a team.  I then put together a process where we would set quarterly meetings.  Agendas would be created and meeting notes would be taken.  Decisions that were needed went through a voting process.   We even determined how we would handle dissention and conflict if they occurred.

We’ve had our beach property for 15 years.  Although we started off a bit rocky, we have been able to establish a strong process to manage this property as a high-functioning team.

Describe your communication style. 

I would say that my communication style has evolved over time – mostly due to my job (professionally) and having kids (personally).

After watching Dr. Boseman’s video on assertive communication styles, it occurred to me that while my natural style may be more aggressive, most people would describe it as assertive- mainly because I am mindful of NOT being aggressive.  Growing up in a large family, and as the middle child, I would feel the need to speak louder to be heard and also input my opinions / suggestions / thoughts about a subject- even if it wasn’t needed.  Over time, I realize that it’s equally important to listen as it is to be heard.  I would start to monitor people’s reactions (verbal and non-verbal) to me during conversations in order to see if they felt like they were being “overpowered” by me.  I would tend to want to jump in and say something even before someone would be finished with their sentence.  Obviously, being interrupted isn’t enjoyable.  So, I’ve become very mindful of this and many times will stop myself in the moment if I feel the tendency to interrupt someone’s thoughts.

I worked several years as a trainer in our HR department and this role was great in helping me refine my listening skills.  In a training environment, it would be critical to allow others to share their thoughts / suggestions.  Through questions vs. statements, I would help them to discover new ways of thinking about things.  I’ve started to adapt this at home too with my children.  Although I still frequently “teach” them about things, I think it’s very important to help them come to their own conclusions by asking them questions and allowing them to thinking differently about certain things.

The one thing that I would like to work on even more is on reflective listening in order to clarify what another person is saying.  I have found that this skill allows the other person to really feel heard if they see me replaying what they’ve said.  The feeling that this elicits is validation, which I think is critical to building strong relationships.

Hello!  My name is Karyn Troxell and this is my 6th course in pursuit of my Masters in OD&C.  From a professional standpoint, I am the Director of Corporate Human Resources and Organizational Effectiveness for Penske Truck Leasing and I’ve been with Penske for 13 years.  All of my professional experience has been in the HR field, mostly in an HR Generalist / Manager capacity.  Two years ago, I was promoted into my current role.  The OE portion of my job is the part that most directly aligns with O.D, so it’s been great timing as I’ve been going through these courses.  I’ve been able to see a lot of opportunities to apply some of the tools from past courses, and I’m looking forward to learning more about Process Consultation to see if I can apply some of that philosophy as well.  I’m very lucky to work with some people who are very steeped in OD, so it’s been a great learning experience all-around.  One of my colleagues who has had significant experience as an OD consultant has always said that Edgar Schein is one of her favorite’s in the OD space, so I’ve been particularly interested in this course and in reading his book.

From a personal standpoint, I live outside of Reading, PA with my husband, Jeremy and our 2 children, Ella (10) and Jeremy, Jr. (6).  We are on the move a lot!  We tend to spend a lot of time at the beach in the Summer and at my husband’s hunting cabin in the woods in the Fall / Winter.  Lately, we have found ourselves immersed in kids’ sports.  Needless to say, we ‘divide and conquer’ quite a bit!  Finding time for school hasn’t been easiest, and typically most of my work is done after the kids are in bed.  Don’t be surprised if you see blog posts and discussion submissions late at night from me!

Good luck to everyone this semester!  I’m looking forward to learning from all of you!

Karyn