DECISION MAKER MOVES: Thinking beyond the pros & cons list
Lesson Background
Your personal values are the things that really matter to you – the things you believe are fundamentally important in how you live. We have curated a list of ways to help your students think about their personal values here.
Your choices should be guided by your values. This exercise is designed to give students practice using their values to generate a range of creative options. (It doesn’t include evaluating trade-offs or choosing among the options.)
This lesson takes 20-30 minutes, but can be repeated with different decision questions for continued practice.
Lesson Framework
State the decision clearly
Try to avoid framing it as ‘whether or not’ to do something. Frame the decision as an open
ended question.
Identify what matters for this decision
Start by taking a few minutes to reflect on your values (try out some of our suggested values activities in advance!) and identify the ones you think are most relevant for this decision. Try to re-state broad values in a way that’s more specific to this decision – what matters to you in this decision?
Generate options
For each of the things that matter, write down some things you could do to address or support it; these become your options for this decision. You might find you can think of options that address two or more of the things that matter at the same time, and that’s fine; be sure to also consider each thing that matters individually – you’ll get more options that way!
Check if you’ve thought of more things that matter
Sometimes generating options makes you think of more things that are important to you and you want to consider. If so, add them to your list and take some time to consider options for addressing these new things that matter.
Get creative
Can you think of new and better ideas by combining options you’ve already generated? How can you tweak the options you’ve already thought of so they address more of the things that matter?
Reflect
Consider the questions below to guide your reflection:
- Did thinking about your values help you come up with more options?
- Are some options good for some values, but not for others?
- Do you think it will be easy or difficult to choose a best option? Why?