Tuesday, January 15, 2008
democracy and dialogue
For the final blog in the lecture democracy and dialogue, the concept that I found most meaningful was deliberative democracy because once again it had to deal with being a great listener and supportive amongst your co-workers. Deliberative democracy gives people a chance to say whats on their mind or give feedback to how they feel about a certain topic or discussion that they make as a team. It gives people a chance to voice their opinions and participate in the discussions. It's about making decisions as a group and not by what one person decides. It's about being open to considerate to other peoples thoughts or suggestions. Deliberative democracy is a great concept period. How it relates to my experiences at my particular job is that when we have a staff meeting, and our supervisors have a particular problem that they address, we are able to provide feedback to help determine if that would work well or not, or how to fix the problem. To me, I find it important because if the supervisors make rash decisions without being open to what we have to say, it might not work well to our customers; considering the fact that myself and others are the ones dealing with the customers in the first place. The supervisors are mainly in their offices.
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6 comments:
I too blogged on this web lecture and selected deliberative democracy as the highlight. I chose the "jury" example the teacher cited as a good model of how deliberative democracy might be exercised. But I agree with Goofy when she talks about how people have a chance to give feedback, voice opinions, and participate in group discussions as a team. The decisions are made not by individuals, but as groups who have listened to and considered others points of views.
Where I work, that is not the norm. It runs on a fairly classical management style and that's OK with me because I really don't care about advancing there. I want to learn and take my skills elsewhere where I will feel like a more valued employee.
I enjoyed reading your perspective of the importance of deliberative democracy. In my opinion, it gives the most to the people to want to say what is on their minds and also how it made them feel. I believe that most people today (whether at work or not) say what is on their minds but don't mention how it makes them feel which is the most important part of any kind of interaction. Reading your post and web lecture made me think about how we bottle our emotions up until we get to a point and just break down. I have done this many times and have just let all my frustrations out which is good. At the same time if deliberative democracy is not present which is in case talking about how it makes you feel than future conflict can arise. This concept made me re think that if you have a problem do two things let it known and let others know how it make you feel and improvement shall occur.
Goofy, I agree 100% with your feelings about deliberative democracy. One of the most important parts of learning is receiving feedback and through deliberative democracy, one can do that. There are times when people feel embarassed to express their views for fear of rejection or ridicule and this type of fear can not be accepted in organizations who wish to thrive.
As long as groups embrace this idea and truly value input from all of their team members, then success is inevitable.
i have to agree the latter part of your entry here. i have worked for a company that does not really encourage participation in meetings unless it is from persons in management. this does not help the "associates" feel as though they are part of a team. i have given suggestions to supervisors (in this particular job) who have turned right around and sold it as their own to their superior. it is a unhealthy practice that i can only see coming back and biting people.
This is exactly how my manager went about do things when I worked in retail. Feedback is so important. Though, if the feedback is not taken into account and is disreguarded that is even worse. Sometimes this did happen where I worked and it is extremely frustrating.
Where I work now, there are over 60 employees and are feedback is consisdered greatly. Just recently 20 of us were asked to help interview a "maybe future supervisor" and give our input about her and ask her questions and give feedback to our manager about whether we think she should be hired or not. This kind of interaction is so important to me,and I am sure to everyone else who was in the room with me. One of the best parts about it is, our manager listened to what we had to say afterwards and is taking all of our perspectives and concerns into account. Without our feedback or her feedback, we wouldn't know what they other was thinking, and how can a conclusion be made otherwise?
I agree that it is a great concept in theory but in practice I feel that it's much harder to achieve. Reaching an outcome that all can support is extremely hard to do in such a diverse world. Teaching a group to become open to different ideas is a task in itself.Not too people just listen without hearing what they plan to say next. Also as humans I feel we all have our own biases according to our individual cultures and personalities.
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