Earlier posts in this Ecology of Judgment series have argued that good judgment depends not only on having access to valid reasoning styles, but also on the conditions that enable them and the human capacities that keep them disciplined. The post on ‘Enabling and Supporting Reasoning‘ examined the practical scaffolds, and the enabling capacities and… Continue reading Factors shaping Reasoning Style Selection and Orchestration
Tag: deliberation
Calibrating Relationship, Judgment, and Action with Lucid Empathy
Lucid Empathy was defined in my post Empathy at the Core as “an integrative form of empathy that balances emotion, cognition, ethics, boundaries, and perspective in order to act with clarity under pressure”. The balancing capacity referred to here has several expressions. The reference to calibration in the title of this post invites us to… Continue reading Calibrating Relationship, Judgment, and Action with Lucid Empathy
Expanding Your Reasoning Repertoire
An earlier post, Your Reasoning Repertoire, introduced a Minimum Working Set of nine valid reasoning styles. That set was designed to give nonprofit leaders and boards a practical starting point. This post expands the view to the full repertoire of 21 valid reasoning styles. A board may have substantial expertise and goodwill, yet still lack… Continue reading Expanding Your Reasoning Repertoire
Empathic Windows: Calibrating Empathic Receptivity, Involvement, and Agency
Previous posts in this series on the ‘ecology of judgment‘ have characterised Lucid Empathy as the disciplined capacity to keep human consequence visible while regulating the force of empathic concern through evidence, role clarity, fairness, proportionality, systemic awareness, temporal perspective, and accountability. In empathy practice, it calibrates engagement; in deliberative reasoning, it calibrates judgment. This… Continue reading Empathic Windows: Calibrating Empathic Receptivity, Involvement, and Agency
Enabling and Supporting Reasoning
The first post in this extended series on the ‘Ecology of Judgment*’, Your Reasoning Repertoire, identified nine valid reasoning styles within the minimum working set normally required for effective deliberation. This post now turns to the enabling capacities, infrastructure, and scaffolds that support the use of those reasoning styles – acknowledging that effective reasoning does… Continue reading Enabling and Supporting Reasoning
Empathy at the Core
Lucid EmpathyIn my previous post, Your Reasoning Repertoire, I described Lucid Empathy as an essential balancing capacity whenever deliberation has human consequences. It appeared at the centre of the ring of 21 valid reasoning styles because it performs a distinctive role: it helps boards and leaders reason with people in view. This post expands on… Continue reading Empathy at the Core
Decision Doors
Every nonprofit — whether a charity, professional association, or community group — faces a constant flow of choices. Some are big and irreversible, others small and routine. But all of them involve ‘decision doors’: a threshold between what we know and what’s next. The Decision Doors framework helps us pause at that threshold. Instead of… Continue reading Decision Doors
Reflective (and Deliberative) Scaffolds: Turning Experience into Insight
Reflection and Deliberation as Twin Practices Reflection and deliberation are often treated as separate activities — one looking backward, the other forward. In reality, they are two halves of the same learning loop. Together, they form a disciplined rhythm of practice: Act → Reflect → Learn/Adjust → Deliberate → Act again. The newly published Reflective… Continue reading Reflective (and Deliberative) Scaffolds: Turning Experience into Insight
The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 2 (Praxis)
Praxis and reflective practice “Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realised, applied, or put into practice. “Praxis” may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realising, or practising ideas” (Wikipedia). As its title suggests, this post therefore seeks to assist nonprofit leaders to reflectively apply… Continue reading The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 2 (Praxis)
The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 1 (Theory)
How often have you witnessed a ‘debate’ in which various of the participants are on different wavelengths? One sees the issues as ‘black and white’, while another sees many ‘shades of gray’, and yet another sees layers of complexity in full colour. Even when directors share a common ‘moral lens’ though, their stakeholders don’t. Dealing… Continue reading The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 1 (Theory)