I found the Dörner chapters intriguing as he evaluated shortsightedness to perpetuate more complex issues in the long-term.  Particularly, I enjoyed reading about the Greenvale experiment.  Dörner drew a distinction between his good participants and bad participants based on individual’s approaches to the social issues in the hypothetical Greenvale.  He noted that good participants made more decisions, addressed more “why” questions rather than “what” questions, considered the potential effects a decision has on other sectors of the society,  and reflected on their own behavior.  All of these characteristics have larger implications for what kind of leader these good participants would make.

In my 102 course, we discussed how much leaders reflect on their actions and how willing individuals are to receive criticism as a key characteristic of an effective and trustworthy leader. In reading the Dörner chapters, I was reminded of this; Dörner considered the participants to be good if they were critical of their own actions and made sure to modify their approaches the next time.  Their work was focused on finding the root of the social issues and creating a reliable plan for the town, rather than impulsively making a decision and failing to take responsibility for the negative consequences afterwards.  In combination with the concluding pages, he poses that individuals in positions of high power need not rely only on intuition; they should embrace criticisms and one’s expertise should not inflate his or her esteem to believe they are immune to flaws – it is quite the opposite.