| Couples |
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 FIVE-to-Decide™Making decisions as a couple is best thought of as a partnership. As a partner, you have your own values and preferences that are different than your husband’s, wife’s or significant other’s. Problems, risks, and opportunities arise as life happens. Wouldn’t you and your significant other greatly benefit from a decision making approach that truly enables you to consider significantly different choices while addressing your different values and preferences in the face of your problems, risks, and opportunities? Both having a say in important decisions is a key contributor to your mutual happiness and sense of self worth. The FIVE-to-Decide Conversation is a step-by-step process that enables couples to teach themselves how to make high quality decisions. The series of steps or what we call dialogues that make up the FIVE-to-Decide Conversation can be counted off on one hand: (1) Focus; (2) Information; (3) Value; (4) Evaluate; and, (5) Decide. Make sure you visit DEI Press and check out our latest publication, “Decision Empowerment: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Good Decision Makers” for a detailed discussion of each individual dialogue listed on this website and how to conduct each in practice. Also, don’t forget to check our downloads page for the latest in useful information. In addition, consider taking our decision behavior diagnostic (link) to learn about which behaviors you may have that keep you and others from making good decisions. Focus DialogueYou need to teach yourselves how to consider different perspectives on what is the decision to be made before agreeing on the specific decision to focus on. That is, you (collectively) need to decide on what the right decision is. Once the decision is clearly defined, identify the distinctly and significantly different alternatives you feel should be considered (i.e., the choices to involve) in the subsequent dialogues that will lead to the decision. Creating a list of compelling choices is the ultimate goal of this dialogue. Getting the decision focus right will help ensure you address the right issues, solve the right problems, and consider all of the best possibilities. Information DialogueYou and your significant other need to identify and understand the issues, concerns, and questions that make the decision hard to make. Answering the question, “why is the decision easy or hard to make?” will uncover the information critical to making the decision and will illuminate the issues of value that need to be addressed (later, in the Value Dialogue). Ultimately, issues must be classified as either: (1) an assumption; (2) an uncertainty; or, (3) value-related. Value DialogueYou and your significant other need to identify whose (yours, your significant other’s, someone else’s) values and preferences should be accounted for in making the decision and what types of value are important to those individuals and therefore should be considered in making the decision. Value Types
Evaluate DialogueThe essence of this dialogue is to evaluate each of the alternatives and understand why the highest scoring alternative is preferred to all other alternatives- the “value story”. Ultimately, this dialogue must answer the question, “Is there one alternative that is clearly the best choice?” Decide DialogueAfter establishing a mutual understanding and agreement on the “value story” of the decision, you and your significant other need to determine whether you (collectively) are: (1) ready to make the decision; (2) need to reconsider the decision; or, (3) need to wait for additional information before making the decision. Decisions You May Want to Make Using FIVE-to-Decide:
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