Decision Making and Judgement

The result of a poor decision.

Making a decision and using proper judgement is part of any profession, but in the outdoor industry the results of a poor decision can be the difference of life or death, depending on the activity, of course. Actively making decisions and thinking about what you are doing when you do something can be very beneficial for practicing decision making, and getting better at it all the time. As I have developed my outdoor skills and knowledge, I have developed enough of a background to have decent judgement in activities that I know well, and love to learn other skills that enhance my judgement. Using all resources available to you in a situation where a decision must also be made is important. For example, as a lifeguard, we are taught to deal with bizarre scenarios that could happen in a pool. This training seemed rather unimportant to me, until the day the bleachers collapsed at the pool at home. I quickly had to make a decision of who to try and help first. The proper person to help in the situation is the person with the most life threatening injury. Using my judgement, I decided the person who most needed my help was the gentleman who had a head injury as a result of the collapse. This is one example of using good judgement in a high risk scenario, and shows that it is necessary to be able to make quick decisions, and make them correctly.

Above is a picture of one of the children I was responsible for over the summer. The picture of him after crashing his bike is my personal artifact for decision making and judgement. I feel that this picture represents judgement and decision making well because he did not have the previous experience to judge whether or not he could drop of the rocks on the right side of the picture. As a result of this low risk decision, he went over the handlebars and crashed.