Perceptions and Decision Making

This week I felt perception and decision making had a major impact on our group. This week we held an information table in the walkway between Lubar Hall and the Union. As a group we all spent time sharing information with the students. The two perceptions that stood out to me during this event were how students and faculty as well as our team members reacted to our information booth.

My perception was that some people were annoyed, others interested, some confused, while many didn't react at all. I used these observations to make a decision to change our information pitch. We shared more information by hitting key points they could hear while walking through the hallway without a lot of elaboration. The key points shared were,"we are holding a book drive, children's books are needed, drop boxes in Lubar lecture halls through next week, to put in first responders cars." This seemed to clear up the confusion if they only heard a little of what was going on. We also noticed some people would reach for the fliers if they were interested in what were saying, while uninterested people would pull out their phone or put their hands in their pockets. Our decision was to offer the flier and let them take it from us so we were not forcing fliers into the hands of unwilling participants. If they were interested they grabbed the offered flier and if not we let them walk by versus our earlier attempts to get fliers to everyone. This approach seemed to clear up the annoyance. We did not want to have a negative reaction so this really helped.
Overall, we had more people interested than we expected and we felt the information session was productive. The second observation I noticed was because I was the loudest and more outgoing I ended up dominating the table when I was with the group. I used these perceptions to make a decision to step away and let the others take over because I wanted the whole group to experience the recruiting aspect of the project. When I returned to our table I was pleased to see everyone was participating and more comfortable sharing information. I enjoyed watching the others in the group grow during this experience and know it will help them in the future in their careers!