The Decision-Making Matrix Helps Us Focus on Rationality

A great deal of the CPI Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Training focuses on “rationality.” For instance, we acknowledge that a person who is demonstrating “defensive” behaviors is “beginning to lose rationality.” At the same time, we are going to respond more positively to a defensive person if we, as staff members, have “rationally detached.” We are going to more positively influence behavior if we can control our rationality, and that is something that we have the power to do!

While Unit 6 helps us recognize “unproductive” responses to defensive and risk behaviors, including “overreacting” and “responding inappropriately,” Unit 7 helps us to think rationally about crisis situations so as to avoid irrational (and unproductive) responses like these. Unit 7 highlights the Decision-Making Matrix, a mental model that places “severity” on a y-axis and “likelihood” on an x-axis, providing an objective way for us to measure risk. And more importantly, the matrix offers us an objective way to consider how to mitigate risk.

CPI Global Professional Manager Lesley Rynders believes that the Matrix helps staff to put risk in perspective. “Sometimes people say that a person’s risk behavior is ‘the worst thing ever,’ but was it really?” Lesley asked. She went on to explain that sometimes our emotional perspective of an incident causes us to believe the incident was more risky than it actually may have been. To help people with this, she has participants write a risk behavior on a Post-It note, and then rank it as “low,” “medium,” or “high” risk by placing it on poster paper. However, when she does this, she asks the participants to base their decision only on emotion, or only on the emotion(s) they were experiencing at the time. “Usually we tend to overreact or underreact,” Lesley said.

After these initial “risk” rankings, the unit has instructors introduce the Decision-Making Matrix and then asks participants to recategorize their initial rankings with new, rational thought centered on severity and likelihood. Once we can do this, we can rank all sorts of things objectively and rationally. For instance, like we did with this initially discussed risk behavior, we can decide not only how to rank risk behavior after one has occurred, but how to mitigate the risk so that it does not happen again. Similarly, we can also mitigate risk for behaviors that have never occurred, preventatively, so we don’t have to be anxious or fearful of them occurring later.

One final way that the Decision-Making Matrix can be used is within the crisis itself. In my classes, I try to model this by role-playing a scenario that could unfold right there, within our class. What if, for instance, one of the participants stood up and threatened me. How might I respond? Would I ask the other participants to leave the room, removing the audience? Would I assume a Supportive Stance? Would I use objects around me to shield myself from a potential threat? Would I use non-verbal or paraverbal behavior to attempt to deescalate this behavior? The answers to all of these questions are probably a resounding “yes!” The point of doing this is to show that within a crisis, I do not need to panic or lose my rationality. Focusing on what I can control to mitigate the likelihood that I am going to be hurt or the severity if I am allows me to stay rational.

When you are teaching this unit, I hope you find it to be an opportunity to help your participants with their rationality before, during, or after future crisis events. If they can leave your training understanding this Matrix, all of the other coursework you have shown them will be more prominently internalized as “tools” they have access to, allowing them to avoid irrationality, fear, and anxiety.