WIN Without Competing! With Dr. Arlene

Both campaigns are vigorously fighting to win. The undecided voters could determine the election. Why? Neither candidate has closed the deal yet. The horserace continues. November 4th is almost here and the voters must decide who will be our next president.

Capturing the undecided voters could significantly impact the outcome of the election. Here’s the untold story. To evaluate a candidate’s ideas, the voter must first perform five intellectual behaviors, from the simplest to the most complex, in sequence: recall information (knowledge), understand a concept (comprehension), use a concept in a new situation (application), compare and contrast ideas (analysis), combine concepts (synthesis). To make judgments (evaluation) our minds must go through all of these five steps first, according to educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom. He created Bloom’s Taxonomy, which has been the standard classification system for intellectual behavior since the 1950’s.

Let’s apply Bloom’s Taxonomy to capture the undecided voters. They are intellectually stuck somewhere between steps one and four. The pundits and the media focus on step four, analysis. They compare and contrast the candidates which adds to the voters’ confusion. The candidates compare and contrast each other, creating more confusion. Moreover, the candidates’ messages are inconsistent, contain factual errors and misleading statements.

One candidate talks about reading every line of the Federal budget if elected. That’s impossible. How is he going to read more than 50,000 pages? As for capital gains taxes on small business, there are none. How can they be eliminated? Both have decided that they will balance the budget. One candidate maintains he can do this in four years. I’m sure that the other candidate will agree that he will do this, too. Balancing the budget in four years is mission impossible, unless extreme measures are taken.

The media, pundits, and the candidates do not present the information that voters need to synthesize a cohesive picture of what each candidate will achieve. Instead they have created confusion rather than harmony which the voters need to make their decisions. It’s time to end voter confusion.

Here’s what each candidate must do to capture more votes. Focus on doable achievements, not plans or solutions which frequently don’t work out successfully. Think about the morgues that are filled with the dead who had highly successful surgeries but they immediately died. If you’re scratching your head wondering why, the answer is simple. We make the erroneous assumption that if the process – what we do – looks good, that the outcome – what we achieve – will automatically be successful. What we do does not necessarily lead to the desired outcomes. Pumping billions into the economy is a solution. The question is what will it achieve.

Both candidates must stop focusing on each other seeking to illuminate their similarities and differences. If the voters try to compare and contrast both candidates, they may discover that the mentality of “best” doesn’t work. If you compare and contrast two rotten apples, and pick one, you have selected the “best” which is still a rotten apple. The voters need to evaluate each candidate’s projected achievements and determine the extent to which it matches their expectations. We would all agree that stabilizing the economy would be a laudable achievement for our next president.

Finally, each candidate needs to focus totally on himself. Each candidate should adopt the philosophy of “compete with yourself, never against others and you will ‘win without competing’ by raising the bar higher and higher.” Play your own game should be the mantra of each candidate. The prize is the presidency.

Copyright © 2008 by Arlene R. Barro, PhD. All Rights Reserved.

To contact Dr. Arlene Barro please call her at 310-441-5305 or email drbarro@winwithoutcompeting.com.

Arlene R. Barro, PhD is a UCLA-trained educator, educational psychologist, and a nationally recognized search consultant and career coach. Dr. Barro is the president and CEO of LA-based barro global search, inc. She is the creator of the Right Fit Method and the author of WIN Without Competing! published by Capital Books, Inc. in the United States and by Macmillan Ltd. in India.