1. The Road to Good Governance Day 3: Skills to command good governance
Aruba Symposium September 2017
Saxion University of Applied Sciences
Willeke Slingerland

2. Governance and Integrity System
Paper ≠ Reality
Execution is poor
Dominated by political parties and politicians
People in it: unaware, ignorant or indifferent
Skills are needed to develop a moral compass.

3. Skills to develop a moral compass
Learned:
At home
In school
At the job

4. Bildung Bildung ≠ Knowledge Develop moral judgment
Develop critical thinking
Needed to be done from very early age and requires practice and engaging with others.

5. Skill 1: recognize your own biases
Pause and take time to reflect
Recognize your own cognitive bias
Quick and intuitive reasoning is ok in emergency situations, but otherwise > logical and rational reasoning

6. Skill 2: Be aware of decisive moments
Time pressure, stress and feeling insecure, limit our capacity to think critically
Prepare and make a list
or pause or ask for extra time
Recognize the
importance of the event
and its context

7. Skill 3: Distinguish facts from assumptions
Our brain is full of assumptions
What is real proof which supports your reasoning and what are assumptions?
Look for hard evidence

8. Skill 4: Understanding causal links
Too often we think in terms of causal links, while many phenomena can only be explained when recognizing it was caused by various factors

9. Skill 5: Multiple perspectives
Prevent tunnel vision
Approach an issue in various ways and with various perspectives
Invite others

10. Skill 6: Think long term and short term
Impact of acting, non-acting long term and short term
Expect unexpected events

11. Skills 7: distinguish specific from general interests
Look for the specific, individual and self-interests and what are the collective or general interests.

12. Skill 8: Ask questions
Be that 4-year-old again and ask: Why, why, why?
Practice various ways of asking questions (tone and wording)

13. The Road to Good Governance
Only when you are aware of how you think, voice and act, you can make the most out of it and help to build Good Governance

14. Civil Society in the EU demanding Good Governance