Master active listening to enhance decision-making

Four people, two men and two women, are gathered around a table covered with various supplies, such as notebooks, pens and coffee mugs. They are looking at two large whiteboards filled with colorful sticky notes. Picture a colleague grappling with a tough decision — they’re probably feeling the weight of uncertainty and pressure. In such moments, it’s tempting to step in with solutions or advice. But real support means resisting that urge, putting your own ideas aside and listening carefully to understand their concerns, priorities and the help or reassurance they seek.

In the Cornell Keynote webcast “Active Listening: Supporting People During Difficult Decisions,” Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, an adjunct professor at the Cornell SC Johnson School of Business and Cornell Tech, shares the four types of active listening and how utilizing them can support decision-makers.

What is active listening?

“There are two kinds of listening: passive and active. In passive listening, the responder is just taking it in, and the person speaking may not get any feedback. We don’t have a sense of whether or not the responder really got what we meant to say. Conversely, active listening is the practice of making sure you make the other person feel heard. You’re listening for cues in what they’re saying so that you can respond, not from your vantage point, but from the vantage point of what they’re truly inquiring about.”

Why is active listening essential in the decision-making process?

“Decision-making is a holistic process, and for too long, we’ve been under the impression that our decisions are ours alone. For our decisions to truly succeed, we need to be able to take into account other stakeholders’ viewpoints, which means actually asking them questions. What to ask is going to stem from what it is they’re talking to us about.

I was interested in coming up with a framework for listening to people and then asking questions that show we are responding to what they’re asking. And, if we’re unsure what that is, how can we further open up the conversation to ask them what they mean.”

What are the four types of active listening support?

“The four types of active listening I discuss are emotional, informational, analytical and reflective.

  1. Emotional support is listening with empathy, making space for the emotion and doing it without judgment.
  2. Informational active listening is about providing the information the other person needs, whether it be knowledge, facts or data.
  3. Analytical support helps them to interpret and understand what they’ve already gathered and how the information can be synthesized into something that has meaning.
  4. Reflective listening is really about mirroring. How often has someone come to you, and you think, ‘I believe they already know the solution.’ By asking questions that mirror what they’re saying, you help them prioritize and clarify their own thoughts.”

How can each type of active listening help support decision-makers?

“Emotional support can benefit the decision-maker by validating their feelings and making them feel heard. You may hear the other person say, ‘I feel,’ and you could respond with, ‘That sounds difficult,’ or ‘I hear your frustration.’ You listen for the cue the other person is giving and respond without bringing judgment to their emotion.

A decision-maker in need of informational support will ask if you have the information they need available. If you do, you can provide it. Otherwise, you can ask what information or data would be useful for them at this point. In a professional setting, speaking to what a decision-maker is asking for makes them feel like you are truly collaborating and giving them the support they need.

When offering analytical support, you can listen for something like ‘How would you interpret’ or ‘What does this mean?’ In these instances, somebody is asking for some kind of interpretation or synthesis. If you think that you have that at your ready, terrific. If not, you could say, ‘What kind of analysis would help you think this through?’ so that you can be directly responsive.

Reflective support helps decision-makers clarify their own thoughts and priorities. You might hear a decision-maker say, ‘I can’t decide’ or ‘I’m conflicted.’ This does not mean they’re asking you to decide for them. You can ask them back, ‘What’s the goal you want to achieve?’ or ‘What’s your priority here?’ and that can help them to bring forth again their own priorities and a solution that they already may have in mind.”

What are some common challenges people face when practicing active listening, and how can they overcome them?

“The toughest thing to remember when actively listening to another person is that you are not the decision-maker. The idea that the other person is a capable decision-maker and their decisions are their own is very important, and one way to pair active listening with this idea is to simply pause. We’re so trained to jump right into conversations that it feels unnatural to take an extra beat, but waiting for a moment to consider what the other person is trying to convey and having that metacognition come forward is going to make it easier for you to be in service to the other person.”

How do you see the principles of active listening evolving in the future to support decision-making across different industries?

“One of my recent research projects, which we discussed during an earlier eCornell Keynote, identified five different ways people approach decisions, each of which has a different underlying value structure. This means individuals are optimizing for different things in their decision-making process. Once you can identify which problem-solver profile somebody is, the act of listening becomes much easier.

For example, if you know someone is a ‘detective’ — like I am — when you come to them with an answer, they’ll want to see the data that supports it. So, if you say to me, ‘Cheryl, this is the evidence I have that supports this hypothesis, and I think we should move in that direction.’ I am going to feel so appreciative that you recognized my need for evidence and allowed me to assess whether that evidence makes sense to me.

That is a great way that I’ve seen companies and teams really bring this idea of active listening forward to streamline decision-making, build trust between team members and increase productivity by aligning communication styles with individual problem-solving approaches.”

Interested in learning more? Discover how you can leverage your problem-solver profile to tackle challenging problems in the Complex Decision-Making certificate program, authored by Cheryl Strauss Einhorn.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Experience the full Keynote “Active Listening: Supporting People During Difficult Decisions” on the eCornell website.

Leaders expand management accounting expertise in new certificate program

Global businesses often wrestle with operational inefficiencies and overlook critical touchpoints that can turn those challenges into opportunities. Expanding management accounting operations is one such avenue for improving business efficiency – not just with a finance-oriented approach but through a leadership lens.

Designed by Robert Bloomfield, the Nicholas H. Noyes Professor of Management at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, the Management Accounting for Leaders certificate program aims to change the perception and application of accounting by bridging theoretical knowledge with tangible, actionable insights. Bloomfield hopes “to endow students with a superpower to deliberate and find ways to improve accountability systems.”

The program offers practical tools to identify, analyze and rectify inefficiencies that are pervasive in modern businesses. Central to this unique approach are the “deliberation guides” – theoretical constructs and hands-on tools designed to help accounting professionals and senior leaders improve their businesses and honor accountability as a core value.

Bloomfield explains, “for every module in each of these six courses, there is a deliberation guide that they can download and take back to their team and walk through the steps to make improvements.”

Through case studies, the coursework exemplifies strategies for enhancing performance metrics such as profitability, efficiency and employee motivation while fulfilling stakeholder demands. Courses include:

  • Improving Governance
  • Improving Margins
  • Improving Capacity Investment and Consumption
  • Improving Coordination and Efficiency
  • Improving Direction, Motivation, and Society
  • Accountability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The program takes a broad view in the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” course that explores artificial intelligence, managing remote workers and navigating new business opportunities as they present further accounting possibilities.

Designed for leaders at all levels, from CEOs to new managers, the program offers insights not just for accountants or financial experts, but for anyone looking to enhance their organization’s operational efficiency.

“The program uses a general framework that applies to any type of organization and accountability for any type of performance. It’s incredibly versatile,” Bloomfield said.
Bloomfield emphasizes that his approach offers a unified framework for problems that allows leaders to address a wide range of issues.

“Management accounting was originally developed for addressing concerns about financial performance, entirely for the benefit of investors. That’s not enough for leaders, who must now address concerns about social, environmental and even moral performance, for the benefit of communities, employees and countless other stakeholders,” Bloomfield said. “This program helps leaders address any concern for any stakeholder as Cornell supports ‘… any person … any study.’”

Enroll in the Management Accounting for Leaders certificate program and unlock a framework for improving accountability and operational efficiency in any business.

Professionals navigate rising economies in Emerging Markets certificate program

Emerging economies, fueled by digital adoption, a growing middle class and urbanization, are full of unrealized growth potential. With potential risks and rewards fluctuating daily – and even hourly – investors and financial professionals must grasp the complexities to navigate volatile markets.

“It is truly a universal global challenge, as well as an opportunity,” said Andrew Karolyi, the Charles Field Knight Dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and author of the university’s Emerging Markets online certificate program. “Emerging markets have unrealized growth potential because they have inadequate capital to fuel growth.”

These markets, often referred to as the E20 – or with a more narrow scope, the BRICS countries – are barred from joining the “elite” group of developed countries in terms of GDP per capita, financial infrastructure and life expectancy rates because of a lack of foreign investments that would fund further development.

The phenomena forms well-paying investment opportunities in those markets counterbalanced by significant financial risks. Course content crafted by Karolyi and his co-authors, Lourdes Casanova, director of Cornell’s Emerging Markets Institute (EMI); Anne Miroux, EMI faculty fellow; and Wesley Sine, John and Dyan Smith Professor of Management and Family Business, covers six categories of those risks.

“Emerging markets are now mainstream; however, there is a lot of noise around them and limited knowledge,” Casanova said.

The four courses they created equip professionals with key concepts and tools to understand current economic events. From discussions of the effects of government intervention on the frequency and success of greenfield and M&A investments to examination of state-owned corporations in China and the impact of currency volatility, students will learn the correlation between the political landscape and market risks in the E20, including BRICS economies.

Tailored for financial services professionals and individuals interested in investment in emerging markets, the program is best suited for those with a foundational grasp of data statistics and business terminology.

Enrollment is now open for the Cornell’s Emerging Markets certificate program. Learn more about the program online.

Cornell launches online entrepreneurship program

To bring a startup business to market, an entrepreneur needs to assess the viability of their concept, develop a strategic framework and navigate the due diligence required to finance it.

On Nov. 19, National Entrepreneurs Day, Cornell launched a new Entrepreneurship certificate program, designed to develop the necessary knowledge and skills to take a new idea from theory to realization.

“Ideas are easy to come by, but the real challenge comes in getting them off the ground,” said Tom Schryver, program author, visiting lecturer in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, and executive director of the Center for Regional Economic Advancement. “This program will help students understand how startups raise capital to execute on their plans, both from the perspective of an entrepreneur seeking to raise money as well as from the point of view of an investor looking to make an investment in a startup.”

The program will enable participants to structure a business model to protect their interests, assign fair valuation to an opportunity and secure funding. Participants will also explore many types of funders, from equity and angel investors to venture capitalists, crowdfunders and grant programs. Courses in this program include:

  • Assessing Startup Viability and Funding Options
  • Pitching Your Business Opportunity
  • Protecting Your Interests
  • Financial Planning, Valuation and Dilution
  • Company Structure and Due Diligence
  • Post-Investment Best Practices

After completing the six courses, participants will receive an Entrepreneurship certificate and 60 professional development hours. Visit the eCornell website to learn more about this program.

Bailey Karfelt

Certificate program combines tech, financial services

Financial institutions are increasingly using new technologies to deploy existing resources to deliver transaction, payment and asset-management services.

To capitalize on these rapidly expanding innovations in financial technology, Cornell has established a new FinTech Certificate Program. Participants will not only identify key advances in the fintech landscape, but also analyze opportunities in financial technology and blockchain.

“Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley are … leading the charge into fintech with blockchain technology and machine learning,” said program author Ari Juels, the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor at Cornell Tech. “Those working in financial services should take heed.”

“Advances in technology have revolutionized the way the financial sector does business, and, by extension, how we all do business,” said Drew Pascarella, associate dean for MBA programs and senior lecturer of finance at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. “It is imperative that everyone within the financial services ecosystem understands these key trends.”

Financial services professionals, consultants, software companies who sell to financial services and others in the banking and financial sectors will find value in this certificate program, available online through eCornell.

The FinTech Certificate program consists of four two-week courses, including:

  • FinTech Disruptions;
  • Trends in FinTech;
  • Cryptocurrencies and Ledgers;
  • Cryptography Essentials.

After completion of the four courses, participants will earn a fintech certificate from Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, and 40 professional development hours.

– Kristi Gaylord

Cornell’s new certificate program teaches how to leverage blockchain technology

Interest in blockchain is rapidly growing, as companies in every industry begin to recognize the many benefits of this innovative new technology. From smart contracts to cloud and supply chain storage, applications of this technology extend well beyond cryptocurrency and financial transactions.

Cornell has launched the new Blockchain for Business certificate program online through eCornell. It will help learners explore blockchain’s cryptographic roots, demystify the technology and recognize how to use blockchain to solve myriad business problems.

“Many associate blockchains with cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, but they have many other applications,” says Ari Juels, professor of computer science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and author of the program. “Our Blockchain for Business certificate program will explore the full power of blockchains with learners, enabling them to leverage blockchains’ powerful capabilities, recognize their often-overlooked technical limitations and apply them to real-world business goals.”

Business and technology leaders, entrepreneurs, developers and software engineers interested in learning blockchain fundamentals, and anyone seeking to develop a greater understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency will find value in the program.

Upon completion of the Blockchain for Business certificate program, learners can apply their new skillset back at work by identifying key areas where blockchain technology can help create efficiency, save time and money, and increase security. Further, learners will be able to recognize whether a blockchain is backed by solid cryptographic building blocks to avoid bad business decisions. Courses include:

  • Cryptocurrencies and ledgers;
  • Cryptography essentials;
  • Blockchain fundamentals; and
  • Applications of blockchain technology.

Upon successful completion of all four courses, learners earn a Blockchain for Business Certificate from Cornell Tech.

Which Job Offer Should You Choose? Here’s a Great Tool To Evaluate Compensation Packages.

What matters most to you when it comes to your job compensation package? How do you decide which job to select if presented with multiple job offers or considering leaving one employer for another? 

Different people have different needs. As a result, pay matters differently to different people. Some employees prefer flexibility over a higher base pay. Others prefer options that will offer more long-term benefits. 

This unique total job compensation calculator, developed by Professor Kevin Hallock, a faculty member and dean in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, can help guide you in your decision-making. You can compare different job offers and calculate their total rewards below. 

ACCESS THE JOB COMPENSATION CALCULATOR 

Feel free to put this tool to use on an individual level, to analyze your own offers, or within an organizational context, to design and evaluate competitive compensation systems. If you’re a manager or HR leader, you can use this tool to explore various types of rewards within the context of employee preferences and perceptions. Consider your organizational goals. What matters most to the talent you want to attract and retain? What components do they value most? 

This calculator is part of the curriculum in the Compensation Studies Certificate program developed by Cornell’s ILR School. If you’re an HR professional or  business leader, we invite you to learn more about this unique online program.

New Online Certificate from CIPA Prepares Leaders to Manage Nonprofit Finances

Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) launched its first online certificate, Financial Success for Nonprofits, to prepare professionals to guide nonprofits to financial sustainability amid rapid changes in technology, policy and wealth distribution. The certificate is offered through eCornell.

“This program provides a crucial orientation to today’s nonprofit world. We move beyond numbers to examine perceptions of impact, and what happens when things aren’t going well and leaders have to love an organization enough to make the hard decisions,” said Joseph Grasso, faculty author of the certificate and associate dean for finance, administration and corporate relations at the ILR School.

Financial Success for Nonprofits consists of four courses that can be completed over two months, in three to five hours per week and prepares students to:

  • use and interpret nonprofit financial statements and ratios;
  • create a realistic budget using good judgment and strategic analysis of programmatic impact;
  • assess opportunities for influence and develop a structured fundraising program; and
  • establish healthy board governance through consensus decision-making, awareness and fiduciary accountability.

The certificate is ideal for CEOs, executive directors, new board members, administrators and program staff from all types of nonprofits, and for lawyers who serve the nonprofit sector. Students who complete the certificate earn a Financial Success for Nonprofits Certificate from the College of Human Ecology, of which CIPA is a part.

The Time Value of Money

As a manager, you may be asked to make financial decisions within your organization. However, the world of corporate finance can be an overwhelming one. There are a variety of new terms, concepts and tools to learn about in order to really understand your organization’s financial standing and to make a sound decision.

One of the primary concepts to understand is the time value of money (TVM); it is a critical element of financial management within organizations, and the principles being discussed below have relevance for personal financial management as well. As a non-financial manager within your company, you want to be conversant in the ways that the time value of money affects your company’s ability to borrow, invest, and expand in general, as well as to fund your projects. Professors Steve Carvell and Scott Gibson explain in this video.

eCornell’s Financial Management certificate will introduce you to the concepts and formulas you need to be able to understand, and speak to, the financial workings of your organization. Having a holistic understanding of this will allow you to more easily advance in your organization.

Tuesday, 5/17 at 1 pm EDT, we’ll be talking live with Professors Carvell & Gibson as they disucss key financial principles that are critical for every professional to understand – regardless of industry or level of experience. To attend for free, please sign up here. Learn more about our Financial Management certificate here.

Basics of Startup Financial Planning

What goes into a useful set of financial projections for a startup?

How do you go about building a set of projections that meet your needs and best position you for success?

In this free webinar, Tom Schryver, Visiting Lecturer of Management at Cornell University, provides an overview of financial modeling and planning principles for startups. This session includes:

• How different reviewers of these projections look at them, and what they look for
• A high level overview of how to construct a set of projections
• How to break down the components of financial projections into actionable blocks

Tom is an experienced entrepreneur, having served as a startup founder and senior executive of high-growth companies. He has successfully structured new companies and raised capital in the form of private venture capital and venture debt as well as grants and loans from local, state and federal agencies. He has managed accounting and compliance functions from initial startup through successful financial audits by national accounting firms, and helped guide company strategy, growth and development.