Examining your black box

Effective management employs the skills of eliciting appropriate behavior and performance from people and successfully interacting with the environment. Formal management training is one tool that can help a medical group manager accomplish this objective. Another tool is a set of personal values which are consistent with the manager's actions. These values are neatly packaged in what the author calls a "black box." It makes for not only a healthy management style, but also a healthy person if the cognitions contained in one's black box are continually examined and weeded. To assist managers in identifying and examining the elements contained in their personal value sets, the author presents a few elements of his own black box.