Building Mental Models for Effective Leadership

Opening with an engaging narrative about famous inventor Nikola Tesla, Hruška sets the reader into the information processing paradigm. Two research paradigms, paramount for the depiction of radical decision making the managerial and organizational cognition and the personal development theory, are explored. The author also describes elements of human cognitive apparatus, which are of essential use in organizational psychology: perception, mental models construction, adaptive learning and action. Finally, Hruška elaborates on how leaders develop competence by reflecting on their experience. The central proposition is how an attribute of experienced professionals in any profession is the development of mental representations that control and sensitize their perception so that they are able to notice the elements of crucial importance for the decision-making situation.