Day 4: Decisions, Problem-Solving and Ethics Under Pressure
Pressure tests leaders. Good tools and clear values help you choose well when it matters.
Today's goal
By the end of today you can use a structured process and ethical lenses to make decisions, reach a team consensus and stay calm when plans change.
Agenda
The session
Fast or slow?
Some decisions need speed and some need care. Notice how you decide.
- The facilitator reads six quick choices (for example: a free day, study or rest? a friend asks to copy homework, yes or no? lead the project or support it?).
- Decide each in five seconds and write your answer.
- Go back and mark which ones you would decide differently with ten minutes to think.
- Discuss: which kinds of decisions should never be rushed?
Solo
Write six choices you face this month, decide each in five seconds, then revisit them slowly.
Group
Students hold up cards or move to sides of the room for each choice (no running).
Related lessons: Cognitive Biases: Why Smart Brains Make Mistakes
A framework for ethical decisions
You met decision tools in lesson ct-07. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University adds a clear process and six ethical lenses for choices that affect other people.
- Step 1, identify the ethical issue: could this harm someone or benefit some people unfairly?
- Step 2, get the facts: what is known and unknown, who has a stake, and have the right people been consulted?
- Step 3, evaluate options through six lenses: Rights (respects everyone's dignity), Justice (treats people fairly), Utilitarian (most good, least harm), Common Good (serves the whole community), Virtue (fits the person I want to be), Care Ethics (attends to relationships and feelings).
- Step 4, choose and test: would I be comfortable explaining this choice to someone I respect, or in public?
- Step 5, act and reflect: how did it turn out, and what did I learn?
- Your own faith and values sit alongside these lenses. Many traditions ask the same questions about honesty, fairness and care.
Related lessons: Making Good Decisions, Making ethical decisions
Survival on the Moon
A classic consensus exercise, used in schools and workplaces, in which you compare your ranking with an expert ranking attributed to NASA. It tests whether a team can decide better than its individuals.
- Scenario: your crew was meant to meet the mother ship on the sunlit side of the moon, but mechanical problems forced a landing about 200 miles away. You must choose what to take on the 200-mile journey.
- Items: box of matches; food concentrate; 50 feet of nylon rope; parachute silk; portable heating unit; two .45 calibre pistols; one case of dehydrated milk; two 100 lb tanks of oxygen; stellar map; self-inflating life raft; magnetic compass; 20 litres of water; signal flares; first aid kit with injection needle; solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter.
- Individual round (8 minutes): rank the items from 1 (most important) to 15 (least), in silence.
- Team round (20 minutes): agree one ranking by consensus. No voting or averaging: discuss until everyone can accept each position. Use paraphrasing and inquiry from Day 2.
- Expert key (attributed to NASA): 1 oxygen, 2 water, 3 stellar map, 4 food concentrate, 5 FM receiver-transmitter, 6 nylon rope, 7 first aid kit, 8 parachute silk, 9 life raft, 10 signal flares, 11 pistols (possible self-propulsion), 12 dehydrated milk, 13 heating unit (only needed on the dark side), 14 compass (useless, as the moon's magnetic field is not polarised), 15 matches (no oxygen to burn).
- Scoring (a common convention): for each item, find the difference between your rank and the expert rank, ignoring minus signs, and add them up. Lower is better. Score yourself and your team.
- Debrief (10 minutes): did the team score beat the average individual score? The best individual? Who changed the group's mind, and how? Was anyone with a correct idea ignored?
Solo
Rank on your own first. Then ask two family members to rank separately, and hold a 15-minute consensus discussion with them. Score all four rankings and compare.
Group
Teams of four to six. The facilitator keeps the expert key hidden until the team round ends. Encourage quieter members to explain their reasoning first.
Related lessons: Making Good Decisions, Disagreeing Well and Changing Your Mind
Break
Breathe out. Hard thinking uses energy, so eat and drink something.
- Step outside or by a window.
- Do a minute of slow breathing.
Case carousel: four dilemmas
Four short cases from four settings. For each, use the Markkula five steps and at least three of the six lenses, and write your decision and the words you would use.
- School (10 minutes): you are a prefect in Abu Dhabi. The night before a mock exam, someone posts what looks like the paper in a class group chat. Your best friend has already looked. What do you do, and what do you say to your friend?
- Club (10 minutes): you captain a school football club with a budget for eight players to travel to a tournament in Muscat. Twelve want to go. Two of the strongest players have skipped training; one quieter player has never missed a session but rarely starts. How do you decide, and how do you tell people?
- Gulf business (10 minutes): on a summer internship at a family-owned trading company in Jebel Ali, your manager asks you to change the delivery date on a customer report so a late order 'looks on time'. A supplier also sends you a generous gift box. How do you respond to each, respectfully and honestly?
- Charity (10 minutes): you lead a Ramadan food-pack drive with a registered charity. A volunteer wants to post photos of families receiving packs to boost donations, and you have more fresh food than you can deliver before it spoils. What do you decide about each?
- Wrap-up (5 minutes): which lens did you use most? Which case had no perfect answer, and how did you still decide?
Solo
Rotate through the four cases with a timer. For one case, write a 60-second script of the conversation you would have, and practise it out loud.
Group
Set up four tables, one case each. Teams rotate every ten minutes, adding their decision on sticky notes under the previous teams' ideas. In the wrap-up, each table reads out the range of answers.
Related lessons: Integrity and honesty, including at school, Courage and standing up for what is right, Making ethical decisions, Volunteering and service in the UAE
Egg drop under pressure
Inspired by a NASA Commercial Crew Program activity in which students design a parachute and capsule to land an egg safely. Here, the facilitator adds surprise problems to test how your team leads under pressure.
- Each team gets one hard-boiled egg (or a plastic egg), two plastic bags, string, four paper cups, sticky tape, scissors and a few rubber bands.
- Goal: design a parachute and capsule that land the egg without cracking when dropped from about 2 metres. A supervising adult does every drop, standing on the floor with arm raised. No chairs, balconies or stairwells.
- Use the engineering cycle: ask, imagine, plan, create, test, improve.
- Build for 15 minutes. Two practice drops are allowed.
- Surprise problems: at minute 5 the facilitator takes away the scissors (tear instead); at minute 10 your team leader must swap teams; at minute 12 the facilitator announces the landing zone is now a marked sheet of A3 paper.
- Final drop, then debrief (8 minutes): how did your team react to each surprise? Who stepped up when the leader left? What would you do differently?
Solo
Build alone and ask someone at home to deliver the three surprise problems from sealed notes at the right times. Write down how you felt and what you did after each one.
Group
Teams of four. Use hard-boiled or plastic eggs only (plastic if anyone has an egg allergy), lay a cloth or newspaper under the drop point and wash hands afterwards. Students stay seated or standing at their tables while the adult drops.
Related lessons: Building resilience, Failure, learning and keeping going
Under pressure, I ...
Pressure shows your default habits. Name yours so you can choose better ones.
- What did you do today when time ran out or plans changed?
- Which of your top five values helped you in the dilemmas?
- Add a manifesto line: 'When the right thing is hard, I will ...'.
Solo
Write your answers in your journal.
Group
Silent writing, then pairs share one line each.
Day 4 quiz
Five questions on decisions and ethics.
- Answer on your own.
- Read every explanation.
Block timer
Your journal
Private, saved on this device only. Your answers stay in this browser. They are never sent to us, even when you are signed in.
Day 4 quiz
Score 80% or more to complete Day 4.
1. Which is the first step in the Markkula Center's framework for ethical decision making?
2. Which ethical lens asks which option produces the most good and the least harm?
3. What is a useful test before acting on a decision, according to the Markkula Center?
4. In the NASA moon survival key, why is the magnetic compass ranked near the bottom?
5. In the Survival on the Moon team round, what does reaching consensus mean?
Overnight challenge
Ask a parent, relative or older friend about the hardest decision they made at work. What did they weigh up? Write down which of the six lenses you heard in their answer.
Sources
- Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University: A Framework for Ethical Decision Making
- Idaho Commission for Libraries: Moon Landing Exercise worksheet
- Grand Valley State University: NASA Exercise, Survival on the Moon (answer key and NASA reasoning)
- Battelle NextGen STEM (NASA Commercial Crew Program activity): Eggstronaut Parachute Challenge