Sequential Problem Solving by Fredric B. Lozo (free children's ebooks online txt) 📖

1. Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
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TRYING THE SOLUTION.

Often complex or new tasks become learning projects, in themselves, to try to more accurately identify the problem, and to gather sufficient facts through failure in experimentation to make progress. Projects should include ongoing evaluation and re-planning. Old World craftsmen, the master craftsmen of yesteryear, had a guiding principle that continues to have merit: "Any job worth doing is worth doing well." Doing a job well often means making a final copy after revising the rough draft.

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MANPOWER MANAGEMENT.

Leaders should remember that several approaches to leadership are available. No one style is satisfactory for all situations.

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LEADERSHIP STYLES.

Three basic leadership styles exist. They are the authoritarian model, the teacher model, and the team work model. [1]

The authoritarian model is useful for situations requiring immediate compliance by a subordinate. Soldiers occasionally use the authoritarian style to demand instant obedience. It is most useful in dangerous situations where hesitation in complying might be disastrous; for instance, when a child is daydreaming and in danger of walking off of a sidewalk curb into automobile traffic. In business situations, this style is not often used because the authoritarian leader is often destined to fail: "micro-management" often has a belittling effect on subordinates, who subsequently rebel, and failure follows for three reasons: the authoritarian leader often doesn't have the expertise, time, or enough energy to do all of the jobs himself job without other's help. The authoritarian leadership style is seldom useful except in emergency situations.[2] (It has been said that a raised voice with someone older than five is usually inappropriate.)

The teaching leadership model is more useful because the people doing the job are contributors. The teacher offers advice and monitors progress.[3]

The team work leadership model is sometimes the most useful. This model works when the students become as knowledgeable as the teacher and each can and will do the other's job. This model is often seen when someone realizes a job needs doing, and does it without being told to do it. These people are conscientious "self-starters."

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LEADERSHIP STYLES.

1. Tannenbaum, Robert and Warren H. Schmidt. "How to Choose a Leadership Pattern." Harvard Business Review 36(March-April 1958): 95-101.
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2. Fiedler, Fred E. "The Trouble With Leadership Training Is That it Doesn't Train Leaders." Psychology Today 6(February 1973): 23-30.
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3. Goodall, H. Lloyd, Jr. Small Group Communications in Organizations. 2nd ed. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown, 1990.
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DEALING WITH INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT.

Western World values and ideas of dealing with interpersonal conflict originate in the Code of Hammarabi and the Mosaic Code.

King Solomon in the Bible, following the Ten Commandments of Moses, offers some practical suggestions for dealing with interpersonal conflict.

In Solomon's Book of Proverbs, one of Solomon's main themes is drawing a consistent distinction between the wise man and the foolish man. He characterizes a foolish man as someone who neither asks for advise nor accepts it. He further characterizes the foolish man as someone who is scornful, divisive, quarrelsome, and mocking of other's efforts with cynicism and sarcasm.

Solomon's advise for dealing with scornful people has three steps. The first step is to try counseling with them in private, one on one. Failing that, the second step is to counsel with them again, but with two people, together, advising the third. The final step is to cease relations.

Solomon's three steps are seen today in practical statesmanship. We should remember that today's enemy is tomorrow's friend. Member nations of the United Nations generally apply this same three-step plan that ends in economic sanctions being applied by the United Nations as a whole. Sometimes even ceasing relations with another is not enough and force of arms must be taken to protect weaker neighbors from aggression.

Whether with neighbors or nations, armed conflict is ultimately sorrowful. It is an admission that patient diplomacy and logic have not been successful. It is premeditated violence to protect the weak. Many people, still developing in religious maturity and understanding, feel torment when violence is necessary, because their religious understanding does not extend beyond helping "all" others. It is a question of who is helped and why. Some people too choose to pass from this life as martyrs. Others feel compelled to stay until the end and protect the weak like a shepherd keeping predatory dogs away from the helpless lambs. There may be a time for each course of action.

The confusion between religion and forcing our will on others is caused by our understanding of what helping others means. If we help others to hurt someone, we become harmful ourselves. We become "Enablers" [1] to those hurting others. Without our consent, the aggressor could not have taken advantage of his weaker neighbor.

The Eastern religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, which is intimately associated with the Samurai warrior of Japan, take great care to teach tranquility and self-control in the use of force. Anger is not a part of thoughtful action.

Aikido, The Way of Harmony, teaches tranquility in the use of force, and compares it to the calm in the eye of a hurricane.[2]

The great Christian pastor, Dietrich Bonhoffer, pointed out that "just causes" for anger did not exist in the earliest accounts of Christ's Sermon on the Mount.[3]

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DEALING WITH INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT.

1. Miller, Angelyn. The Enabler.—When Helping Harms the Ones You Love. New York Ballentine Books, 1988.
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2. Stevens, John. Abundant Peace—the Biography of Morehei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido. Boston: Shambhala, 1987.
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3. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Macmillan, 1963.
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INTERPERSONAL PROBLEM SOLVING:

Drama and literary analysis as a tool in personal problem solving.

The structure of Aristotle's Pentad [1] for five act plays is useful as a framework for solving personal problems.

1. Who is the hero? What are his weaknesses? How is he likely to fall?

2. Who is the villain? Is the villain another person, nature or society?

3. What external events lead to the climax with the villain?

4. How does the climax with the villain turn out?

5. What did the hero learn about his own internal weaknesses in the encounter with the villain?

This five part framework is useful in separating the external foes we face from the internal conflicts that are our weaknesses.

EXTERNAL CONFLICTS.

External conflicts are usually found to involve either another man, nature or society. In the man versus man conflict, another person is the adversary. In the man versus nature conflict, the adversary might be a hurricane, or the rigors involved in climbing a mountain. In the man versus society conflict, the opponent might be industrial organizations or lobby groups advocating nuclear waste disposal in the ocean.

The man versus self conflict, such as a man facing a crisis of courage, is an internal conflict.

INTERNAL CONFLICTS.

Internal conflicts are man versus himself and man versus God conflicts.

The man versus God occurs when a person violates his conscience and does something that he knows to be wrong. Many religions advocate resolving the man versus God conflict by admission of wrongdoing and restitution to those harmed. There may be some people that have no conscience, and the internal conflicts they face are not, as yet, well understood. [2] Those people without a conscience are a continuing source of grief for humanity and that problem is discussed in the section on dealing with "unattached people."

The second type of internal conflict, the man versus self conflict exhibit certain human character weaknesses that can be identified with the acronym FALL: fear, arrogance, laziness, and loneliness.

Loneliness is often caused by a combination of several of the other three common human weaknesses, for instance, fear and laziness: fear of rejection while trying to find new friends and laziness in making the attempt.

Fear is a very common weakness and is related to our needs. Abraham Maslow[3] classified these needs as follows:

1. Physical safety.

2. Food and shelter.

3. Love or belonging—the need to love and be loved.

4. Career—the need to be successful at something.

5. Self actualization—the need some people feel to become who God wants them to be.

People must meet their immediate, basic needs for physical safety before they can meet their wishful needs for love or fulfilling a career. While we strive to behave as thinking people, with well thought out plans, sometimes we act purely as animals by instinct alone. If we are suddenly frightened by a snarling dog, we react by running or fighting, instinctively, without conscious thought. Paul MacLean describes what happens in our brains as a stepping down the evolutionary ladder and using those parts of our "Triune" brain that operates on instinct rather than thought. [4]

MacLean divides the Triune brain [5] into three parts that developed over the evolutionary eons. The oldest, which he calls the reptilian brain, controls aggression and passionate impulsiveness. The middle region, the limbic system, controls docile, loving emotions. The outer region, the neo-cortex controls thoughtful planning with an awareness of consequences and cause-effect relationships. This phenomenon is important because fear alone can inhibit successful higher level thinking by keeping the brain at the lowest (reptilian) level preparing to meet the threat. The educator Lev Vygotsky stressed the importance of creating and maintaining a risk-free environment that encourages higher level (neo-cortex) thought. [6] The growing recognition of the Triune Brain might very well have influenced world politics in the replacement of the policy of "mutually assured destruction" with a "kinder and gentler" statesmanship.

Maslow's need and MacLean's brain are both related to animal-like behavioral weaknesses when we react impulsively rather than with thought and planning, and we are more likely to act impulsively when our physical safety or food and shelter needs are threatened.

When we do act like animals, we often are ashamed because we momentarily set aside our conscience. Fear overpowers our desire to be loving because it engages lower brain centers that are not controlled by abstract thought centers in the higher levels of our brain.

How then can we act like we are created in the image of God instead of selfish, impulsive animals? We can begin by analyzing what characters in literature and drama do. We can recognize when fear, arrogance, laziness, or loneliness drives the hero's actions, and imagine how the hero might overcome his weaknesses. We can project a responsible resolution to the hero's internal conflicts. This exercise of recognizing the source of another's actions is merely an intermediate step in the learning process, however. [7] The final step is when we face our own trails, and face the need to analyze our own reactions to stress, as we have looked at those in dramas. Finally, we can plan our own future and make it happen, just as we did with alternative endings to conflicts in dramas.

Occasionally, people face moral choices that seem to confusing to be solved, and the thinking brain tries to step down a notch. It either takes a passive emotional position with MacLean's limbic system, or an impulsive aggressive position with the reptilian system. At these times, a checklist for moral decision making can provide a framework for keeping our actions in the realm of planned activity rather than impulse.

THE STEPS OF MORAL DECISION MAKING.

Moral decision making involves several growth steps in reaching maturity.

Stanley Kohlberg [8] provided us with a framework for making moral decisions:

Age      Test                     Question.

 6         Punishment                  Will I get caught?

10        Golden Rule                 How would I like