Episode 12: Think Again
Hello and welcome to Episode 12 of Metamorphosis, this time featuring Think Again by Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist, author and host of the WorkLife podcast.
A quote from Mark Twain, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority it is time to pause and reflect” and a deep-seated inkling about creating a set of beliefs that are mine and not those endowed upon me, by family, institutions, or a period of time, led me to read this book.
Many of our beliefs are cultural truisms: widely shared, but rarely questioned. If we take a closer look at them, we often discover that they rest on shaky foundations. “Over the past year we have been forced to question assumptions that we had long taken for granted: Safe to go the hospital, eat in a restaurant, and hug our grandparents. Our ways of thinking become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late.” As Adam writes,
“When it comes to our possessions, we update with fervor. We refresh our wardrobes, renovate our kitchens. When it comes to our knowledge and opinions, though, we tend to stick to our guns... The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we don’t know.”
I am convinced that anchoring oneself in flexibility of thinking is a path that leads to ‘generate new solutions to old problems and revisit old solutions to new problems.’ “A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools- and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.” This book offers compelling evidence on the benefits of opening our minds, helping one explore how rethinking happens, and caveats the purpose of learning as not to affirm our beliefs; rather to evolve them.
My first takeaway is about attaining confident humility.
“Having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem, gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.”
I think this merely acts as a mindmap to typical interview questions like “What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Learning, as psychologist Elizabeth Krumrei Manusco writes, “requires the humility to realize one has something to learn.” What this amounts to, is that you can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence.
As Adam writes, if we hold an opinion weakly, expressing it strongly can backfire. Communicating it with some uncertainty signals confident humility, invites curiosity, and leads to a more nuanced discussion.
My next takeaway is on the art of persuasive listening and asking questions. An important tool in your arsenal can be the ability to ask effective questions that lead to discoveries and solutions. Little did I know that “Listening well is more than a matter of talking less. It’s a set of skills in asking and responding ... we can get better at asking “truly curious questions that don’t have the hidden agenda of fixing, saving, advising, convincing or correcting another person’s thoughts.”
Ask how people originally formed an opinion. To help people re-evaluate, prompt them to consider how they’d believe different things if they’d been born at a different time or in a different place or simply increase your question to statement ratio.
"Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart. They help approach their own views with more humility, doubt, and curiosity. An inverse charisma, a wonderful turn of a phrase that captures the magnetic quality of a great listener, a sense of being listned to with such intensity that you have to be your most honest, sharpest and best self."
My final takeaway is a question that can always be asked when you get bogged down on something or to someone you wish to persuade to think differently,
“What evidence would change your mind?” If the answer is “nothing”, then there’s no point in continuing the debate. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.”
You can’t bully someone into agreeing with you. It’s often more effective to inquire about what would open their minds and then see if you can convince them on their own terms.
Like always, ending this episode with a few words to live by:
“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom”
Thank you for reading through this episode of Metamorphosis and hope to catch up with you soon in the next!
