Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
—ANNE BRADSTREET1
Strengths of the head are character traits that compose the moral virtue of knowledge and wisdom. By strengths of the head, we mean more than IQ. For psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, the moral virtue of knowledge and wisdom refers to “cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge.”2 Individual character strengths that contribute to knowledge and wisdom are creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, and perspective. Whether your IQ is 110 or 140, you can possess, nurture, and display these strengths. Many of the problems we face in life require us to do just that.
One of the more contentious areas in Iraq during the well-known surge was north of Baghdad in Salah ad Din province, which was heavily Sunni and the home province of the former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein. The Sunni sect was at war with itself, as the radical wing, led by Jordanian-born al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, bombed and destroyed the holy Shi‘ite Al-Askari Mosque in the city of Samarra. The mosque, built in 944, is one of the most important Shia shrines in the world, and its bombing was designed to create a violent sectarian conflict between the Sunni and Shia sects. Samarra is just outside the US base called Balad, and besides the ongoing conflicts among the sects, US forces also became the target of this outbreak of violence, making this region one of the most volatile areas in all of Iraq.
Given that background, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Hodne, a capable and intelligent battalion commander of the Third Squadron, Fourth US Calvary Regiment, was assigned the mission of defeating the insurgent elements, enabling and supporting Iraqi security forces, and assisting the fledgling local government build its legitimacy among the local population. A daunting mission for sure, but Hodne used his intellect to think his way out of the quagmire that had plagued this part of Iraq for several years.
Hodne’s approach was different. Previous commanders in Iraq prosecuted the war with a heavy hand. Their main effort was to mass combat power at what the commanders felt was the decisive point. This created significant collateral damage and unintended consequences that polarized the Iraqi population, resulting in attacks on coalition forces.
Rather than using raw combat power to achieve his mission, Hodne began thinking of novel ways to address this problem. He built relationships with two wealthy Iraqis and convinced them to pool their money to create an Iraqi bank. This bank could loan money to small local businesses, providing them with much-needed capital to build or rebuild their businesses. This was a risky strategy because under Saddam Hussein’s regime banks did not exist in the Iraqi economy. Hodne had to overcome a lot of doubt and build a lot of trust to make this work. But Hodne was not an ordinary commander. He had great interpersonal skills and built the trust necessary to get the bank started.
One of the first loans went to a dilapidated tomato-paste factory that had been inoperable for several years. The loan allowed the owner to purchase replacement parts and get his factory running again. This was important because now that the factory was working, farmers had a market for their products. This part of Iraq is agrarian, and farming in Mesopotamian Iraq requires irrigation from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. To get water from the river, you have to first get it into canals, then out of the canals and into the fields. This requires an operational irrigation infrastructure. After four years of war, the electrical grid that ran the pumps was inoperable, and the canals were broken and full of silt.
In Iraq, running and maintaining the irrigation infrastructure is the state’s responsibility, and the local farmers put pressure on the government to get the canals repaired and the electrical grid operational. The government responded and began to make the necessary repairs. With the pumps functional, the water flowed out of the river and into the canals, and from the canals into the fields. And the farmers started growing tomatoes again.
This was important for another reason. Repairing the infrastructure and allowing the farmers to grow tomatoes restored the local population’s confidence in their government’s ability to provide the essential services the population demanded. In fighting an insurgency, establishing the legitimacy of the local government in the eyes of the population is critical for success.
Now that the farmers were growing the tomatoes, they were putting them in their pickup trucks and bringing them to the tomato-paste factory. The factory was adjacent to the main highway between Baghdad and Mosul, which traversed downtown Balad. With so many trucks waiting to drop off tomatoes, they created a traffic jam on the highway, causing another problem that demanded a solution.
An entrepreneurial Iraqi solved that problem by building a parking lot adjacent to the factory. Because the trucks were waiting awhile, another entrepreneurial Iraqi built a snack bar to sell food to the farmers, and another built a small hotel for those that were waiting overnight. Soon another entrepreneurial Iraqi started making the cans for the tomato paste, and yet another started a factory to make labels for the cans. Before you know it, an industry was reborn. Young men, many who were previously part of the insurgency, were now employed, and the government had gained the confidence of the population. But more important, Balad, which had previously been one of the most volatile areas in Iraq, was now one of the more peaceful. It became a model for other cities in dealing with their insurgencies.
The US military was criticized in the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom for using a heavy hand in dealing with insurgent elements, indigenous Iraqi security services, and the local population. Rather than breaking their will, in many cases it hardened the resistance, making it all the more difficult to achieve mission objectives. It took time to realize that dealing effectively with this insurgency required building relationships among diverse stakeholders in the region, including indigenous forces and their leaders and other coalition elements. Building these relationships required understanding the local culture and the second, third, and fourth order of effects of the decisions made. The battlefield was complex, and the greatest weapons on the battlefield were not rifles and tanks, but the six inches between the ears—the intellectual understanding of the complexity of this battlefield.3
The case of the dilapidated tomato-paste factory illustrates what can happen when a leader invokes character strengths that make up knowledge and wisdom to solve a complex problem. Hodne could have followed the lead of previous commanders in the region and tried to defeat the enemy by brute force. Instead, he demonstrated at least three strengths of the head to attain his military objective. He used creativity in developing a plan to obtain the cooperation of local Iraqi leaders by giving them a loan. Hodne showed perspective by understanding the culture and history of that part of Iraq and its people. And he employed open-mindedness in working with others—Americans and local Iraqis alike—to implement this program. The result, attributable in no small measure to Hodne’s intellect—was a significant reduction of hostilities and loss of life, and the empowerment of the local government.
The case of the dilapidated tomato-paste factory offers another important lesson: Hodne’s chain of command allowed him to exercise his creativity, perspective, and open-mindedness to achieve the mission. Too often, in the military and other organizations, leaders do not empower their subordinates to capitalize on their strengths of the head. In 2019, Hodne, now a brigadier general, reflected, “I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity to have served with General Caslen during that experience. Precisely because he afforded subordinates the room to operate within his intent, he leveraged the intellect, talent, and character throughout his formation.”4
Psychologists who study intelligence make a distinction between general intelligence (a single, overall measure of one’s intellectual capacity, measured by IQ) and specific subtypes of intelligence. For good reasons, most of us do not spend much time thinking about our overall IQ. We are too busy putting it to use to be concerned about its specific value. But being aware of different aspects of intelligence may allow us to learn to apply these specific intellectual skills to solve problems.
Psychologist Robert Sternberg discovered an interesting thing about intelligence. He found that overall intelligence breaks down into three subtypes: analytical, creative, and practical. This triarchic theory, as Sternberg calls it, suggests that people differ in the strength and balance among these three components. Analytic intelligence—the ability to analyze, compare, and evaluate—is useful in sizing up a problem. Creative intelligence brings innovation and inventiveness to design a solution to the problem. With practical intelligence a person applies the analytic and creative components of intelligence to implement the solution.5
Some of us are better at one form of intelligence than another. Some are eggheads (high analytic intelligence) who cannot put brilliant ideas to practical use or think of creative ways to address a problem. Others can take that brilliant plan and creative solution and use their practical intelligence to make it work. Hodne showed all three aspects of intelligence and also identified others in his command and among local Iraqis who could use their own practical intelligence and make the plan work.
Another psychologist, Howard Gardner, identified eight types of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. A college professor might be strong in linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, a police officer in interpersonal intelligence, and an athlete might excel at bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Charles Darwin was off the charts in naturalistic intelligence, being able to see patterns in nature that were invisible to others.6
In understanding strengths of the head, our message here is simple. The traditional idea of IQ is complex. Each of us has a unique pattern of intellectual skills. Some of them may be average, but some may be exceptional. For you to fully employ strengths of the head to flourish in school, the workplace, or socially, you must know what types of intelligence you are good at. A great leader recognizes his or her intellectual strengths and limitations. These leaders then build a team around them that complements their own intellectual skills and so enables success for the entire organization.
Creativity provides innovative and novel ways of solving problems. It is sometimes called thinking outside of the box. Creativity is the ability to see things in a different way from others, such as seeing uses for objects other than what they were designed for. Dr. Matthews’s father had a knack for this. He had purchased a well-used 1950 Chevy (for $50) for his sixteen-year old son, Glen, to drive. One day while Glen was driving the car, he depressed the accelerator and it stuck on full throttle. The motor raced at its highest RPM, but fortunately Glen shifted the transmission into neutral and pulled over before causing a wreck. After Glen pushed the car back to his home driveway, his father needed a quick interim solution to get the car roadworthy again. Having been raised in the Great Depression, he was frugal. So he examined the car and found that the spring that controls the accelerator pedal had broken. With a sudden smile, he retreated to his storage shed and emerged with a mousetrap. He attached the mousetrap to the accelerator pedal, and (for a while at least) the car worked again. Not many people would have come up with that solution. The mousetrap car is long gone, but its legend is testimony to the power of creativity.
Psychologists have learned interesting things about creativity and creative people. Creative people use divergent thinking—the ability to generate multiple solutions to a given problem.7 The late comedian Jonathan Winters once had a network television show. In one of his regular routines someone would throw him a common object, then he would rattle off as many nontraditional uses for the object as possible. For Mr. Winters, a yardstick quickly became a fishing pole, a rifle, or one of a dozen other things. Creative people are good at this kind of task.
Creative people also share certain personality traits. They tend to be high in grit; once committed to solving a problem, they do not give up easily. They are open-minded, accepting of other people regardless of race, religion, or culture. They are motivated by the work itself, rather than by extrinsic rewards such as money or fame. They are self-assured and self-accepting. On the downside, they may be ambitious, dominant, and sometimes hostile and impatient with others. Many had demanding parents and showed passion for their chosen field at an early age. Most had supportive and influential mentors along the way.8
Curiosity is the trait of finding pleasure in exploring new ideas and possibilities. You may have an intuitive sense of your level of curiosity just based on the breadth of your interests and your daily behaviors. Do you like to stay in your own lane (not so high in curiosity)? Or do you enjoy reading about and experiencing new ideas and activities? Maybe you do not have much artistic talent but enjoy visiting museums or viewing art simply for enjoyment. Or you join a book club because you find discussing ideas from different books, authors, and genres rewarding and enriching. For a more systematic evaluation of your curiosity, look at your curiosity score from the Values-in-Action Inventory of Strengths test (VIA-IS). Where does your curiosity strength fall with respect to your other twenty-three character strengths?
Curiosity is linked to a variety of positive outcomes. Highly curious people tend to enjoy more positive moods and feelings.9 They are less bored and prefer challenging tasks at work, school, or recreation. Curiosity and complex decision-making are linked. Highly curious people tend to form closer and more meaningful relationships with others. One study even showed that among a sample of geriatric people, those higher in curiosity had a higher survival rate over five years than those lower in curiosity.10
Open-minded people listen to and consider ideas and perspectives that differ from their own. They use sound judgment in making decisions. They display good critical thinking. Instead of clinging to long-held beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, open-minded people change their minds to adapt their attitudes and beliefs to accommodate new information.
Open-mindedness has positive consequences. Open-minded students outperform others on a variety of cognitive tests, including the SAT. Leaders who keep an open mind make better decisions than those tied to a specific belief or ideology. A good leader will include among his or her staff people who have opposing views and empower them to express ideas that are at odds with his or her own.11
Open-mindedness allows diverse thought to be considered, and by allowing diverse thought, we broaden our understanding, become more empathetic, and arrive at better solutions. Narrow-minded thinking creates narrow-minded solutions. They may be sufficient solutions, but they can block alternative and perhaps better solutions. Allowing diverse thought will bring a better range of solutions to the table.
The failure to exercise open-mindedness may have widespread effects. Some people believe the US moon landings were an elaborate hoax. Others believe the world is flat. Scientific evidence strongly supports the idea of global climate change. But for a host of reasons, some politicians and others discount and disregard this evidence. Because it is a global issue, nations must come together to form international agreements to address the problem. When a country that is responsible for a substantial portion of greenhouse gas emissions denies the problem and refuses to help solve this global problem, then everyone suffers.
How open-minded are you? Look at your VIA-IS score for open-mindedness. Or reflect on your own behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. Better yet, ask close friends whether they consider you to be open-minded, and why they think this. Be honest with yourself. Most of us may be open-minded on some things, but resistant to change in others. The irony is that people who are not open-minded probably will not follow this advice. The flip side is that if you do evaluate your open-mindedness, that may be good evidence that you are indeed just that!
Love of learning means enjoying the learning of new skills and knowledge, whether formally or on your own. Love of learning may manifest itself in a passion for a particular topic, motivating one to continue to build an ever-deeper knowledge of the subject, or in learning a variety of new things. You can usually spot people who have a love of learning. They will be excited to talk about a new book they have read, a course they are taking, or a novel approach to a common problem. They prefer to engage in active learning versus passive activities such as watching television.
Psychologists identify multiple benefits associated with a love of learning. These include positive feelings about learning new things, increased ability to persevere in the face of obstacles, an enhanced sense of autonomy, better problem-solving strategies, and a sense of self-efficacy.12 The underlying theme is that love of learning is related to general well-being, both mental and physical. Evidence even suggests that love of learning may help protect against age-related cognitive decline.13
How are you doing in love of learning? Again, look at your VIA-IS score and then reflect on your behaviors. Do you attend educational events or visit a museum to see the works of an artist you have developed an interest in? Do you read—a lot? Both fiction and nonfiction? Do you get excited about new things you have learned and enjoy discussing them with friends? These are all solid indicators of a passion and love for learning.
Perspective is equivalent to wisdom. In many ways, it is a product of the other strengths of the head. Creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, and love of learning all contribute to perspective. Perspective is not arrived at overnight. It takes time to build and is a lifelong process. One can have perspective in a given domain but not others. An experienced teacher can make sense of what good education means, both for him- or herself and for others, but may lack insight on other issues. Perspective grows with depth and breadth of experience, but it does not do so inevitably. It depends on other character strengths and the ability to contemplate and reflect upon what is important. Perspective is not the same thing as intelligence. You do not have to be a genius to be wise. And knowledge alone does not equate to perspective.
Perspective is essential to deriving meaning from life. When faced with what at the time seemed to be a major, anxiety-causing issue, a biologist friend reflected, “None of this will matter in a million years!” He was trying to be funny, but the ability to put one’s trials and tribulations into a larger picture does help in managing the worry that accompanies the daily aggravations of life. Perhaps this is why psychologists have found that among older adults those high in perspective have a higher sense of well-being, despite challenging health, financial, and other issues. Whether successful aging builds perspective, or whether perspective leads to successful aging, is not known. But psychologists do know that perspective is positively related to successful adjustment throughout a person’s life span.14
Once again consider your VIA-IS score for perspective. But self-reflection is especially important for this trait. When you encounter a setback, can you place it into context? Do others turn to you for advice? Think about this last question. If you are older and more experienced, when did people begin to more frequently seek your advice? A new assistant professor may work mostly with students, but over time colleagues may increasingly turn to him or her for guidance. Who are your mentors? You probably do not choose a mentor just because he or she is highly knowledgeable on a topic. Facts can be found elsewhere, usually with a mouse click or two. Instead, you choose a mentor because he or she helps you frame things better and aids you in developing your own perspective on large issues. Thus, a good indicator that you have gained perspective is when others seek you out for your opinions, views, and ideas.
Coupled with the surge in 2007 was an internal movement within Sunni Iraq. Moderate Sunnis felt their future was best aligned with an Iraqi representative government, even though the senior leadership in this government would come from the Shia majority. The sectarian conflict between the Shia and the Sunni was generational, but moderate Sunnis felt that a future based on the radical extremist wing of their sect was not in their best interest. So they sided with the American-backed Shia representative government. This was called the Awakening, and the transition of moderate Sunni support from the insurgents to the legitimate government was sensitive and risky. Included in this transition was the switch of Sunni insurgent foot soldiers from fighting US and coalition forces to now joining with US forces in fighting their former allies, the radical Sunni insurgent forces. Bringing these new partners on board was risky, and even more challenging was gaining their trust and confidence. How would you feel if your previous enemy was now supposed to be your trusted partner?
The former insurgents now supporting the government were called Sons of Iraq. The challenge was to integrate them into the Iraqi forces and to gain their acceptance by the Iraqi military leadership, most of whom were from the Shia sect. Given the historical mistrust between the Sunni and the Shia, integrating the Sons of Iraq would require a lot of time to build the necessary trust. The US forces were eager to bring them on board and worked hard to facilitate their integration into the Iraqi security forces. It took a lot of dedicated work at Caslen’s level as a major general (at the time), and in addition the junior officers and NCOs had their work cut out for them.
One officer with oversight of about three hundred Sons of Iraq was a former West Point cadet and now a second lieutenant, Sam Ketchens. Sam had played rugby at West Point and was a scrappy, tough, hard-nosed officer. He served in the infantry, became a Ranger, and was one of the best young officers in his battalion. Caslen knew Sam from his days at West Point and watched with great interest as Sam worked with the Sons of Iraq.
Sam was given the mission to integrate the Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi Army, and to operationally deploy them to interdict the flow of foreign fighters from the Syrian border through the Jazira Desert. Gaining the support of the Iraqi Army leadership to accept these former Sunni fighters was the tough part. But Sam was great. He negotiated, reasoned, and won the support of his Iraqi Army counterparts and got these former insurgents the support, equipment, and rations they needed. In their operational mission, Sam led them to successfully block the access of foreign fighters from Syria.
Caslen recalls meeting with Sam in one of the towns in his area of operation. While Caslen was talking with him about the mission, Sam’s cell phone rang, and without an interpreter he carried on a five-minute conversation in the native Iraqi Arabic dialect with one of the sheikhs of the Sons of Iraq. When Sam was done, Caslen asked him where he learned to speak Arabic so well, and Sam said he picked it up while in Iraq. Later in the mission, Sam held a meeting with about fifteen sheikhs who were the tribal leaders of Sam’s three hundred Sons of Iraq. It was a great meeting, and Caslen departed, admiring how one twenty-three-year-old US Army lieutenant had pulled this off.
Wisdom is the ability to draw on one’s knowledge and experience to make well-informed judgments.15 Sam was a natural at this. His strengths of the head set him apart from his peers. His interpersonal skills enabled him to build functional relationships between former enemies, making him an effective leader. His innovative approach to building relationships enabled his unit to be successful.
Philosophers talk about “wicked” problems—those that are so complex that they seemingly defy solution.16 Climate change, world hunger, war, and political instability are examples. Similarly, when a large, complex organization suffers a major failure, fixing the problem can be daunting, just as wicked as any other large-scale problem. When an organization fails, it is up to the leader of that organization to fix the problem. While strengths of the gut such as grit and determination help, finding solutions most often comes from strengths of the head.
How do you change the culture of your organization, whether it is a thirty-person small business or the largest department in the US government? If you became the leader of an organization of more than three hundred thousand people with a bureaucratic culture that had lost sight of its purpose, how would you change its direction? Changing a culture is not easy. It must start with the senior person in charge, driven by that leader’s character and values.
In 2015, an elderly veteran broke his foot and drove himself to the Puget Sound Veterans Affairs (VA) emergency room in Seattle. His foot swelled so badly while driving that when he arrived, he was unable to walk the ten feet from his car to the emergency room. He called the emergency room for help. Unfortunately, the VA representative who answered the phone refused to assist him and instructed him to call 911. Soon the fire department arrived and carried the veteran the ten feet from his car to the emergency room door.
When the story went viral in the news and on social media, the VA defended their actions, quoting regulations stating that they were only allowed to treat a veteran once the veteran was inside the medical center’s building. Clearly the bureaucratic, rules-based culture caused this organization to fail this veteran, resulting in widespread distrust among the entire veteran community.
This occurred on the heels of another embarrassing incident. A year earlier, in 2014, the Phoenix VA center manipulated its appointment process to give the impression they were remaining within the fourteen-day timeline standard for veterans to get an appointment. Rather than scheduling the appointment when the veteran requested it, they waited until they entered the fourteen-day window, to give the appearance that they were meeting the regulated minimums. A whistle-blower reported a veteran who died while waiting for an appointment that had not yet been scheduled despite his request having been made almost twenty weeks earlier. A follow-up investigation by the inspector general found “widespread data manipulation intended to obscure the Phoenix VA’s poor performance.” Altogether, the inspector general received 225 allegations of wait-time manipulations at the Phoenix VA facility, and 445 additional allegations of wait-time manipulations at other VA facilities. A vociferous public outcry had significant repercussions within the VA leadership. Ultimately this crisis led to the resignation of the secretary of veterans affairs, a criminal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the eventual replacement of thirteen of the VA’s top seventeen leaders.17
President Obama knew that the VA had to be transformed and to change how they cared for veterans. To lead this transformation, the president selected Robert McDonald, who was the retired chairman, president, and CEO of Procter & Gamble (P&G). McDonald was a West Point graduate who served in the Army for five years, then served thirty-three years at P&G. His career included leading P&G businesses across North America, Asia, and Europe, and he also led several major corporate transformation efforts.18
Secretary McDonald had an immediate impact when he employed a High Performance Organization Model, designed to frame the issues at the VA and focus on transforming the organization. “It starts with purpose, values, and principles, which, to me, is the bedrock of every organization,” McDonald said. “What happened in 2014 was a violation of purpose, values, and principles.”19
Once in charge, Secretary McDonald began an intense study of the entire organization. He and his senior leaders met with veterans, veteran-service organizations, the VA workforce, and congressional members and their staffs. They wanted to see the VA from all perspectives, but principally from the veteran’s perspective. They sought meetings with critics of the VA to understand their concerns and issues. This initial assessment revealed a department in disarray that needed quick, forceful, and ethical leadership to build trust between the institution and its veterans, and between the institution and its employees and stakeholders.
One immediate and effective initiative McDonald put in place was the MyVA initiative, with the purpose of empowering employees to deliver excellent customer service to improve the veteran’s experience.20 The initiative achieved some immediate practical successes, but more important, it began rebuilding trust.
McDonald also realized that lasting transformation required buy-in from the entire department and the ability to connect VA employees at all levels. To help connect employees, McDonald introduced an internal training program called Leaders Developing Leaders (LDL), an ambitious program that also had an immediate impact. The objective was to have every employee identify with the VA’s vision and mission—from the custodian cleaning the floors at night to the high-level managers—knowing his or her work enables the VA to provide the service needed for every veteran who uses their facilities. The overarching goal was for the VA to become the number one customer-service organization in the federal government.21
Bob McDonald is a leader who lives and exemplifies character in everything he does. Character is the foundation of how he leads, how he engages with people, and how he drives the principles of any organization of which he is a part. In a paper titled “What I Believe In,” McDonald lists ten principles that “drive my behavior everyday.”22 His first principle is “Living a life driven by purpose is more meaningful and rewarding than meandering through life without direction,” and his life’s purpose “is to improve lives.” Given that purpose alone, President Obama could not have selected a more fitting candidate to transform the VA from a rules-based to a principle-based organization.
Another of McDonald’s principles is “Character is the most important trait of a leader.”23 He defines character as “always putting the needs of the organization above your own.” This definition goes to the heart of why character in a leader is so important. He followed this principle his entire career. As an Army captain he placed the needs of his soldiers above his own. At Procter & Gamble, he ensured every leader took personal responsibility for the results of their organization.
McDonald developed his leadership philosophy at West Point, where, as a freshman, he was allowed to reply with only one of four responses: “yes, no, no excuse, and I do not understand.” These four responses put him as a soon-to-be-leader in a position that is perfectly in line with his definition of character—to put the needs of others above your own. There is no equivocation or excuse in these answers; there is no “but.” He also learned at West Point to “choose the harder right over the easier wrong.” As McDonald says, “A leader who lives by his or her word can be counted on to do the unpopular thing when it is right. To always follow ‘the harder right,’ a leader must truly believe that a life directed by moral guidelines promises deeper and richer satisfaction than a self-serving, self-absorbed life. Living up to this ideal of character requires courage, determination, integrity, and self-discipline. You must live by your word and actions and know that is the most powerful demonstration of leadership.”24
As P&G CEO, McDonald also demonstrated the values of wisdom and perspective needed to understand local cultures when doing business in Asia. He could not do business in Japan the way he did in Belgium. Similar to Lieutenant Sam Ketchens’s learning Arabic in Iraq, P&G paid for language lessons for their employees working in foreign countries. Their goal was not fluency. McDonald recognized that even a rudimentary learning of the native language fosters cultural understanding, creates bridges, and builds trust.
If you need an example of a leader of character who leads not only from the heart and the gut, but also from the strengths of the head, Bob McDonald is a good place to start.
1. Know your best talents and use them systematically. We saw there are different sorts of mental abilities. You may not have had a formal assessment of your intelligence since high school, and it could be worth your time and money to make an appointment with a mental-skills coach for an assessment and discussion of your mental abilities profile. Review again the eight mental abilities that Gardner defines. Reflect on your past successes and failures, then rank order your strengths from highest to lowest, or just note your top three or four abilities. Identify your strengths and mindfully apply them to solve problems. Lieutenant Sam Ketchens did this, using his proficiency with languages to build trust with the Iraqi people with whom he worked.
2. Practice creativity. Build a creativity phase into the problem-solving approach you typically employ. Brainstorm different solutions. If you are a manager or a leader, form small teams to assist you in deriving multiple solutions to a problem. The more complex the problem, the more important this stage may be. You may also observe creative people directly and note some of the ways they go about problem-solving. Reading biographies of creative people is useful, too.
3. Rediscover your innate curiosity. Children are curious by nature. As we mature, many of us become locked into narrower lanes of interest. Adults often find it challenging to find free time to explore new ideas and ways of thinking, but successful individuals and organizations thrive on curiosity. Engage in behaviors that require curiosity. Visit a museum. Spend time reading about art or science. Keep a journal and each day write down new things that you find interesting and would like to know more about, then follow up and learn about them.
4. Open-mindedness. People can become more open-minded by intentionally entertaining views that are counter to their initial way of thinking. Someone who deeply holds to the view that global climate change is occurring should systematically explore counterfactual arguments, and vice versa for climate-change deniers. People who thoughtfully engage in counterfactual thinking develop a deeper understanding of other points of view. This may be particularly important in social attitudes and beliefs. Sometimes just exposing yourself to people with views different from your own may have a profound impact on your tolerance and acceptance of the beliefs and attitudes of others. Psychologists also point to the positive impact of additional education on instilling a more open-minded worldview. You may already have a college degree or even an advanced degree, but taking a class in philosophy or social science may be fun and rewarding. Develop that habit of exploring different sides of issues with others. Join a book club and learn different viewpoints from both books and others in the club (an activity enhanced and fortified by wine and cheese).
5. Love of learning. Engaging in learning may be done for learning’s sake alone. But you may also learn new things that will aid you in your job, as a leader, or in your family and social relationships. The military is a big believer in the importance of lifelong learning. It may surprise you to learn that the US Army is the largest education and training organization in the world. All soldiers, whether enlisted or officers, are required to attend professional military education and training courses throughout their careers. West Point cadets graduate with a bachelor’s degree and immediately go to a Basic Officer Leader Course, where they learn the specific skills needed to lead others in whatever branch they will serve. They may also take shorter qualification courses in a variety of skills, such as learning to make combat parachute jumps (known as airborne training). Four years later, they attend the Captain’s Career Course. After promotion to major, Command and General Staff College follows. Those who are ultimately selected for even higher ranks may attend the Army War College. Lifelong learning is seen as vital and essential in the profession of arms, and all branches of the military devote significant time and resources toward this end.
Take the initiative to see what training opportunities your organization may have. If you are self-employed or work for a small firm that does not have the resources to support education and training opportunities, then you may seek out these opportunities on your own. Take a computer course or two, work toward a degree in management, or learn a new language that will aid you in working with a wider variety of customers.
Not all learning needs to be job related. Some of the most rewarding new things you may learn will have nothing at all to do with your job. Learning a new recreational skill may yield many benefits. Learning to ski is fun, and you will also make new friends along the way and visit new places. Taking up bridge will do the same thing. Learn to paint or write poetry. Travel to unfamiliar places. Doing these things will expand your horizons and fuel the desire for even more learning.
6. Perspective and wisdom. These strengths build through the complexity and richness of personal experience. They are also based on the other strengths of the head, so following the advice already presented is helpful. You can be intelligent and knowledgeable but not possess perspective and wisdom. There is no easy path to perspective and wisdom, and aging alone won’t necessarily imbue you with these capacities. High social intelligence helps. Learn to use your other strengths of the head, be considerate of others and their opinions, and take time to reflect on important matters in your personal and work life. Consider things in the larger context. Doing so will set the stage for building both your perspective and your wisdom.