Think Again will increase your intelligence, persuasiveness, and self-awareness by showing you the value of admitting your ignorance, how to notice mental blind spots before they become a problem, and what you can do to improve your ability to persuade others of your point of view.
Do you still have a Blackberry phone? Blackberry possessed approximately half of the smartphone market in 2009. Five years later, they were practically nonexistent; at that point, the company had a 1% market share.
What took place? It’s all because Mike Lazaridis, the man behind the Blackberry, wouldn’t change his views.
If you recall, the iPhone from Apple was starting to take market share at this point. Lazaridis persisted in believing that the majority of customers only required a phone for the bare essentials—making calls and sending emails. We all know how it ended out, so.
The moral of the story is that we should occasionally reevaluate our convictions. Conviction is something that so many of us find comfort in because it’s much simpler. But what might the world look like if we all frequently practised being open to new concepts?
In Adam Grant’s book Think Again: The Magic of Knowing What You Don’t Know, we examine the science of altering our minds and discover how to teach others to do the same. Grant explains why we should routinely completely reevaluate our views in addition to allowing ourselves to have doubts.
If you want to be smarter and more likable, admit that you don’t know everything
Did you know that the majority of us have no idea what we’re not very good at? In fact, we frequently mistakenly believe that we are skilled in our areas of weakness. For instance, research have shown that those with the lowest scores on tests of logical reasoning and sense of humour also have the most exaggerated perceptions of these skills.
Even worse, someone who has a false sense of competence in something is less likely to work to develop it. According to a study on emotional intelligence, participants who scored the lowest on this dimension were the least inclined to want assistance in raising their emotional quotient.
What can we thus do to address this apparent blind spot? Remain modest. You will become more receptive to learning new things if you start to acknowledge that you don’t know everything. As a result, your competence will increase. Therefore, humility and confidence do not conflict with one another.
Self-belief is the foundation of confidence, whereas humility is the willingness to question your own techniques. Success comes in both forms. Although they are humble enough to question if they are employing the most effective strategies to accomplish their goal, they are self-assured in their abilities to eventually succeed.
Even the most illiterate people occasionally alter their thoughts.
Grant recounts the life of Daryl Davis, a musician of colour. He began conversing with Ku Klux Klan members in 1983 in an effort to persuade them to alter their views on race. Since then, he has convinced numerous Klan members with whom he has spoken to to reconsider their views and depart. Even more absurdly, one of these ex-KKK members sought Davis to serve as the godfather for his daughter.
As Davis’s tale demonstrates, one of the most effective methods to alter people’s prejudiced attitudes is to demonstrate the irrationality of those ideas. When Davis interacted with the Klan members, he discovered that many of them held white supremacist views only out of familial obligation.
In order to help them realise how erroneous their views were, he advised them to consider the reasons for their beliefs. From there, they started to doubt racism and, in the end, frequently had a change of heart about it.
As he looked at the rivalry between Yankees and Red Sox supporters, Grant also noticed similar behaviour. Typically, both sides viewed the opposing group as haughty, hostile, and disagreeable.
Grant instructed the baseball fans to participate in an experiment by writing an essay describing how absurd some of the reasons they despised the opposing team were. He also got them to consider the possibility that they would support the same team even if they were born into a different family.
Thus, instead of simply telling someone they are mistaken and why, try persuading them to change their mind. Demonstrating to someone that their opinions are only the result of chance is one of the finest methods to get them to reconsider their viewpoints.
Asking the correct questions will help you persuade others of your viewpoint.
Interviewing people and asking the correct questions can also successfully persuade people to reconsider their opinions. Grant recounts the experience of a young woman who opposed vaccinations and didn’t want her child to receive the measles vaccine.
Dr. Arnaud Gagneur was brought in by the maternity unit staff because they knew he could help. He employed a persuasive technique called motivational interviewing, which helps people come up with their own justifications for changing their minds as opposed to only stating your own.
This kind of interview starts off with an open curiosity to learn where the beliefs originate. Gagneur began by probing the woman’s motivations for feeling the way she did about this in open-ended questions.
Gagneur began by probing the woman’s reasoning behind her reaction to the immunisation with open-ended questioning. Gagneur then started to enquire about her thoughts on the implications of not immunising her child.
A motivating interviewer listens instead of simply trying to convince someone with a lot of evidence. Gagneur therefore acknowledged her concerns using the reflective listening method. He emphasised that it was her decision once he was done.
Giving someone the right to make their own decisions is crucial since sometimes people won’t change their ideas simply because they prefer their own freedom than truly disagreeing. After the interview, she chose to vaccinate her child on her own will; no convincing was required.
Think Again Book Review
“Think Again” by Adam Grant is a book that challenges readers to reexamine their beliefs, assumptions, and biases in order to become more open-minded and flexible in their thinking. This review takes a closer look at the book’s main ideas, strengths, and weaknesses, offering an honest evaluation of its effectiveness in helping readers become better thinkers and decision-makers.
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