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Those who adapt do so by a) teaching their brains to work in a way that doesn’t come naturally (the creative person learns to become organized through discipline and practice, for instance), b) using compensating mechanisms (such as programmed reminders), and/or c) relying on the help of others who are strong where they are weak.
Differences in thinking can be symbiotic and complementary instead of disruptive.
Practice radical open-mindedness.
if you can recognize that you have blind spots and open-mindedly consider the possibility that others might see something better than you—and that the threats and opportunities they are trying to point out really exist—you are more likely to make good decisions.
Radical open-mindedness is motivated by the genuine worry that you might not be seeing your choices optimally. It is the ability to effectively explore different points of view and different possibilities without letting your ego or your blind spots get in your way. It requires you to replace your attachment to always being right with the joy of learning what’s true.
Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with “not knowing” is more important than whatever it is you do know.
Radically open-minded people know that coming up with the right questions and asking other smart people what they think is as important as having all the answers.
Recognize that decision making is a two-step process: First take in all the relevant information, then decide.
Taking in others’ perspectives in order to consider them in no way reduces your freedom to think independently and make your own decisions. It will just broaden your perspective as you make them.
People typically try to prove that they have the answer even when they don’t. Why do they behave in this unproductive way? It’s generally because they believe the senseless but common view that great people have all the answers and don’t have any weaknesses. Not only does this view not square with reality, it stands in the way of their progress. People interested in making the best possible decisions are rarely confident that they have the best answers. They recognize that they have weaknesses and blind spots, and they always seek to learn more so that they can get around them.
Most people seem much more eager to put out (convey their thinking and be productive) than to take in (learn). That’s a mistake even if one’s primary goal is to put out, because what one puts out won’t be good unless one takes in as well.
Recognize that to gain the perspective that comes from seeing things through another’s eyes, you must suspend judgment for a time—only by empathizing can you properly evaluate another point of view.
Remember that you’re looking for the best answer, not simply the best answer that you can come up with yourself.
Ask yourself: Am I seeing this just through my own eyes? If so, then you should know that you’re terribly handicapped.
Be clear on whether you are arguing or seeking to understand, and think about which is most appropriate based on your and others’ believability.
I define believable people as those who have repeatedly and successfully accomplished the thing in question—who have a strong track record with at least three successes—and have great explanations of their approach when probed.
Appreciate the art of thoughtful disagreement.
In thoughtful disagreement, your goal is not to convince the other party that you are right—it is to find out which view is true and decide what to do about it.
it’s pointless when people get angry with each other when they disagree because most disagreements aren’t threats as much as opportunities for learning. People who change their minds because they learned something are the winners, whereas those who stubbornly refuse to learn are the losers.
Triangulate your view with believable people who are willing to disagree.
Plan for the worst-case scenario to make it as good as possible.
My point is that you can significantly raise your probabilities of making the right decisions by open-mindedly triangulating with believable people.
Open-minded people are more curious about why there is disagreement. They are not angry when someone disagrees.They understand that there is always the possibility that they might be wrong and that it’s worth the little bit of time it takes to consider the other person’s views in order to be sure they aren’t missing something or making a mistake.
Open-minded people genuinely believe they could be wrong; the questions that they ask are genuine. They also assess their relative believability to determine whether their primary role should be as a student, a teacher, or a peer.
Open-minded people always feel compelled to see things through others’ eyes.
Open-minded people know when to make statements and when to ask questions.
Open-minded people are always more interested in listening than in speaking; they encourage others to voice their views.
Open-minded people can take in the thoughts of others without losing their ability to think well—they can hold two or more conflicting concepts in their mind and go back and forth between them to assess their relative merits.
Open-minded people approach everything with a deep-seated fear that they may be wrong.
A few good decision makers working effectively together can significantly outperform a good decision maker working alone—and even the best decision maker can significantly improve his or her decision making with the help of other excellent decision makers.
Mental pain often comes from being too attached to an idea when a person or an event comes along to challenge it. This is especially true when what is being pointed out to you involves a weakness on your part. This kind of mental pain is a clue that you are potentially wrong and that you need to think about the question in a quality way.
you should switch from a fighting mode to an “asking questions” mode, compare your believability with theirs,
I practice Transcendental Meditation and believe that it has enhanced my open-mindedness, higher-level perspective, equanimity, and creativity. It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight.
Most people do not look thoughtfully at the facts and draw their conclusions by objectively weighing the evidence. Instead, they make their decisions based on what their deep-seated subconscious mind wants and then they filter the evidence to make it consistent with those desires. It is possible to become aware of this subconscious process happening and to catch yourself, or to allow others to catch you going down this path. When you’re approaching a decision, ask yourself: Can you point to clear facts (i.e., facts believable people wouldn’t dispute) leading to your view? If not, chances are
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Being calm and reasonable in how you present your view will help prevent the “flight-or-fight” animal/amygdala reaction in others. Be reasonable and expect others to be reasonable. Ask them to point to the evidence that supports their point of view. Remember, it is not an argument; it is an open exploration of what’s true. Demonstrating that you are taking in what they are telling you can be helpful.
I have no doubt that in the years ahead such “machine-thinking” tools will continue to develop and that smart decision makers will learn how to integrate them into their thinking.
Gaining open-mindedness doesn’t mean losing assertiveness. In fact, because it increases one’s odds of being right, it should increase one’s confidence.
Becoming truly open-minded takes time. Like all real learning, doing this is largely a matter of habit; once you do it so many times it is almost instinctive, you’ll find it intolerable to be any other way.
For me, there is really only one big choice to make in life: Are you willing to fight to find out what’s true? Do you deeply believe that finding out what is true is essential to your well-being? Do you have a genuine need to find out if you or others are doing something wrong that is standing in the way of achieving your goals? If your answer to any of these questions is no, accept that you will never live up to your potential. If, on the other hand, you are up for the challenge of becoming radically open-minded, the first step in doing so is to look at yourself objectively.
“Would you rather I be open with my thoughts and questions or keep them to myself?”; “Are we going to try to convince each other that we are right or are we going to open-mindedly hear each other’s perspectives to try to figure out what’s true and what to do about it?”; or “Are you arguing with me or seeking to understand my perspective?”
Because of the different ways that our brains are wired, we all experience reality in different ways and any single way is essentially distorted.
In fact, I attribute as much of my success to what I’ve learned about the brain as I do to my understanding of economics and investing.
I wanted to work with independent thinkers who were creative, conceptual, and had a lot of common sense.
The better we know ourselves, the better we can recognize both what can be changed and how to change it, and what can’t be changed and what we can do about that. So no matter what you set out to do—whether on your own, as a member of an organization, or as its director—you need to understand how you and other people are wired.
Understand the power that comes from knowing how you and others are wired.
Using Myers-Briggs and other assessments, we evolved a much clearer and more data-driven way of understanding our different types of thinking.
Just as our physical attributes determine the limits of what we are able to do physically—some people are tall and others are short, some muscular and others weak—our brains are innately different in ways that set the parameters of what we are able to do mentally.
Everyone is like a Lego set of attributes, with each piece reflecting the workings of a different part of their brain. All these pieces come together to determine what each person is like, and if you know what a person is like, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you can expect from them.
Just as a baseball card compiles the relevant data on a baseball player, helping fans know what that player is good and bad at, I decided that it would be similarly helpful for us to have cards for all of our players at Bridgewater.
As Kegan wrote in his book An Everyone Culture, “from the individual experience of probing in every one-on-one meeting, to the technologically integrated processes for discussing . . . issues and baseball cards, to the company-wide practices of daily updates and cases, Bridgewater has built an ecosystem to support personal development. The system helps everyone in the company confront the truth about what everyone is like.”