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Changing Minds: The Art And Science of Changing Our Own And Other People's Minds (Leadership for the Common Good) | |||||||
 
| 60% Recommended by our customers. Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Catalog: Book Release date: 2006-09-30 Media: Paperback Number of pages: 244 Ean: 9781422103296 Book Isbn: 1422103293  Tip: compare prices with similar booksAuthor:
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Think about the last time you tried to change someone’s mind about something important: a voter’s political beliefs; a customer’s favorite brand; a spouse’s decorating taste. Chances are you weren’t successful in shifting that person’s beliefs in any way. In his book, Changing Minds, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner explains what happens during the course of changing a mind – and offers ways to influence that process. Remember that we don’t change our minds overnight, it happens in gradual stages that can be powerfully influenced along the way.This book provides insights that can broaden our horizons and shape our lives. |
| User Reviews: |
 Written on February 23, 2005 Summary: Valuable insights Most of Howard Gardner's work is written for an academic and education audience. This book, like his earlier Leading Minds, is directed primarily to a business and general audience. I regard Leading Minds as one of the best current books on leadership and Changing Minds adds very useful insights into how to be effective in one of the key activities of a leader. The core of the book is concerned with identifying the seven factors at work in changes of mind and how they are applied in situations ranging from dealing with small homogeneous groups through to dealing with large and very diverse groups. In the course of the book, he appeals to the concept of the 'schooled' and the 'unschooled' mind (a person who is vey sophisticated in some fields may judge issues outside those fields in an 'unschooled' way), which he introduced in Leading Minds. He also refers to - and updates - his now famous concept of multiple intelligences,with the advice that one is more likely to be successful in mind changing if several intelligences can be appealed to (think of the power of a song - words and music - compared with plain text). The book provides a very valuable guide for those concerned with gaining acceptance for and implementing change. For a somewhat different - and also very useful - perspective, it is worth comparing this book with Hultman: Making Change Irresistible. Gladwell: The Tipping Point also provides a different but complementary perspective on the factors and agents in acceptance of a new idea, fashion or concept. He focuses on what it is that causes an 'infection' to move suddenly from a few isolated cases to a full-blown 'epidemic'. The book contains useful reflections on the skills and situations required for this to happen.  Written on December 19, 2004 Summary: A difficult read, but worth the effort Howard Gardner is probably best known for his theory that human intelligence has at least 8 dimensions, each dimension requiring acknowledgement and development. His work is generally considered part of the 'constructivist' school of psychology, which seeks to correct various failings in the standard American philosophy of mind: behaviorism. For the behaviorist, scientist can only discuss measurable and repeatable phenomena. 'Anecdotal' stories are explicitly disqualified, with particular emphasis on 'privileged insight' of our own 'self'. This leads to a favorite constructivist joke about behaviorists, which Gardener quotes early in the book: "So the two behaviorists had just finished making love, and the first one turns to the other, and says, 'It was good for you, was it good for me?'" Constructivism seeks to remove the straightjacket behaviorism imposes on scientific dialog. It holds that learners impose meaning on the world, and so "construct" their own understanding based on their unique experiences. I mention this to put 'Changing Minds' in context. Constructivism is far from 'accepted' among academics or the general population. Despite Gardner's claims to the contrary, most academics would argue his theories are non-scientific, anecdotal gobbly-gook. He fails to obey the behaviorist dogma about relying on probability and measurable phenomena, and should not be allowed any voice in 'scientific academia'. Without this backdrop of academic controversy, the book's message will seem oddly out of balance. Gardner's themes don't really emerge naturally for the reader. This occurs because his arguments are designed to address an academic milieu the general reader will not know. Gardener sidesteps the academic debates by addressing the needs of educators rather than psychologists. According to Gardner, the school is an environment for 'changing minds'. This is going to sound a bit odd to most, since most would argue school is for 'imparting truths' upon the 'blank slates' of student minds. It isn't a matter of 'changing minds', but putting something there in the first place. Though strange to see this material presented as 'business literature', the emphasis on education over 'theory' provides Gardner an escape from academic nihilism. Changing the minds of students involves engaging the ideas occupying student attention and reshaping them to more closely approximate some goal. For Gardner, 4 classes of 'ideas' can be distinguished: A. Concepts: the elementary units of logic. The notion 'dog' is a concept. B. Stories: the narrative flow of conceptual units producing emotional response. For example, the feeling 'I understand' is an emotional response to a good story. C. Theories: Stories, when generalized, become theories D. Skills: Phenomena the 'self' or 'mind' can generate via an activating sequence of bodily motions. The process of 'molding' involves 'representational redescription' of their attention. Gardner comes back to this theme over and over, again. Change can only take place when the representational models take new forms. This requires the 'change agent' (teacher) to engage the student in a process of tearing up the existing model and reconstructing it in a new form. This produces new theories about how the world works. These efforts are aided by 'resonance', an emotional experience reinforcing the 'new model'. They are inhibited by 'resistance', or attachments to the old models. Additionally, the teacher must be prepared for either abrupt or gradual change. Gardner unfortunately ignores the mental mechanics of 'changing minds', but he is quite willing to acknowledge it takes its own pace. The slow is just as effective as the fast. Gardener argues there are 7 factors (levers). Each must be considered when the 'change agent' (teacher) designs the process of tearing up the old model and reconstructing something different. 1. Reason-the act of logical inspection 2. Research-the act of study 3. Resonance-the experience of 'understanding' 4. Representational redescriptions: with out the images. Nothing happens 5. Resources and rewards 6. Real world event 7. Resistance-persistent images which the audience is attached to Additionally, the change agent must consider the social setting. A. Is his presentation 'face to face' or indirect? B. Is the presentation directed at a homogeneous audience, or one with significant disagreements? C. Someone else, or the change agent themselves? With this in mind, Gardner generalizes the realm of 'politics' as one where 'the change audience' is approached 'directly', the audience is diverse and the focus 'external' to the agent. On the other hand, a doctor's approach is direct; the audience has one frame of mind and is 'external' to the agent. In contrast, a scientist changes minds indirectly via his publications. Finally, Gardner suggests being aware of the audience's initial state of mind. In some cases this is a matter of expectations, but other times the 'initial state' is a function of recent events. For example, at the start of the ideal class, the 'students' are all alert, well fed and eager to understand the teacher's logical presentation. The reality is that many students will be dealing with fear, distrust, dislikes, pain, language differences and disinterest. After making some rather futile attempts to illustrate these ideas with 'the lives of famous people', Gardner offers a token plan: Before launching into a change program, answer the following questions: 1. What is the redescriptional goal: Do you want to 'redescribe' a concept? a story? a skill? 2. Who is your audience? Are they diverse? 3. What is your relationship with the audience? 4. What impact will the 'change plan' have on audience? 5. Which of the 7 factors (levers) is most important? 6. Is the change ethical? Is the world better off after the change has been made? This above plan relies heavily on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a program widely derided by academics. In particular, the standard NLP question 'is the change ethical' represents something of a logical land mine for this somewhat academic presentation. Entire books are devoted to this topic. Overall, 'Changing Minds' suffers an inability to focus on a straightforward message. Despite this, the suggestions are more than worthy of your attention. The book is well worth the effort required to tease out some meaning. Written on November 15, 2004 Summary: Interesting, but not terribly revealing! For well over 10 years, Howard Gardner has been writing books exploring many aspects of the mind - from how the mind creates, to traits leaders have. Following this path, he has now written a book exploring the phenomenon of mind changing. How do we do it? What plays a factor in it? Why is it so dang hard to convincce people to give up well cherished (wrong) beliefs for new (right) ones? The problem is that we get only the vaguest of answers to these questions. As I like to say, the best psychology tells us most of the things we already knew (but may not have known we knew). This book follows suit. It might explain which of the seven "factors" (listed by the reviewer below) plays a part in different mind changing situations, but hardly eluminates beyond that. For instance, in a chapter devoted to how politicians try and change our minds, we hear about Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (both iconoclasts who were successful in the end at mind changing). The explanation to their success in mind changin is that they were able to tell their story, their nation's story, and a vision for the country's future, in different conceptual language than their opponents (and convine us that their own story was better. That answer seems quite right, but I was hoping it would be followed by examples of how they did this - how they told stories different from their opponents, while gradually winning acceptance for them. Gardner hardly gives any. Much of the book is like this. After he explains the general principles utilized in one situation, he doesn't bolster it with detail and example, but simply moves on to the next situation. What it all makes for is a somewhat (somewhat!) interesting, but hardly revealing, book. Written on October 10, 2004 Summary: Artfully written discourse on the mind and how it changes Howard Gardner summarizes an impressive ensemble of information about changing minds. But perhaps more importantly, he recognizes the limits inherent in such an endeavor. Minds are not something we can readily study with a microscope or experiment on physically. A study of this topic must of necessity be anecdotal and philosophical. But rather than spend chapters defining taxonomies of thought or relentlessly hammering home his theories, he wittily teaches us with both fun with absurd illustrations of his ideas. He chooses a silly essay by Nicholson Baker alongside the far more practical 80/20 principle to focus on in Chapter 1. He names his levers of mind-changing with the starting letters "re" as if to artfully acknowledge that there could be 8 or 6 instead of the 7 he has arrived at. And unlike many writers, Gardner adheres to the rule of writing about what he knows. Many of his examples hail from academia where he is an assured expert such as the successful attempt by Dartmouth's president to revitalize that institution. He regales us with political leaders that resonate with us: Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Gandhi, Mandela, and Thomas Jefferson to name a few. And one of his best examples serves as a powerful experiment in mind-changing (at least for me). He revisits the blow-up between the esteemed Cornell West and Lawrence Summers. I remember reading about this in the press and wondering what all the fuss could be about. Like Summers, I "believe in being direct, expressing my views, and letting the chips fall where they may." After reading Gardner's fictional account of how the meeting might have played out, I've changed my mind about the best way to influence others. And just as Gardner describes, this process started some time ago (with a trusted superior suggesting I work at being a little more "discrete"). Gardner's book has proven to be the tipping point in my own change-of-mind and a useful blue-print for how to change minds unlike my own.  Written on October 2, 2004 Summary: Empty envelope I bought this book without first reading other customers' reviews. Big mistake. Had I done so I would not have spent the money for this "empty envelope"; that is, attractive title, well-known author. Unfortunately, very little depth inside -- in fact, empty. |
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| Catalog | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book |
| Release date | 2006-09-30 | 2007-04-03 | 2006-07-03 | 1993-04-20 | 1996-06-13 | 2000-09-17 |
| Media | Paperback | Hardcover | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback |
| Number of pages | 244 | 196 | 320 | 496 | 416 | 304 |
| Ean | 9781422103296 | 9781591399124 | 9780465047680 | 9780465025107 | 9780465082803 | 9780465026111 |
| Book Isbn | 1422103293 | 1591399122 | 0465047688 | 0465025102 | 0465082807 | 0465026117 |
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