Thinking Styles

In my seven years of hobo-ing around this world with a backpack upon my back and thongs upon my feet I used to dream of a life where I could work and travel, travel and work.

Most of my accommodation in those years was sleeping rough. At one stage in a 90 day journey through Europe I spent 33 nights sleeping at train stations or in a sleeping bag somewhere in a forest. A luxury night was a night in a youth hostel.

Every now and again I would pass by luxury hotels and daydream about the opportunity to sit in their lobby, rest in their beds and swan in their saunas.

Ten years ago I returned to Australia from my travels and established the True Learning Centre. Since then my work has taken me and my wife and partner Lindy, to the USA, The Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, Singapore and last month it took us to Canada.

In Canada we flew into Calgary via Vancouver and were met by a car and driver who drove us through some magnificent countryside to a place called Chateau Lake Louise. This gorgeous lake and luxury chateau is situated 45 minute from Banff and represents one of the most beautiful optic highlights you could ever have the joy of experiencing.

Lindy and I spent three nights at the Chateau. As we arrived I said to her it was the kind of place I used to try to sneak into during my hobo years, to use the lobby toilet before hiking onto a hostel and joining 50 other sweaty males in a dorm for a cheap nights sleep (with ear plugs to protect me from the snoring).

Perhaps my early dreams
were the seeds that helped
such hopeful sighs become a reality.

The reason we were at the Chateau was to join two other speakers in presenting a day of learning for 200 very successful people. I started the day by focussing on the theme of being an on-going lifelong learner, Edward De Bono followed, presenting on being an on-going thinker, and Captain John Dennis finished by presenting some scenarios for problem solving using the learning/thinking skills which Edward and I had taught.

The Capelli Bit

This model comes from the wonderful Robert Sternberg who I had the pleasure of presenting with at a conference in Minneapolis in 1992. Robert is a Yale professor who believes we can use our CAP to tap into Successful Intelligence.

'Successful intelligence is the kind of intelligence used to achieve important goals. People who succeed, whether by their own standards or by other people's, are those who have managed to acquire, develop, and apply a full range of intellectual skills, rather than merely relying on the 'inert' intelligences that schools so value. These individuals may or may not succeed on conventional tests, but they have something in common that is much more important than high test scores. They know their strengths; they know their weaknesses. They capitalize on their strengths; they compensate for or correct their weaknesses. That's it!'
--- Robert Sternberg from Successful Intelligence

I have always believed that every one of us is gifted and talented and every one of us is remedial. We all have areas of smartness in which we flourish and we all have areas where we flounder. Successful people know this and enjoy growing their strengths and teamworking with others to improve in their areas of weakness. Successful people work to overcome their weaknesses and to continually improve their strengths through learning. Indeed, successful people use their CAP.

We explored this CAP with the 200 people at the Chateau and then extended it to a CAPE. The way to get your CAP to become a CAPE is to add the E of Emotional Smartness.

Emotional intelligence may be the most important of them all. This E smartness includes:

	Self Control
	Zeal and persistence
	Ability to motivate oneself
	Understanding feelings in self and others
	Leading to remorse (when needed) and compassion

The key word for E smarts is empathy.

One of the leaders in this field of smartness is Daniel Goleman. In his wonderful book Emotional Intelligence he talks of the link between sentiment, character and moral instincts as a foundation for E smarts. He says;

There is a growing evidence that fundamental ethical stances in life stem from underlying emotional capacities.

What is the use of passing IQ tests, gaining doctorates or leading companies if we go home and beat up on our kids or abuse the ones we are supposed to love?

Where is the good in being amongst the 'world's brightest minds' if this so called 'brightness' is used for cruel or evil purposes? In 1942 Adolf Hitler gathered together some of the 'brightest' minds in Europe for the Wannassee Conference - a forum designed to work out how to eliminate Jewish people, gypsies and other minority groups. This, to me, is not smartness or intelligence.

What is the use of being an expert in physics if this expertise is used to explode bombs? It amazes me that during the cold war, groups of scientists were working on special bombs that would kill people but leave buildings intact. Perhaps somewhere along the line our priorities became a little distorted.

Some of the key strategies which can help us to fully develop our potential in the areas of our CAP and CAPE are

	Kaizen: continuous improvement
	Widezen: stretching sideways
	Timezen: wisdom with time
	Hozen: wisdom with humaneness, health and humour

We believe that the Human Resources departments should be the real Hozen providers, ensuring morale, motivation, humour and the sustainable health of the people in their organization. Indeed, perhaps we should add an e to Human Resources and call it Humane Resources.

Within the Four Zens model we look at the many ways of learning and the ways to ensure we all learn and overcome the barriers of apathy, boredom and cynicism. Part of the widezen is to know that when we get blocked there are always other ways to make sure learning happens. There are many ways of activating our CAP and CAPE to ensure deep learning. Learning which can endure. Learning which has the flexibility to transfer from one situation to another. Learning which maintains breadth as well as depth.

The Edward De Bono Magic

After our session at the Chateau exploring the CAP, CAPE and Zens of thinking, Edward De Bono shared ideas about the nature of thinking and ways to enhance our thinking abilities.

It was an honour to share the stage with Edward. I was first introduced to some of his concepts in my initial year of university in 1974 and my bookshelves house about 20 of his books.

Edward began by talking about the IQ trap. The IQ trap is where we select information that reinforces our argument which in turn supports our ideas. He explained how IQ is like a car engine, it is the potential but thinking is the skill of the driver that operates the engine. IQ does not mean that we think well, it is the potential to. Edward flips the IQ model by saying:

THINKING IS THE SKILL WITH WHICH WE USE OUR INTELLIGENCE

Edward went on to say that our intelligence models have been dominated by the Gang of Three; Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. He explained that each of these men presented a view of thinking which was unconstructive and designed for judgement and analysis which was therefore not creative. In short, the Gang of Three mentality adds up to adversarial thinking. I'm right and you're wrong. It's black not white. It's either this or that. Edward suggests this argumentative way of viewing thinking is limiting us and advises replacing it with a Parallel way of thinking.

In parallel thinking we all take the time to teamwork and to view each and every possibility. Instead of argument we widezen to a variety of possibilities and layers. Instead of 'I'm right and you're wrong' we end up with let's see together all that ways that this may be right, let's see all the ways that this may be wrong.

Edward offers a variety of strategies for this way of parallel thinking:

The PMI = Plus, Minus and Interesting Explore all the pluses together, all the minuses and all the other factors which may be interesting

The PO PO stands for hypothetical, poetic, possibility and potential. A way to create new ideas is to take two random, seemingly unrelated things and PO them together. Fuse them and see what possibilities emerge. For example, the PO of taxi drivers and learner drivers might lead to an idea of having L plates for Taxi drivers who are learning their way through the streets of a city. If you know how to get to where you are going you flag down an L taxi driver and direct them to your destination. You would be charged a lower rate on the fare because you are helping the L driver to learn. You save money and the driver learns more about the street directory.

The Six Thinking Hats This is perhaps the most famous of the De Bono thinking skills with each coloured hat representing a different style of thinking. This works by having all members of the team figuratively putting on a thinking hat of a particular colour and brainstorming together in the style of that hat before trying on another colour and exploring a totally different possibility. Check our Six Thinking Hat raps for the different ways of thinking.

Edward De Bono concluded his speech at the Chateau by saying that THINKING MATTERS and by developing more flexibility in how we think we can overcome our Intelligence Trap of having smartness but not using smartness.

Captain John Dennis

The third presenter at the Chateau was Captain John Dennis an airline pilot with Qantas and a top bloke. John had everyone form into teams of four and them presented them with some challenging problems. We had to imagine that we were the essential crew of a plane and had to make decisions about fuel, passengers, take-off, landing, dealing with difficulty, speed and climate factors to get our plane successfully across the ocean and through a foggy landing in Europe. Each thinking team used some of the thinking and learning strategies of Edward and myself to try to score the best points and save their plane, crew and passengers.

John also talked about using the GRADE process of problem solving.

G Gather all the information
R Review it
A Analyze paths of action
D Decide on a course of action
E Evaluate the course constantly

One of the key points he made was that we must learn to gather all the information without prejudice. In the G stage of problem solving we must not filter any of the information we find. We have a tendency to dismiss information because we think it is unimportant or unrelated to our problem when in fact it often becomes the most vital clue.

Thankfully, our team, captained by Lindy, managed to successfully land the plane although we did have a few rough patches in our flight. Other teams chose different strategies and provided a wonderfully smooth and safe flight. Some did not make the GRADE and crashed.

Dinners To Dine Out On

Another highlight was the fact that Lindy and I dined with Captain John, Edward De Bono and his PA Libby Fordham (Libby is a magic person from Melbourne. Her Dad is a former president of the Essendon Football Club - but we didn't hold that against her).

What amazing dinners we had. For three to four hours each night we all chatted about life and learning. Told jokes. Connected jokes to themes. Connected themes to dreams and dreams to meanings. It was such a delight to share good food with good company and good conversation.

The most evident point that emerged from the dinner table was that each of us were excited about learning. Each was open to knowing more and open to the fact that the more you know, the more there is to know, that life is an on-going adventure full of challenge, pain and joy and learning is what we make of it and how we embrace it all.

So, let us all take our CAP, CAPE, Zens, Hats, Possibility, PMI and make the GRADE. With joy.

The Six Thinking Hats Of Edward De Bono

The white hat is my neutral hat
Computer like - Stats & facts
Data in and data out
With no opinion of good or bad... Put on my white hat

The red hat is my gut feeling
Don't ask me why, It just is
Intuitive impression, It counts as such
Don't ask me why, It's just a hunch... Put on my red hat

The black hat is my logical negative
It won't work out, I'm a critical pessimist
It doesn't fit with what we know
The reasons it will fail, I will now show... Put on my black hat

The yellow hat is my positive thinking
The optimistic reasons why we'll be winning
A constructive focus on a logical benefit
It's the knowing that we can do anything... Put on my yellow hat

The green hat is a creative generation
For new ideas it's a deliberate creation
A new approach, A need for change
The stepping stone which may be strange... Put on my green hat

The blue hat is my thinking of thought
The organisation of how we do it
Defining the problem, The controller of hats
The overview to keep it on track... Put on my blue hat

The six thinking hats of Edward De Bono
It's a strong 'Yes, Yes', It's not a 'No No'
It can simplify thinking, It can help a switch
Within our Magic Brains, It can make us rich!

We say 'thank you' to Edward.

Glenn Capelli.

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