True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing – Socrates
When I was a whipper-snapper of a junior manager, educated, proud, arrogant in thought, if not action, I was humbled during a group exercise. In the event, there was a problem that needed to be solved, and if I remember correctly, it was deciding what we needed to do after our plane had crashed in a desert. There was a selection of about twenty items that we could use to help solve our problem, of which we were allowed to choose five. So, for example, we would need to decide first whether to stay with the plane and hope to be rescued, or to take some supplies, leave, and try to find help. Then there would be a number of items that could be used to assist in each decision, such as mirrors, water bottle, map, etc., but we were limited in the number of items that could be used. The exercise was in two parts. First, we needed to try to solve the problem as individuals, and, second, we would negotiate within a group of five or six to provide the group answer. We were scored both individually and as a group against the expert answers.
The exercise was fun and I relished the challenge to try to solve it. I was, after all, a lover of puzzles, such as brain teasers, Sudoku, Kakuro, crossword puzzles, and the Jumble. I felt I was quick of mind, and, confident with my individual answers, I was the first in the room of one hundred participants to find my way to the coffee bar while waiting for everyone to finish.
After the break, we went back to work as a group, where I was to discover that the others did not share my enthusiasm for my answers. After considerable discussion, we submitted our group answers, which I was sure were not the best answers. I imagined that when the expert answers were revealed, my colleagues would wish that they had listened more attentively to my suggestions.
As you might guess, I was wrong, and our group answers were spot on. Of the twenty groups in the room, our group received the highest score and we all won a book prize. Unfortunately, my individual score was the lowest in the group. I was humbled, but not enough that I wasn’t considering that the so-called experts who designed the scenario didn’t know what they were talking about. And not so humbled that I was ready to be fully open to having my thoughts and ideas challenged.
However, three years later, after a managerial promotion, I participated in a similar exercise with a different scenario, and despite feeling a bit wiser and being more careful with my individual answers, at the end of the day, the results were the same. In fact, they were exactly the same. Our group score was once again the best in the room and my individual score was the worst in the group! An incredible coincidence, in my opinion, and another blow to my ego, darn it!
In both scenarios, if the group had followed my plan, we would have found ourselves deeper in trouble, or possibly even killed.
How could this be possible? How could I be so wrong about things? Did I have blind spots that could be hurting me, or possibly hurting my team? I was, ultimately in my role, someone who was expected to think clearly during emergencies. And, more importantly, expected to make wise decisions.
Those many years ago, I didn’t know much about intellectual humility, or any of the twenty-four virtues actually. But what I did know after my successive failures was that I needed to start entertaining the idea that I might be wrong about a great many things, and that I needed to discuss my ideas more openly with my mentors, colleagues, and team. I learned to seek out and accept feedback more maturely, even if it was painful. I became curious about my potential blind spots, frequently asking myself, “What questions should I be asking? What don’t I know?”
More than thirty years have passed since those humbling exercises, years in which I have gained more experience and wisdom, but I haven’t forgotten the lesson. I still share ideas with my colleagues, mentors, and team, and solicit feedback on them. When there is an emergency and the matter is urgent, then yes, I must make the best decision I can in the moment, and having many more years of experience dealing with urgencies has reduced the risk of my making poor decisions. But when there is time, I still consult others.
I’ve become a better listener as a result. Like everyone, I have a few raving fans that always say nice things about me no matter how much I mess up and a few contrarians who challenge every single thing I do or say. What I’ve gotten better at doing, however, is taking my ego out of the equation. Our egos like to be stroked by our fans and to lash out at our contrarian nemeses, but if we can put those egos aside, it’s easier to filter out the key messages from the emotional fluff (positive or negative) from both groups to decide what changes need to be made, if any, to our ideas and decisions.
I admit, however, that it isn’t always easy. I can still occasionally get my back up when I’m challenged, and realize I still have biases about people’s intellect and wisdom based on their age, education, profession, character, and extent of travel experiences. When I notice my bias, I have to force my ego back down and recognize that everyone’s perspective is worthy of an ear and consideration, that even a five-year old child might prove me wrong, and that grade-school dropouts might expose blind spots, which, in fact, they frequently have.
We’ve all heard the saying ‘older people are stuck in their ways”, and now that I’m older, I’m discovering why. It’s because older people have many years of experimentation, trial and error, and experience behind them in order to make sense of the world and find a way to fit in it. For myself, I feel like I’m open to change, but only if it makes sense to do so. What I’m discovering, however, is that it requires more convincing to cause me to make a change these days.
And this can be a dangerous place to be. I remember that, as a first-time supervisor, the boss I worked for would yell at his employees and belittle them. I mentioned to him that his management style might not be serving him well, but, after disparaging me for my feedback, he reminded me that his region was the most profitable in the company, so there was no reason to change. After I told him that I thought the path to success was maybe more important than the success itself, he told me never to bring the topic up again. A year later, after numerous harassment complaints against my boss were investigated, he was fired.
It’s good to take time to carefully consider if making a change will serve us better or not in the long run. But it’s dangerous when we are provided information or advice that clearly would benefit us, we know it would benefit us, and then we purposefully choose not to follow it. There could be legitimate reasons for doing so, but sheer stubbornness, arrogance, or a bruised ego shouldn’t be any of them. They just lead us down that slippery slope toward involuntary exclusion, which would not be serving our successful aging strategy well. At best, we might be able to surround ourselves with other like-minded, but close-minded, people. But where’s the joie de vivre in an existence like that?
Five Tips for Developing Intellectual Humility
Like our muscles, our virtues can be strengthened. For example, the virtue of Gratitude can be strengthened by daily journaling, which has shown to have positive health outcomes. The Self-regulation virtue can be strengthened by remembering to take a few deep breaths to control anger before speaking. And the virtue of Citizenship can be improved by volunteering in the community or running for office in the local government. If you want to develop your Intellectual Humility virtue, here are some actions that have worked somewhat for me:
Read Extensively
When reading non-fiction, don’t just select books in which you and the author see eye to eye. Read books from people with contrarian views to gain a broader perspective on a topic. Are you a hard-core atheist? Then read books about the case for the existence of God, not necessarily to change your mind, but to better understand where the religious folks are coming from. Outspoken carnivore? Read a couple of books about the case for vegetarianism. Even if you decide not to make a change in your diet, at least you’ll have a broader understanding of the nutrition discussion and be able to speak more intelligently about your position without coming across as an arrogant buffoon.
Ask Questions
We all have blind spots, biases, and all kinds of things that may not serve us well. It’s good to ask ourselves probing questions, ask others for feedback, or even hire a coach to help us broaden our thinking. For example, you may have a strong opinion about a sibling’s choice to be a professional artist instead of, say, a highly-paid executive for which s/he was trained. Instead of being judgemental, you could ask your sibling lots of questions to learn more about the career choice. Or maybe you think the practice of meditation is just for reality-avoiding hippies. Talk to those who are practicing it to get their perspective on the health benefits. Or, let’s say you have a vision for your ideal life. Perhaps you have a strong opinion on how to achieve that life, but it’s still useful to ask yourself, “What would some of the alternate routes look like to achieve my ideal life?” A life or business coach can probe even deeper. What would you like your life to look like? What would you need to accomplish to get closer to that ideal life? What challenges will you face along the way? If nothing changes, how will that affect your life? What habits do you need to change to support who you want to be? And the list goes on.
Ask for Help, Even if You Think You Don’t Need It
The thing about our blind spots is that, well, we’re blind to them. One of the ways to expose them, while at the same time building our intellectual humility muscle, is to ask for help on things with which we feel we already have a solid grip. A recent example in my working world is our plan to change the décor and location of some furniture in our seniors’ home to accommodate a piece of exercise equipment. I was about to sign off on the plan until I realized we hadn’t consulted the residents themselves. And am I ever thankful that we did! We had underestimated the value to the residents of a little-used sitting area that we were going to relocate, but we quickly learned how and why that little space was so sacred to some of them. How would we have known if we hadn’t asked for their help in developing the plan?
Consider Our Opinions in the Absence of Egotism
If we can just put our egos aside for a few minutes and consider why we have certain opinions, we may uncover some of our biases and think more clearly. For example, early on as a vegetarian, I was sometimes criticized for my dietary choice by a few of my outspoken meat-eating colleagues, after which my ego wanted to respond in kind. But when I got past my ego, I found it useful to remember why I became vegetarian in the first place and to regularly consider if it’s still serving me well. Since I initially chose vegetarianism for health reasons, I’ve recently experimented with eating fish to see if I can discern any health improvements by doing so. If I can’t, then there’s no reason to change. However, if I can see a health improvement, I should seriously consider a permanent change to my diet. Likewise, I’ve been criticized by some for my minimalist tendencies. “No sane human can live in less than 2,000 square feet!” wrote one critic. I’ve even been accused of being a traitor to Canada because I don’t buy things to support the economy. Traitor? “Ouch,” says my patriotic ego that wants to respond with an attack. But, ego aside, I’ve experimented with my lifestyle in numerous ways, and even though I can afford to buy things, I just find that being more frugal than most and keeping my life simple has been better for my mental health and, more broadly, the environment. So, thus far, there’s no reason to change.
Make Intellectual Humility a Daily Reflection
One of the daily practices with which I’ve been experimenting lately is selecting two of the 24 virtues and ruminating on them. Today, one of the two virtues I selected was ‘intellectual humility’. Here’s how my focus on it has manifested so far this morning:
- I have strong opinions about what happens after we die, which, despite the messaging I’ve received on the many pilgrimages I’ve participated in, is…nothing. There is no afterlife, no heaven, and no hell. Just nothing. Of course, I must consider that I could be wrong. So today, I’m reading the Dalai Lama’s book, Becoming Enlightened, to better understand the Buddhist perspective on reincarnation.
- Somehow over the years, I’ve convinced myself that the practice of meditation, specifically the part about trying to think of nothing, is too hard, so in my quiet moments, I’ve been partial to creative visualization or the Ancient Stoic practice of negative visualization, whereby I focus on the idea that I’ve lost something important in my life, such as my ability to walk, so that I might have a greater appreciation for my hiking life (it works, by the way). But this morning, I meditated for 45 minutes and discovered that, although yes it was difficult, I was able to enjoy moments when I wasn’t tortured by my self-talk. As a result, I’ve decided to work on it daily for three months to see if a permanent change is in order.
The ancient philosophers held wisdom as the highest virtue, under which intellectual humility is categorized. We think of wisdom as something gained over time with age and experience, and intellectual humility seems to work the same way. At least for me. I still sometimes feel shame for the intellectual arrogance I had as a young man, but I recognize that this is par for the course of human development, so I’ve been more forgiving of Past Dave. Besides, despite my progress to date, I feel that there is still much improvement I can make in living this virtue. Future Dave may yet still be embarrassed by the intellectual arrogance of Present Dave.