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USING KNOWLEDGE, UNDERSTANDING AND WISDOM TO BE A BETTER LEADER

4/4/2013

8 Comments

 
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Leaders unite people to work together to create a better world and cope with the changes and challenges that emerge as they pursue their goals. To do this, leadership requires negotiation and decision making. To improve your ability to make decisions and negotiate, it is helpful to appreciate the difference between knowledge, understanding and wisdom. They are easily misunderstood which can result in dangerous assumptions.

Knowledge 

Knowledge enables you to know what the situation/thing actually is-you are aware of things. You gain knowledge by processing information. When we learn, our brain processes the information our senses feed it to generate knowledge. This is importance because it enables you to identify and engage with the situation. For example, when talking about climate change, one must first know what climate change is before you can engage in the conversation! 

Crucial to this is awareness of boundaries as they enable you to distinguish between different things and situations. Agreeing where to draw boundaries, what should and should not be included, is an important and often challenging conversation. For example, should solar activity be included in the discussion on climate change? The challenge is to identify the right boundaries, the right things to include.

Understanding 

Understanding enables you to understand how the situation is being caused-you are aware of how things work. Understanding is generated by perceiving how things interact to cause a thing or situation to exist. When you say ‘I understand’ what you mean is that you are aware of what elements are interacting to cause a particular situation to exist. For example, if you say you understand climate change, you mean that you are aware of the manner in which all relevant elements interact to cause climate change. Understanding is important because it allows you to create and influence/control things and situations by changing the relevant causal relationships e.g. you understand how to influence climate change by reducing carbon emissions.

Wisdom

Wisdom is effective decision making, wise people are wise because they make the right decisions. Wisdom is generated by perceiving the consequences that cascade from things, situations and decisions. The more aware you become of consequences through time and space the greater your potential for wisdom. Wisdom is a function of perspective, the more perspective you have the greater your capacity for making better decisions. For example, a leader making a decision on climate change must recognise the consequences of their actions (or failure to act) in the present and the future, across economies and cultures. This is a highly complex task! Recognising the purpose of agents and situations facilitate this process. A wise leader assembles as much knowledge and understanding as possible to empower them to make the right decision in a timely manner. This is why wise leaders surround themselves with the best people. However, wisdom and leadership requires decision making not simply awareness. It is not enough to simply ‘ask for more information’, sometimes there is not enough time and this is where experience and judgement play a crucial role in success. 

Being a better leader

When negotiating and making decision, it is critical to be aware of what you think the situation is, how you think the situation is being generated and why the situation exists. Discussing these assumptions with others, especially your team members, can help avoid assumptions. Use the following questions to structure the conversation: 

  1. What do you think are the key elements in the current situation? List the elements in order of priority (most important first) then compare notes with your counter-party or team members.
  2. How do you think these elements are interacting to create the current situation? Identify the three most important relationships and how they interact to create the situation and compare with people you trust. 
  3. Why do you think the current situation exists? What is the purpose that brings everyone together? Try and define it as simply as possible and compare with your peers to see if they agree with you

In the information age, we often mistakenly assume that because we have a lot of information we know and understand the situation e.g. there are limits to how much any one person can know and understand  about climate change. It is vital to be aware of your limits; in a complex, uncertain and rapidly changing world, it is unlikely that you alone have sufficient knowledge, understanding and wisdom to achieve the desired result. These must be gained through communicating and collaborating with others. Now you know the difference between knowledge, understanding and wisdom, you test yourself to see if you also understand it-try explaining it to a colleague or friend!
8 Comments
Patricia link
5/4/2016 13:05:44

I found your web page after a Google image search for "understanding wisdom" for my blog (faithtrustandbreastcancer.blogspot.com). I used your image and naturally linked back to you. Awesome image!

Take good care,
Patricia

Reply
time
27/12/2017 13:34:57

this helps me a lot for my future.As i wish to become an IAS officer.

Reply
Jobarteh Fofana
20/4/2020 10:20:00

It was indeed great reading the article, is profoundly insightful. By reading the article I have a more clearer and better perspective about this very vital topic which is relevant to my study of leadership. I want to sincerely commend you for your time and effort to produce such a high quality intellectual material. I

Reply
Rick Badman link
3/11/2020 09:48:23


This post was truly worthwhile to read. I wanted to say thank you for the key points you have pointed out as they are enlightening.

Reply
Sajid Khan
22/11/2020 00:30:38

Our Leaders Keep Urging People to Improve Their Knowledge Everyday Even When the Knowledge Available is Half Baked!

It is amazing that our finest of the finest leaders like Obama, Bill Gates, Richard Bronson, Bill Clinton, Oprah etc., all keep emphasizing the importance of improving one’s knowledge base by reading and learning every day! Their advice is very effective for improving MIND EDUCATION that upgrades professional skills. But when it comes to BRAIN EDUCATION the knowledge that is available and one learns is simply fuzzy, half-baked and even false!
So those who keep learning the knowledge related to brain education, keep learning half-baked and ineffective skills. The domain of the mind is science, math and every other professional skill. The domain of the brain is wisdom which in scientific terms is emotional intelligence.
Firstly the definition of the mind itself is still fuzzy. Can you believe there is no topic mind in High School psychology textbooks. The self-image is the face of the mind. In order to define, know and understand the mind, define, know and understand the mind as the self-image. So our leaders must advise the masses to heal their self-image.
Secondly after all these thousands of years of researching wisdom all that our experts keep doing is they keep defining wisdom by its attributes. It is like they keep defining the tree by its fruit! Just imagine if you have not seen a tree and you are told that the tree produces these fruit. How can one grasp the knowledge of the tree by knowing its fruit? No wonder wisdom is as fuzzy as ever and to this day wisdom remains a philosophy!
There is a very simple trick that changes wisdom from being a philosophy to wisdom becoming a science. Wisdom and emotional intelligence are the same and they are generated by an emotionally healthy brain. So define wisdom as EMOTIONAL HEALTH. Focus on emotional health and wisdom will emerge effortlessly.
They keep trying to change and improve peoples’ minds. The mind itself is the fragrance of the brain and you cannot improve a fragrance on its own. The source of the fragrance, the brain has to be healed.
In effect what our leaders are asking from the masses is urging them to keep learning fuzzy knowledge every single day. They should be telling the people that the nature of our struggles are emotional health struggles…

Reply
Stella link
7/1/2021 20:48:14

First time reading this, thanks for sharing

Reply
Stella link
11/1/2021 23:45:24

I enjoyed reeading your post

Reply
Rose
11/3/2022 00:11:12

Very informative.
I just stumbled on it.

Reply



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