Leading through Wise Reasoning

Wisdom and leading might seem an obvious pairing. However, the subject index in the Sage Handbook on Leadership (2011) identifies the word “wisdom” exactly zero times.  Perhaps scholars and practitioners just assume that effective leaders are also wise leaders. Perhaps the difficulty of either measuring the concept or even having near consensus concept’s dimension prevents scholarly research on the possible link between leading and wisdom. (A good overview of these issues can be found here.) Yet most people possess a certain understanding or view of wisdom. Wisdom in this common sense often means knowledge and experience that produces a set of abilities in a person. This set of abilities fairly implies good sense and judgment. This common way of thinking about wisdom sees wisdom as a personal characteristic. However, social and behavioral research on wisdom is moving in a new direction.

Wise reasoning

This new way of thinking about wisdom shifts the focus more toward a social or ecological view of wisdom. In this perspective wisdom takes on a broader cast that stresses the importance of context and an interpersonal dimension. Igor Grossman, a psychologist at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), is perhaps the preeminent researcher in this area. Grossman suggests that wise reasoning is close to what Aristotle called practical wisdom. Some of his most recent work can be found here and here

Four themes or principles comprise the wise reasoning framework:

• Intellectual humility – recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge (see earlier post on intellectual humility)
• Recognition of uncertainty and change – understanding that contexts change over time and the need to be open-minded about the direction of change
• Perspective-taking of diverse viewpoints – open-mindedness toward different viewpoints on an issue, seeking others’ perspective, and seeing the broader context (see earlier post on empathetic deliberative democracy).
• Integration of different viewpoints – search for a compromise between different interests at stake for the issue.

Philosophically, none of these themes or principles are new. These principles recognize that domain-general cognitive abilities (e.g., propositional logic, fluid intelligence) are often insufficient for understanding the complexities of social life. Domain-general abilities may work well for solving structured problems. But they may not be suited for working through ill-structured or wicked problems.

Issues that significantly involve other people are ill-structured in the sense that they include value tradeoffs, often have unclear means or end goals, or abound in incomplete information. In these situations applying a general rule is problematic. Dialogical thinking, consisting of an awareness of an inherent contradiction between different interests we face as well as understanding that such interests are in flux and change, helps people work through ill-structured problems.

Propositions about wise reasoning

Research on wise reasoning has generated significant if preliminary findings:

• People seem more capable of wise reasoning when they reflect on other people’s challenges than when their own personal issues are the focus of reflection. When we adopt a third-person or observer perspective we reason more broadly and focus more on the interpersonal and on moral ideals such as fairness. Wise reasoning seems to require “ego-decentering.” Wise reasoning increases when we take a self-distanced perspective.
• Cultural-historical, personal-motivational, and situational contexts play a role in wisdom. Wise behaviors are contingent on situational properties. Our ability to reason wisely depends on a variety of external factors.
• Wise reasoning is associated with a focus on the bigger picture, more complex emotional representation (emotional balance), less reactivity to adverse events, adaptive emotion regulation, and greater forgiveness. What this suggests is that wise reasoning does not require uniform emotional downregulation (that is, trying to dissipate or remove all emotions). Having a rich and balance emotional life contributes to wise reasoning.
• A small but positive relationship exists between wise thinking and crystalized intelligence and the personality traits of openness and agreeableness.
• Although prior research suggests that higher socioeconomic status (SES) usually produces better performance on standardized intelligence tests, research on wise reasoning suggests a reverse pattern. Even when controlling for gender, age, social desirability, emotional intelligence, agreeableness, and abstract cognitive abilities, such as executive functioning and crystalized IQ, higher SES is associated with lower wise reasoning scores on interpersonal issues. The primary reason given for this is that people with lower SES pay more attention to an interaction partner and have greater intentional engagement with others. More colloquially one might say that higher SES people tend “not to give a f**k” about others, especially lower SES people. More clinically, SES people focus more on themselves than on others.

Wise reasoning and leadership

Grossman and Brienza give a succinct summary of the relationship between wise reasoning and leadership:

Leadership not only requires decision making about regulations and policies. Leaders also serve as models and guides by which business and society can change for the better, thereby impacting people’s values, attitudes, and behavior….Contemporary leadership requires wisdom to tackle the challenges of life in the 21st century: the increasing rate of change and uncertainty in business, politics, and civic affairs, the need to motivate cooperation among and between increasingly diverse stakeholders and growing concern for bigger picture, ethical, and socially responsible decision making.

They also remind us that even the wisest leaders cannot be wise at all times and in all matters. They do not discount leaders who are otherwise remarkable, nor do they propose wise leaders have no faults. However, they do argue that the wise reasoning framework of intellectual humility, recognition of change and uncertainty, perspective taking of different viewpoints, integration of different viewpoints provides a better understanding of the principles most appropriate for dealing well with ill-structured problems, problems that are typically the focus of leadership.

Comment

Wise reasoning may provide a challenge to our notion of leadership because it significantly downplays the importance of, indeed the value of, egocentricity. My view of the scholarly research on leadership indicates that nearly all models or theories of effective leadership are inherently egocentric. I think this is largely true of transformational leadership and authentic leadership, and for much of the relational leader-member exchange. Even the spiritual and servant models of leadership cannot escape some focus on egocentricity.

The personality factor most associated with effective leadership is extraversion – illustrated by people who have a great deal of energy and enjoy being at the center of attention. Persons scoring high in extraversion are assertive take-chargers. One could plausibly argue that leaders high in extraversion may not be particularly intellectually humble and may have difficulty taking the perspective of others and taking the time or effort to search for a compromise among colliding interests.

Openness seems to be positively associated both with traditional leaders as well as leaders high in wise reason. Openness’s facets are fantasy/imagination, aesthetics feelings, actions, ideas, and values. Leaders who deal effectively with continual change and/or work in creative environments tend to score high in openness. Openness connects with wise reason in two principles of the wise reasoning framework: recognition of uncertainty and change and perspective-taking of diverse viewpoints.

The outlier here is agreeableness. In most studies, agreeableness is the personality factor least positively associated with effective leadership, and sometimes has a negative relationship. People who score high in agreeableness score high in trust, altruism, and straightforwardness. In addition they tend to exhibit morality, cooperation, modesty, and sympathy. Although the association between agreeableness and wise reasoning is not strong, it is positive. This tends to make sense especially regarding three of the four principles of wise reasoning: intellectual humility, meaningfully considering different viewpoints and perspectives, and integrating different viewpoints.

To the extent that one is an executive leader especially one may have a very difficult time moving away from being egocentric. This occurs not only because a leader becomes the center of attention, someone who unwittingly or not may attract sycophants and be surrounded largely by “yes” staff. Most if not nearly all executive leaders are also high in SES and may have a difficult time relating well with many other people with whom they may not deal with on a regular basis but whom they may employ or even serve.

Complexity leadership, especially as promoted by Ralph Stacey (Tools and Techniques of Leadership and Management) with his focus on complex responsive processes, may comport most well with wise reasoning. Stacy often uses the phrase “practical wisdom” in discussing his version of complexity leadership. I would argue, in fact, that the four principles or themes of the wise reasoning framework can easily be pulled out of Stacey’s work, especially in his discussion of complex responsive processes.

In each of the leadership posts so far in this blog, I have commented on the connection between the leadership topic discussed (child-man/immature leadership, intellectual humility, and hubris) and President Trump. Here, I think it is relatively accurate to say that Trump is not intellectual humble, may have a difficult time entertaining or even wanting to entertain differing viewpoints and perspectives, or wanting to or being able to try to seek compromises among different interests. One might argue that Trump may recognize uncertainty and change, although in my view he has an especially static view of change. But it is clear to me that he does not welcome change with open-mindedness.

Personally I find wise reasoning very significant within the context of my own view in leading. First, I think it is critical for most leaders to address the broader picture, and not get hung up with instrumental rationality or a focus on narrow or short-term objectives. Once this is done, leaders will invariably need to deal well with different perspectives and interests and seek ways to try to integrate differing viewpoints. It seems to me that once one begins to deal with a broader picture, a larger scope, and is immersed with different viewpoints and interests, one must reduce egocentricity and embrace intellectual humility to a substantial degree.

In closing I am reminded of historian Sam WIneburg’s comment (Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past) as noted by John Fea (Believe Me) “the narcissist sees the world – both past and present – in his own image. Mature historical understanding teaches us to do the opposite: to go beyond our own image, to go beyond our brief life, and to go beyond the fleeting moment in human history into which we are born. History educates (“leads outward” in the Latin) in the deepest sense.” Wineburg also makes the point that history best teaches “those virtues once reserved for theology – humility in the face of our limited ability to know, and awe in the face of the expanse of history.”