Leadership = Powerful Narratives LO21684

AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Thu, 20 May 1999 13:47:13 +0200

Replying to LO21554 --

Dear Organlearners,

Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> writes:

>Gardner, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, became
>famous with his book _Frames of Mind_ in 1983 which made a
>compelling argument that intelligence is multi-faceted, that there
>are multiple dimensions of intelligence, or in his words "multiple
>intelligences." This is in contrast to the classic view that there is
>one inborn dimension of intelligence, and that this is well-measured
>as "IQ".

Greetings Rick,

Is language not a strange thing? We shorten "multiple dimensions of
intelligence" into "multiple intelligences" and nobody worries because
"multiple intelligences" has not been used before, neither "multiple
dimensions of intelligences".

Intelligence is but one of the many things like character and knowledge
which makes up a personality. Personality is that thing which distinguish
the person in the human.

Unfortunately, the English language already has found usage for the phrase
"many personalities". It is used to denigrate a person. For example: "He
is someone with many personalities." Perhaps the phrase "He is someone
with multiple personalities" works similarly. Furthermore, the phrase
"multi-personality" is used as a term in psychology to refer to a person
having a specific mental disorder. Consequently I will have to use the
long name "Multiple Subject Dimensions of Personality" (MSDP) to express
what I mean.

During my university years and the first five years afterwards, I was
quick to box somebody by labels such as "He thinks just like a phsycist"
or "She thinks just like a novelist". But soon after I began teaching at a
secondary school, I realised how crazy and contraproductive it is to
stereotype anybody. However, the notion of stereotyping began to transform
and grow into something else. At first I noticed how my fellow students
began to acquire a personality which had a dimension corresponding to the
subject that student were specialising in. Then, at the College for
Further Educational Training, I began to notice how my fellow colleagues
(more than two hundred of these subject specialists) also manifested this
"specialist dimension of personality". Later on, at university, I could
not help to notice it even clearer.

During all those years I have also made friends with people who
"specialised in more than one subject", or rather, who worked
interdisciplinary in more than one subject. I have noticed how they
effortlessly switched over from one "specialist dimension of personality"
to another "specialist dimension of personality", depending on which
specialist or what discipline they were talking. They were manifesting
MSDP (Multiple Subject Dimensions of Personality).

Does MDP have anything to say for LOs?

Let us think about the five Elementary Sustainers of Creativty (ESC):
dialogue
problem solving
exemplar studying
game playing
art expressing

The way in which we run our organisations today, the last four ESCs have
become specialist activities. However, try to use these four ESCs where
many specialists are involved and see what happens. For example, ask a
bunch of different specialists to solve a multi-disciplinary problem and
see how far they get. Ask a bunch of different specialists to study a
complex exemplar in order to furnish a comprehensive account not devided
into specialist chapters and see how far they get.

But the one ESC which is most diffcult to box into a specialist mode and
which the most clearly demonstrates how restricted specialists think, is
the dialogue. SDP (Specialist Dimension of Personality) is one of the
important reasons why people find it difficult to participate in dialogue.
And without dialogue it is very difficult, if not impossible, to set up a
Learning Organisation. On the pther hand, it is observable how people with
MSDP usually participate with more ease in dialogues, often causing the
dialogue to branch (bifurcate) into a new direction or to strengthen
(digestion) in a certain direction.

If our civilisation keeps on pushing into more and more specialisation,
the fewer remaining people with MSDP (Multiple Subject Dimensions of
Personality) will eventually find themselves being stereotyped as people
with "multi-personalities" -- people with a mental disorder. I wonder
whether it will still be possible to transfrom an organisation into a LO
when this stage has been reached.

Best wishes

-- 

At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>