Lessons from Edward de Bono

Edward de Bono (quite simply) a genius of human behaviour, creative thinking, and thinking as a skill in general. To quote The Times, Edward de Bono is "a cult figure in developing tricks to sharpen the mind." He has stayed true to this description!

Here are some of the lessons I learned from his book How to Have A Beautiful Mind:

How to AGREE –

AGREEMENT: When in a discussion with someone, and that person puts his point of view across, even when your immediate reaction would be to disagree, do the following:

• Think about special circumstances that may prevail giving rise to the correctness of that opinion e.g. when someone says that arranged marriages are a good idea, you may very well disagree with this, but then think about the troubles of finding a partner in turmoil, or cultural expectations external to your own environment. Also, consider the possibility that you may have read arranged as being akin to forced.
• Compare that opinion under your own values with it under a special set of values. This is saying that under your own values, you might disagree, but had I adopted these values, I might have agreed with you. It is still stating your opinion.
• Has the person spoken from special experience in that field?
• If a sweeping generalisation has been implicated, you can disagree with it but show agreement with some of its implications e.g. All women are intuitive; all men are logical – you could say that women do tend to take into account more factors and because men work in groups, logic is dictated so as to maintain functionality.

Most importantly: make a genuine attempt to find points of agreement in the other person's argument. Agreeing with everything is just as bad as disagreeing with everything. Remove your ego from the discussion and focus more on the subject-matter. Explore that person's logic bubble. This means: look at the above bolded factors.

How to DISAGREE –

SELECTIVE PERCEPTION: perceiving things in such a way so as to support a pre-formed idea e.g.: stereotypes and prejudices. This is not a good idea to have. It is even more difficult to challenge when given i.e. when someone tells you something negative about someone else's work performance, how can you draw any conclusion without comparing it to their positive work performance? Another very good example (especially applicable in South Africa) is racial perception in relation to crime: many people think black people commit more crimes thus only notice instances when they do commit crimes. What they fail to notice is that often, it is actually as a result of economic forces within the group to which those people belong, and it just so happens to be concentrated with people of that race. In other words, criminal intent is not a characteristic of the black culture or personality. Rather, the trend has resulted from an economic oppression of a group to which black people are often associated.

SELECTIVE PERCEPTION → EMOTIONS (prejudices & stereotypes). This looks at how objective a point of view really is by looking at the adjectives used in that statement. If you can strip the opinion free from those emotional adjectives without the opinion losing its meat, then the opinion is likely objective. Emotions determine reactions to events as well as perceptions. Although people are free to express emotionally, a listener should not be subjected to the correctness of those emotions.

• Different experiences can conflict - but this does NOT mean that one is right and the other is wrong. It is simply that they differ. An acquired skill in discussion is to distinguish different experiences from different interpretations of experiences.

EXTRAPOLATIONS & SWEEPING GENERALISATIONS are dangerous in discussions, the former being the creation of a trend and its assumed continued use throughout.

Note the use of “certain” and “possible” in conversations. If he asserts a certainty, and you struggle to agree, but can see some value in this statement, assert your opinion by affixing it with a possibility of occurrence.

What is DISAGREEMENT? It is when there is a concern for the truth. How do you disagree? A bald statement of disagreement is not conducive. Reasons for your disagreement ought to be provided. e.g.: it is possible but not certain, this is one of many alternatives, etc. Therefore, it is VITAL that you distinguish disagreeing with the opinion from having a different opinion.