{"id":167,"date":"2024-07-29T19:47:19","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T09:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcher.co\/p-f\/?p=167"},"modified":"2024-09-28T14:33:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T04:33:32","slug":"intellectual-humility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcher.co\/p-f\/intellectual-humility\/","title":{"rendered":"Intellectual Humility"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Summary<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A person with intellectual humility recognises that their beliefs might be wrong, and understands that other people can know considerably more than them in important fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When practiced well, intellectual humility opens people up to learning, improvement, and positive cooperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The absence of intellectual humility can lead to failure to learn, higher susceptibility to demonstratively false beliefs, and team tension. If someone won\u2019t accept correction, then there\u2019s nothing to stop them believing anything they want to believe, no matter how ludicrous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectual humility is an important trait to seek and develop in both individuals and organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Most of us have encountered someone at some point who just can\u2019t grasp that they might be wrong \u2013 on anything. We may have even drawn the connection between that trait and the likelihood that they\u2019re completely wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 2015 the first papers were published that put a name to what appears to be missing in such a world view \u2013 Intellectual Humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectual humility describes \u201cthe degree to which people recognise that their beliefs might be wrong\u201d (Leary et al, 2017<\/a>), how well they can \u201crecognise one\u2019s intellectual shortcomings\u201d (Dykhuis, 2024<\/a>). People with intellectual humility are more open than others to revising their views, respect for other’s viewpoints, lack intellectual overconfidence, and are more willing to change their views when confronted with convincing evidence (Plohl & Musil, 2023<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People with intellectual humility have a deep awareness that they are fallible, that other people are likely to know more than them on important topics, and that there will be many occasions when the best thing they can do is to be quiet and learn from the considered views of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectual humility is a critical component of wise reasoning which, in turn, enables people to see things within a larger context, with flexibility, self-reflection and thoughtfulness (Grosman et al, 2016<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also notable that intellectual humility is a stronger predictor of trust in science than either education or intelligence (<\/a>Plohl & Musil, 2023<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People with low intellectual humility are more likely to be convinced that they are in possession of the one \u201cTruth\u201d \u2013 in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (Robson, 2019<\/a>), they\u2019re more likely to react badly to people expressing different views, are less willing to negotiate or compromise (Leary et al, 2017<\/a>) and, consequently, are more prone to conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, people low in intellectual humility are more likely to be wrong. They\u2019re unable to accept input that would otherwise improve or refine their understandings. They\u2019re not open to exploring the logical inconsistencies of their arguments, and are more likely to ignore the expert opinion that could have otherwise help them to develop a more well-founded understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Developing ourselves as individuals requires intellectual humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building productive teams requires intellectual humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it\u2019s hard to think of human situations that would not be helped by a dash of intellectual humility \u2013 from personal development and learning to corporate design, business delivery and team productivity, and on to political leadership and diplomatic negotiation. Intellectual humility is a critical trait in all human endeavours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Intellectual humility in teams<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Intellectual humility in teams<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to being a critical attribute for individuals, intellectual humility is also critical for social interaction and the effective operation of teams. For every team, for every organisation, for every complex area of understanding, people need to be able to work together. Working together well requires a willingness to listen to others, to value the perspectives and expertise of others, to learn from others, and to realise that we, ourselves, don\u2019t have all the answers (i.e.: we\u2019re not gods). Working together well requires intellectual humility in all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The absence of intellectual humility in teams<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alternative to intellectual humility in teams is, in short, failure. Closed-minded thinking, lack of cooperation, conflict, and failure to realise the value that connection across disciplines or world views can bring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The practical manifestations of the challenges of low intellectual humility in teams have been summarised by one researcher in the field (Snow, 2022<\/a>) as including \u201cstubborn ignorance of the subject matter of another discipline, superficiality in approaching the subject matter of another discipline and failure to develop shared understandings of relevant concepts\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectual humility and Genuine MDTs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

About Genuine MDTs, and why they\u2019re different<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) are, ideally, groups of people from different fields of expertise who come together to achieve a particular goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most organisations, multi-disciplinary teams do genuinely involve multiple disciplines, but these disciplines tend to be quite closely related and, similarly, the people brought in tend to think of the world in quite similar ways, or at least from similar perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term \u201cGenuine MDTs\u201d is used to delineate a type of MDT that\u2019s more explicitly focused on ensuring it incorporates in to its core people with very different perspectives on life and work, from very different disciplines, and frequently very different brains (for more on the value of different brains, see Complementary Skills<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance of IH to Genuine MDTs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A central focus of Genuine MDTs is its bringing together of people with different areas of expertise to build the multiplied insights and value that come from different ways of understanding the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The successful operation of Genuine MDTs is dependent on team members being able to work with, an utilise, difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, achieving the diversity of Genuine MDTs is dependent on bringing together people with brains that work in different ways, such as the significant proportion of top-level specialist experts who are neurodiverse. The different intuitive skills of experts with less common brain types mean that their skills are critical organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Successful Genuine MDTs require people willing and able to take in ideas and insights that are very different from their own, see their value, learn from them, and build on them to create something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They require that teams work positively, constructively and calmly with conflict of ideas without that conflict becoming conflict of personalities and emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The smooth operation of such diverse teams is dependent, above all else, on two key factors \u2013 team management practices and cultures that foster the positives of such diversity, and intellectual humility among all team members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost by definition, achieving such constructive conflict across vastly different perspective requires team members strong in intellectual humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectual humility, therefore, is critical to the healthy and productive operation of Genuine MDTs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The problem of autism and intellectual humility<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It would be valid to ask why there is a focus on autism in an article on intellectual humility.
I’ve included this focus partly because I\u2019m talking about my own group, but mostly because my advocacy for the organisational criticality of people with Level 1 autism (See Complementary Skills<\/a>) encounters a significant obstacle when the need for intellectual humility in teams encounters the reduced likelihood of people with autism actually having that trait.
I believe, however, that there is a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A description of the problem<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Most research into the foundational traits of intellectual humility point to emotional awareness being a critical prerequisite skill (Jarvinen & Paulus, 2017<\/a>).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. By definition, people with autism are not particularly good at understanding other people\u2019s emotions (DSM-V definition of autism, American Psychiatric Society, 2015<\/a>).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. People with autism probably won\u2019t be too good at intellectual humility.\n