Howard Gardner on thought leadership

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Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A.Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  He also holds positions as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Senior Director of
Harvard Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities. In 2005 and again in 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. The author of 25 books translated into 28 languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments.

Gardner will be doing a multiple city tour of Australia in May 2011.

1.    Howard, in the 1990s you investigated professional ethics, or what you and your colleagues termed ‘good work’.  Can you explain what ‘good work’ means for companies today?

“Colleagues and I are still investigating good work. As we now define it, GoodWork is Excellent technically; personally Engaging and meaningful; and carried out in an Ethical manner. We speak of the three Es, and of an intertwined ENA. As psychologists, our work focuses on the individual, but clearly the good work analysis can be extended to corporations as well. Also, when it comes to the treatment of work, I would add a fourth E—that individuals are treated equitably, and that the income and privilege ratio is not skewed too much in favor of senior management.

“For more information see www.goodworktoolkit.org and www.goodworkproject.org”

2.    You have worked with many noted and pre-eminent psychologists, neurologists and others, what do you think has made some of them more successful than others in building a public profile and becoming known as a thought leader in their market?

“Two different routes:

1. The outstanding quality of work, I would cite my close colleague Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and his ground breaking work on ‘flow’ or neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolati, who discovered ‘mirror neurons’
2. The capacity to speak and write for a popular audience, and the willingness to go on television, travel, speak to general audiences, get a joke writer, hair stylist, etc. I’ll let you come up with examples. Let me simply say that some scholars who achieve popular acclaim, like paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould or astronomer Carl Sagan, were also great scholars.”

3.     You have written numerous papers and books.  Given your experience, what tips can you give aspiring thought leaders in other industries about what it takes to be recognised as a thought leader?

“Even if you begin as an indirect leader, writing for and addressing primarily scholarly audiences, it is crucial to pay attention to reactions. I have in mind both appropriate criticism of your scholarship AND suggestions about how better to present your materials. My presentations have changed as much, because of the reactions of popular audiences (including my own children) as they have been affected by scholarly colleagues who would never go on television or address a rotary club.

“I would add that there are certain things that I would not do, even if they were to give me more visibility. One of them is to appear on Fox television, which I do not consider to be a worthy outlet.”

4.    In building your thought leadership position around multiple intelligences, what has been your key differentiating factor/s and has there been one stand out tactic that has helped you achieve this?  

“While I never anticipated it, the use of the word ‘intelligence’; has been crucial. If I had spoken and written about seven or eight talents, gifts, faculties, my work would not have attracted comparable attention.

“Also, I have found it useful to employ a simple analogy: The standard solitary view of intelligence is like a single all purpose computer, which can work well or poorly; the multiple intelligence view posits a set of relatively independent computers—so, for example, one person might have a good music computer and a poor spatial computer or vice versa, while a second person might have a strong linguistic computer and a poor interpersonal computer, or vice versa,

“Over twenty-five years, I have been able both to deepen my own analysis of this work, and to present it in ways that are easy to understand while not being misleading. Every year I think that I improve both my understanding and my ability to communicate effectively—at least I hope so!”

5.    What’s your view on sharing content and ideas and from your experience, how far should a thought leader go in sharing this information?

“I don’t really understand this question. I don’t see why anyone should withhold information, so long as they are confident that what they are saying has some validity.

“When it comes to trade secrets, I suppose that is a different kind of problem. Ideas and thoughts are free and should be treated as such.”

6.    How would you define thought leadership?

“Thought leaders are individuals who develop ideas that have substance and validity and have some success in communicating these ideas to a relevant wider public. Some thought leaders do it primarily through their writings—see the Csikszentmihalyi and Rizzolati examples above—and others do it through a combination of writing, speaking, blogging, tweeting, etc.”

2 Responses to “Howard Gardner on thought leadership”

1. Karthik Nagendra says:

   April 23, 2010 at 19:07

   I think in the current dynamic markket, its imperative for companies to focus on building thought leadership. but a lot of them primarily look at thought leadership as a lead generation tool which in my view is completely wrong. i planned approach of coordination between marketing & stratgy teams will ensure that the right trust is built in the minds of the customer & like they say a share of mind results in share of market ultimately. read my blog on thought leadership & strategy for further views http://ideasquare.wordpress.com/
2. craig says:

   April 27, 2010 at 16:04

   Karthik, I agree 100% - thought leadership is not primarily a lead generation tool rather it established a foundation of trust from which you are able to engage with your audience in a far more meaningful conversation. It is a conversation that shows you deeply understand your audiences issues and challenges and that you have the insights and knowledge to help them address these.

   The relationship therefore is built on trust, knowledge and insights rather than one where they expect you to hard sell them on your service or product.