Biography

Howard GARDNER

2009 ranking: 16

Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner (b. 1943) is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard University.

He gained world-wide recognition in the early 1980s for his theory of Multiple Intelligences, outlined in his book Frames of Mind (1983). Gardner’s works on different forms of intelligence preceded that of psychologists like Daniel Goleman. Traditional methods of measuring intelligence recognized only one aspect. Instead Gardner pointed to the existence of other forms. Each person had differing levels of these intelligences, and so every human had a unique cognitive profile.

Gardner devoted much of the following two decades to applying his researches to children’s education. In recent years he has turned his attention to the world of business leadership. He is probably best known in the business world for his recent book Five Minds for the Future (2007). He has said that the book was not written from the point of view of a psychologist but of a policy maker. He sees the radically changed technological and information environment as demanding new cognitive abilities “… that will command a premium in the years ahead." He sees globalization as having the effect of making everyone and everything in the world interconnected. The communities in which we live are also more diverse than ever before. We need new ways of learning, and new ways of dealing with what is learned.

As the title of his book suggests, this is based on five mindscapes.

The first is the disciplined mind. This is close to traditional excellence in a field. It is about expertise. Gardner believes that such expertise can only be gained and retained through a disciplined approach.

The synthesizing mind is about knowing how to deal with an avalanche of information; knowing what to learn and what to reject as irrelevant. It is about refining, and once refined, communicating what has been found. Gardner considers this to be the most distinctive of the five minds. He also acknowledges that it is probably the hardest to achieve. In a world where people are inundated with information it is the most important.

The third mind is the creative: it is about “coming up with something new that eventually affects how other people are and think.” He realizes that this is only important for “an eccentric few”, and that if everyone was hyper-creative the results would be chaos. Gardner considers the fourth mind, the respectful, as having a long history, going back to pre-literate times. It is essentially about having respect for difference – differences of belief, gender, lifestyle etc. In a world which is marked by diversity as never before it is vitally important, especially for building trust. Where there is mistrust, there is often fear. The last mind is the ethical. This is about realizing your role and your responsibilities, in an occupation and as a citizen. Gardner doesn’t see citizenry as linked only to states; a person can be a citizen of a community, a town, a region. This imposes certain responsibilities. In short the ethical mind is often about self-awareness. The ethics of a community can be threatened by the environment of that community. “When a community comes to value money, power, or success, over all other priorities, then individuals have little incentive to be honest, responsible, or treat others with integrity.” He believes in the importance of “Good Work”. This contains the three ‘E’s: it is work that is technically Excellent, which is Engaging to those who carry it out, and that’s performed in an Ethical manner. Gardner hopes that his book shows the type of minds that are needed in today’s world, and also the type of minds and thinking parameters that should be nurtured, through education, training and through the work-place. Essential Reading Changing Minds (Leadership for the Common Good), Harvard Business School Press (2006) Five Minds for the Future, Harvard Business School Press (2007). Responsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don’t Act) Responsibly, Jossey-Bass (2007)

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