Mozart or Messi?
Tags: Management, Philosophy, Skills, Business, Education

How to collect multiple intelligences

Giuseppe Mondi / Unsplash

By Jack Fereday

Talk of “collective intelligence” risks overshadowing the diverse nature of people’s intellectual abilities. To get the best out of your team, you’ll need to cater to multiple intelligences…

The 21st century will be shaped by collective intelligence. Forget Rembrandt’s Philosopher or Rodin’s Thinker — this is the era of collaboration; of noisy brainstorming sessions, open-source software, and bustling hackathons. You need a new marketing strategy? Gather your brightest recruits in a room with a whiteboard and an espresso machine, and let them work their magic — like the Baron Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, who holds eccentric inventors captive in his dungeon so they can build him a flying car… Let your Steve Jobs rock the stage like solitary gurus — we know the real heroes are the multinational tech geeks who collaborate behind the scene.

So has the innovation puzzle finally been cracked? Can ideas now be grown like crops, by simply concentrating a number of plants in one place? The metaphor would work if people’s brains were like corn, each cob identical in shape to the next. But contrary to what IQ tests would have us believe, this is seldom the case. What we call “intelligence” is not some homogeneous resource that simply needs to be collectivised, but a heterogeneous set of talents, which flourish in very different conditions. So if you’re going to rely on your team’s “collective intelligence” to grow and innovate, you first need to know what intelligences you’re dealing with — and make sure none is neglected.

Shakespeare VS. Mozart

If you were to guess, who would you say was more intelligent: Shakespeare or Mozart? If the question leaves you perplexed, that’s probably because their respective gifts are incommensurable: the former was a literary genius; the latter a musical one. For all we know, Shakespeare was incapable of carrying a tune, while Mozart’s letters to his cousin are hardly the object of literary admiration (although amateurs of scatological humour might find them to be of interest)… How intelligent is a Lionel Messi or a Cristiano Ronaldo? Each can control the tempo and intensity of a football match like a virtuoso conductor, yet they mumble their way through interviews without a hint of eloquence.

‘We’ve all worked with someone we find remarkably clever in one way yet frighteningly limited in another’

The same can be said of the absent-minded professor, that archetypal character of popular fiction, whose academic brilliance is matched by their complete inadequacy in other areas. The uneven distribution of capabilities might even be a hallmark of genius, like that of the misunderstood poet, who Baudelaire likened to an albatross — “the prince of the clouds, who is friendly to the tempest and laughs at the bowman; banished to ground in the midst of hootings, his wings, those of a giant, hinder him from walking.” (“The Albatross”, trans. Eli Siegel)

A theory of apples and oranges

This “savant syndrome” isn’t just common among artists and academics. We’ve all worked with someone we find remarkably clever in one way yet frighteningly limited in another. Take Kate, a young marketing recruit: terribly inarticulate in meetings, but a dab-hand at writing copy. Or Tom, her manager: brilliant at resolving conflicts and getting the best out of people, but yet to pen any memorable catchphrase himself… So how would they rank in terms of general intelligence?

‘Cognitive abilities are like apples and oranges: neither comparable nor measurable by one unique benchmark’

According to a theory by Harvard Professor of Cognition and Education, Howard Gardner, Kate and Tom’s cognitive abilities are like apples and oranges: neither comparable nor measurable by one unique benchmark. Standardised IQ tests, Gardner argues, assess just two forms of intelligence — “linguistic” and “mathematical-logical” — out of a total of seven, which he describes in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: Theory of Multiple Intelligences:

Linguistic: the ability to understand and use language, both verbal and written.

the ability to understand and use language, both verbal and written. Logical-mathematical: the capacity for logic, mathematics, abstract reasoning, and critical thinking.

the capacity for logic, mathematics, abstract reasoning, and critical thinking. Musical: a sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music.

a sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music. Visual-spatial: the ability to perceive the visual world accurately and recreate or alter it.

the ability to perceive the visual world accurately and recreate or alter it. Bodily-kinaesthetic: the ability to handle one’s bodily motions and objects skilfully.

the ability to handle one’s bodily motions and objects skilfully. Interpersonal: the ability to understand other people’s moods, feelings, temperaments, and motivations, and cooperate with them.

the ability to understand other people’s moods, feelings, temperaments, and motivations, and cooperate with them. Intrapersonal: the ability to understand oneself, including one’s own emotions.

A fruitful controversy

We all develop these abilities in varying degrees, resulting in distinct profiles. On paper, these are often represented by a seven-sliced pie chart. Kate’s linguistic segment might be highly developed, for example, but not her interpersonal one, while Tom performs well in the interpersonal department, but isn’t nearly as creative with words. Similarly, it takes a high degree of bodily-kinaesthetic skill to dribble past defences like Leo Messi, but a very different kind of “smart” to give a great T.V. interview…

Of course, this theory hasn’t gone unchallenged. Critics argue that it is tautologous and therefore unfalsifiable: by arbitrarily expanding the definition of “intelligence” in a way that could potentially include any interest or ability, they say Gardner has essentially rendered it useless. But a lot of this controversy is semantic, and subsides when you replace “intelligence” with broader terms such as “ability”, “talent”, or “skill”… In fact the main contribution of Gardner’s theory is to suggest that these are interchangeable: why not consider the capacity to calculate or use logic to be one skill among others? Why does the command of words or numbers count as intelligence and not that of colours or sounds? Thus the concept is inherently open to revisitation. The work of French psychologist Yves Richez draws inspiration from Chinese thought, for example, where the notion of “intelligence” doesn’t exist per se — he distinguishes not seven, but ten “natural operating modes” (MoON), the observable results of which he calls “talents”.

No employee left behind

In spite of their lack of scientific foundation, these unorthodox approaches raise legitimate concerns in the field of education, where a one-size-fits-all system can leave some kids behind. Not only do traditional curriculums tend to favour mathematical and linguistic skills over other core skills — children of different abilities can have different learning styles, which often go unaddressed in the classroom. Some come into their own whilst engaging in hands-on activities (bodily-kinaesthetic), while others thrive when working in groups (interpersonal). Some love to learn with music, while others respond better to pictures and charts (visual-spatial).

That’s not to say learners should be labelled and restricted to one modality of learning: on the contrary, the multiple intelligences theory suggests we should engage in a wider range of activities, to develop each of our abilities to its full potential. The idea isn’t to cater to each pupil individually, but to mix and match a variety of teaching techniques, so no-one gets left out.

‘Managers tend to shape the workplace in their own image, favouring those practices that suit their natural abilities’

This is equally true in the office: company managers, like teachers, tend to shape the workplace in their own image, favouring those practices that suit their natural abilities. A boss with a high interpersonal score might be afflicted with chronic meetingitis; and if he’s also visual-spatially inclined, each session might revolve around his PowerPoint fetish — at the risk of alienating other members of his teams.

The manager as gardener

From here it isn’t hard to imagine a more inclusive approach to collective intelligence, one that draws on a variety of practices. A good brainstorming doesn’t have to involve a group of people gathered round a whiteboard. Colleagues of high bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence might be more inclined to think out of the box over a game of squash or table tennis; introverts (e.g. high intrapersonal, low interpersonal) might put their best ideas in writing, in the comfort of their own home — collective intelligence shouldn’t necessarily imply proximity. Others might find inspiration in music: why not allocate a space where they can kick back and discuss strategies to a backdrop of Beethoven or Strauss? Who knows what grandiose vision Also Sprach Zarathustra might unleash?

Multiple intelligences — or skills, or abilities, or whatever you’d like to call them! — call for multiple settings, in which the Mozarts and Shakespeares and Messis of the world can all work together. The manager should learn to nurture these talents not like a farmer overseeing one big cash crop, but like an astute botanist, in tune with the needs of each individual plant. Here the work — and name! — of the multiple intelligences theorist could provide valuable inspiration: in 1996 Howard Gardner proposed an eighth, “naturalistic intelligence”, to describe our ability “to recognize flora and fauna, to make other consequential distinctions in the natural world, and to use this ability productively”. If we’re to nurture each other’s gifts collectively, we should work in the same spirit.