LEADERSHIP COMMON GOOD HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PRESS CENTER FOR PUBLIC LEADERSHIP JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The Leadership for the Common Good series represents a partnership between Harvard Business School Press and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Books in the series aim to provoke conversations about the role of leaders in business, government, and society, to enrich leadership theory and enhance leadership practice, and to set the agenda for defining effective leadership in the future. OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
Changing Minds by Howard Gardner Predictable Surprises by Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins Bad Leadership by Barbara Kellerman
Many Unhappy Returns by Charles O. Rossotti Leading Through Conflict by Mark Gerzon
Copyright Copyright 2006 Howard Gardner All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to
[email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163. First eBook Edition: April 2007 ISBN: 978-1-4221-4799-3
For Oscar Bernard Gardner Who embodies our futures
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgments 1 Minds Viewed Globally A Personal Introduction 2 The Disciplined Mind 3 The Synthesizing Mind 4 The Creating Mind 5 The Respectful Mind 6 The Ethical Mind 7 Conclusion Toward the Cultivation of the Five Minds
Notes About the Author
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge several sets of individuals and institutions who contributed in various ways to this book. The first set involves colleagues with whom I’ve worked for many years: associates at Harvard Project Zero, who helped me to understand the disciplined, synthesizing, and creating minds; and researchers on the GoodWork Project, who helped me to delineate the respectful and ethical minds. The second set involves publishers: Claudia Cassanova and Carme Castells at Paidos, my Spanish language publisher, first invited me to contribute Las Cinco Mentes del Futuro to its Asterisk series; Hollis Heimbouch, my wonderful editor at the Harvard Business School Press, championed the present work from its earliest incarnation. I want to mention, as well, her skilled and enthusiastic colleagues, Elizabeth Baldwin, Erin Brown, Daisy Hutton, Susan Minio, Zeenat Potia, Brian Surette, Sandra Topping, Christine Turnier-Vallecillo, and Jennifer Waring. Third, I am grateful to the several foundations and generous individuals who have supported the research that formed the basis of this book. Finally, I owe deep gratitude to my capable assistants Christian Hassold, Casey Metcalf, and Lindsay Pettingill; my exemplary literary agent Ike Williams and his ever-helpful associate Hope Denekamp; and my wife Ellen Winner, who always strikes an exquisite balance between critique and encouragement.
C H A P T E R1
Minds Viewed Globally
A Personal Introduction
FOR SEVERAL DECADES,
as a researcher in psychology, I have been pondering the human mind. I’ve studied how the mind develops, how it is organized, what it’s like in its fullest expanse. I’ve studied how people learn, how they create, how they lead, how they change the minds of other persons or their own minds. For the