Edward de Bono on...confidence
Thinking should be confident. Any skill is better if it is done with confidence – be it skiing or playing tennis. There is, however, a big difference between being confident and being arrogant.
To be sure that you are right, to be sure that your thinking is better than anyone else’s, to be sure that there can be no alternatives, are all aspects of arrogance. As I mentioned earlier, arrogance is the major sin of thinking – because it kills thinking. A confident thinker is not necessarily a brilliant thinker. Confidence has nothing to do with value. It is the way something is done. A confident driver in a small car can drive with confidence. He may drive rather slowly. He knows the limits of his skill and exercises it with confidence.
A confident thinker does not have to prove himself right and the other person wrong. He or she sees the thinker as an operating skill, not as ego-achievement. A confident thinker is willing to listen to others. He is willing to improve his thinking by acquiring a new idea or a new way of looking at things. A confident thinker is willing to set out to think about something. He or she is able to acknowledge that an answer has not been found.
A confident cook is able to make mistakes and to learn from them.
Passage taken from: “de Bono’s Thinking Course”, by Edward de Bono, ISBN 0563 37073 4 Copyright © MICA Management Resources 1982, 1985, 1994
Edward De Bono’s Message
Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.
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