![]() Jobs wanted strong glass to cover the display, but his team at Apple had sampled some of Corning’s glass and found it too fragile. That relationship began when Jobs reached out to him, frustrated that the plastic face of the iPhone prototype kept getting scratched. Trying to explain something complex can be a humbling experience-even for someone like Steve Jobs.Ī few years ago I met Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning, which makes the glass for the iPhone. They suddenly realized how little they understood. As they struggled to articulate how a TV transmits a picture and a toilet flushes, their overconfidence melted away. The students were supremely confident in their knowledge-until they were asked to write out their explanations step-by-step. In a series of experiments, psychologists asked Yale students to rate their knowledge of how everyday objects, such as televisions and toilets, work. A better approach is to let them recognize the gaps in their own understanding. If you call out their ignorance directly, they may get defensive. We’ve all encountered leaders who are overconfident: They don’t know what they don’t know. The first barrier to changing someone’s view is arrogance. Ask a Know-It-All to Explain How Things Work Here are some approaches that can help you encourage a know-it-all to recognize when there’s something to be learned, a stubborn colleague to make a U-turn, a narcissist to show humility, and a disagreeable boss to agree with you. So if you want to reason with people who seem unreasonable, pay attention to instances when they-or others like them-change their minds. Even the most rigid people flex at times, and even the most open-minded have moments when they shut down. Humans are a lot messier, but we too have predictable if…then responses. If the procrastinator has a crucial deadline coming up…then she gets her act together.Ĭomputer code is a string of if…then commands. If the competitive colleague is dealing with an important client…then he shifts into cooperative mode. ![]() If the dominant manager is interacting with a superior…then she becomes submissive. Every leader has an if…then profile: a pattern of responding to particular scenarios in certain ways. Think of the dominant manager who is occasionally submissive, the hypercompetitive colleague who sporadically becomes cooperative, or the chronic procrastinator who finishes some projects early. ![]() The good news is that it is possible to get even the most overconfident, stubborn, narcissistic, and disagreeable people to open their minds.Ī growing body of evidence shows that personality traits aren’t necessarily consistent from one situation to the next. The bad news is that plenty of leaders are so sure of themselves that they reject worthy opinions and ideas from others and refuse to abandon their own bad ones. As an organizational psychologist, I’ve spent time with a number of people who succeeded in motivating him to think again, and I’ve analyzed the science behind their techniques. Within nine months the App Store had a billion downloads, and a decade later the iPhone had generated more than $1 trillion in revenue.Īlmost every leader has studied the genius of Jobs, but surprisingly few have studied the genius of those who managed to influence him. After his team finally persuaded him to reconsider, he banned outside apps it took another year to get him to reverse that stance. If Jobs hadn’t surrounded himself with people who knew how to change his mind, he might not have changed the world.įor years Jobs insisted he would never make a phone. The reality is that much of Apple’s success came from his team’s pushing him to rethink his positions. The key to his greatness, the story goes, was his ability to bend the world to his vision. ![]() The legend of Steve Jobs is that he transformed our lives with the strength of his convictions.
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