How to Tell a Know-It-All He’s Wrong

 

How to Tell a Know-It-All He’s Wrong

Extracted from Harvard Business Review

In 2007, when I was an editor at Time magazine, Steve Jobs visited our office to give us a peek at Apple’s newest gadget: the iPhone. We passed the device around the conference table carefully, as if it were a moon rock. When we handed it back to Jobs, he slam-dunked it on the floor to demonstrate its durability. Jobs knew how to win over a room—even in a small group, his confidence and showmanship were mesmerising.

After that meeting—and again years later, when reading Walter Isaac son's biography of the Apple co founder—I wondered what it must have been like to work for him. On one hand, what an opportunity to observe an extraordinary genius at close range. On the other, Jobs was a know-it-all and a bully, so how could subordinates possibly push back or persuade him when he was wrong?

In “Persuading the Unpersuadable,” Wharton professor Adam Grant uses Jobs as an example to explain precisely how to do so. “Plenty of leaders are so sure of themselves that they reject good opinions and ideas from others and refuse to abandon their own bad ones,” Grant writes. “The good news is that it is possible to get even the most overconfident, stubborn, narcissistic, and disagreeable people to open their minds.” The article, adapted from Grant’s new book, Think Again, outlines four strategies for doing just that.

In a world of entrenched partisanship, finding new ways to talk about disagreements is a skill that goes beyond management. I hope leaders everywhere will put Grant’s advice into action.

To find International Buyers and Sellers visit www.cord360.com , the only active trade platform with active buyers visiting. click on the above link to find authentic spice sellers , Tea , coconut products from Sri Lanka and south Asia.