Profiting from Multiple Intelligences in the Workplace
Profiting from Multiple Intelligences in the Workplace
Joyce MartinGower2000ISBN: 0566083124£49.50Keywords: Intelligence, Organizational effectiveness
I first came across Howard Gardener's ideas of multiple intelligences late last year when being interviewed about my continuing professional development. During the conversation, I mentioned that my son's school performance is not matching the intellectual capacity he demonstrates through his general knowledge. The interviewer asked me if I knew of Howard Gardener's work and I then researched it on the Internet. I read a couple of reviews and ordered a"self-development book" from Amazon. That book arrived the week before I was invited to review Joyce Martin's book – strange things, coincidences!
The concept of multiple intelligences appeals to me because one-dimensional models of people seem so shallow. However complicated the model, it is still a pale shadow of the complexity of real people. Models can help us deal with that complex reality in manageable ways. The Introduction of my "self-development book" on multiple intelligences I found particularly appealing in its view of our all having special and unique capacities through them. I learned from my brief skim of references to Howard Gardener that he had initially identified seven intelligences in 1983 and that he had recently extended this to nine. I was pleased to see that Joyce Martin's book is based around the nine intelligences.
Profiting from Multiple Intelligences in the Workplace is written around managers reviewing their intelligences in their work context and then applying them to their staff. I found it very much a "work book" with instructions to write on the checklists and questionnaires in the book. This would have been much easier if a loose-leaf format had been used rather then the hardback binding. Questionnaires going across backed pages I found particularly irritating. I also find it difficult to overcome my reluctance to write in "proper books" even though I tell my students that they should feel free to highlight things and write comments and notes upon their textbooks. There are many references to other sources included, both books and Websites, in the text,which I thought sometimes interfered with the readability.
I found this book involving and demanding as I was invited to do things all the way through it. This helped to reinforce the ideas around the nine intelligences. It also had the consequence that, for some activities, I felt I was responding with what I thought were the intelligences that I valued. I am unsure whether that is an advantage or disadvantage but sometimes I questioned the validity of my answers.
I liked the comprehensiveness of the early chapters, which explored other approaches to describing the capacity of people. Intelligence tests, emotional intelligence, psychological tests are all given critical scrutiny and their limitations explored. The nine intelligences are introduced by describing them and then getting readers to apply them to their own jobs. There are many examples in the text linking the intelligences to managerial roles to illustrate their application. The author suggests that the best managers will have high scores on all nine intelligences. This conflicts with the overall message of the book that we all have relative strengths and weaknesses in our multiple intelligences.
From identifying my relative strengths and weaknesses for each intelligence,I was interested to be taken through matching them to my job demands and then looking at my leisure activities. There are activities for building a personal database for the intelligences and then developing a personal profile. This demanded more time than I was willing to commit but is something that I may well come back to in the future. There is plenty of material here for further reflection and review of intelligences with some powerful questions. One question I particularly liked was "How would you demonstrate that you have used feedback to improve your performance during the last three months?" (p. 85).
There is great emphasis placed by the author on recognising that the intelligences cannot be reduced to a single number to allow a direct comparison between individuals. It is also suggested that the intelligences are not entirely innate and that, like preferred learning styles, we can develop them. I did not feel that the book offered advice about how weaker intelligences might be developed.
The application of the intelligences is extended to recruitment and selection. Identifying the intelligences required to successfully undertake a job and producing a "job profile" seem useful. Devising an application form to seek information about a candidate's intelligences seems a logical extension. The advice to list only those intelligences "of greatest potential benefit" left me struggling to think of objective criteria to judge. A process for establishing the intelligences of potential candidates seems more daunting to me and is not addressed. The author points out that other approaches have just the same problems and that effort to apply the intelligences will pay off with better recruits. I was not convinced that there was evidence beyond the intellectual belief that this approach is more attractive than other options.
The intelligences are then applied as a framework to other activities including induction of staff, supervision practices, training and development,stress, motivation and promotion. I became uneasy with these applications, as they seemed to be purely theoretical. I began to feel they were examples of an enthusiast going "over the top" in applying their solution almost indiscriminately. The book concludes on the note that the sky and your imagination are the limits to your opportunities to apply Howard Gardener's concept of multiple intelligences.
This book is a good starting place for looking at the idea of multiple intelligences but I feel it is over-optimistic about what is possible and practical in real organisations. I think that there will be a big selling job in any organisation to use multiple intelligences for selection, induction,promotion, stress and motivation. The cover claims that no other book provides a method of translating the theory of multiple intelligences into workplace practice. While this may be true, I feel there are major challenges in adopting this approach, which the book does not address. The price of £49.50 seems a bit steep but it certainly provides a vocationally based introduction to multiple intelligences. Managers could utilise this book to review their jobs and development using multiple intelligences and apply them to their staff.
John RoscoeThames Valley University
