Accepting that people who have lived different lives than you will want different things and will see the world differently helps you recognize that what look like debates are often just people with different life experiences talking over each other, unable to hear one another.

Henry Ford said, “If there is any one secret of success it lies in the ability to actually understand the other person’s point of view and be able to see things from their angle as well as your own.”                                                                                                  

Since everyone has different needs and experiences, the only way to move forward and get things done is to tolerate and work with some views even when you disagree with them. If you think there is only one right answer to every problem, you will insist on banging through more debate until the other side agrees with you, often just cementing them into their position.

It takes smarts to accept that for most problems in the world, your idea of the “right” answer is the one that promotes your own wellbeing and fits your understanding of how the world works. But since everyone has different needs and experiences, the only way to move forward and get things done is to not only tolerate, but to work with some views even when you disagree with them. The outcome if you can do this is getting along with people you disagree with.  It is indispensable.

People who understand various fields may be intelligent, but understanding how the world works requires smarts. Many people are knowledgeable in their field but are oblivious to how interconnected the world is and how foreign other peoples’ life experience may be to their own.

Often we buy into tribal thinking.  That’s when if a person knows your opinion on one thing, they can pretty well tell how you will think on all others. Independent thinking frees us to agree with people on some topics but not others. Both agreeing or disagreeing on every topic with someone or some group indicates an unquestioned knee jerk reaction.

No matter how convinced you are of your truth, realize that the most powerful truth does no good if you can’t get people to listen enough to at least understand why you believe it.

The most successful people have an ability to express their ideas effectively even to people who tend to question or challenge them.  Truth has to be seen in the context of life experience.  It has to be fleshed out in ways different people can hear it. Often that starts with finding a point of agreement and going from there. But that takes you being open enough to find that point and also trying to understand what fears and life experiences block the other person from being able to hear you well enough to think independently.

Giving ideas a life context is a soft emotional skill. And it takes understanding why the other person thinks the way they do. Intelligence and smarts are not the same. But both are important.

( Eileen: A lot of this is from the context of an article by Morgan Housel.  It’s a blend of my ideas and understanding of what he writes about the difference between and the importance of both intelligence and smarts.)