Thinking Styles

Following on the heels of Edward de Bono's series on thinking (although only de Bono's "Lateral Thinking" is cited) these management consultants, take up where de Bono left off. Their thesis is that throughout our lives we tend to fall back on one, or at most, two strategies of thinking, when in fact there are at least five or six common styles available to us. These overlooked styles and strategies greatly limit the power and range of our thinking and thus also limit the range and power of our problem-solving abilities. Including them in our repertoire can prove valuable in extending the range, power and quality of our thinking and problem solving. Five strategies are examined and analyzed in this book. We are taught to understand our own style of thinking; how to use our existing strengths more productively, ways to augment them, as well as how to identify our own blind spots and the limitations of our own thinking style. At the end of the book an inventory questionnaire is devised as a checklist so that problem-solvers and decision-makers may use it to ensure that they have broadened the context of their decision-making to include the widest possible variety of thinking styles. This is a very practical and useful book, that works. Five stars

As always, Sternberg discusses his topic in a way that readers can understand. His inclusion of the assessment of thinking styles helps to clarify reasons individuals may look at the world differently. This is a must for leadership classes.

This book will be of interest to diverse audiences: educators, psychologists, managers. Thinking styles are of interest ptimarily to educators because they can help teachers to improve instruction and assessment. They are related with age, gender, experience, self-esteem. Sternberg say that learning styles might be used to characterize how one prefers to learn, cognitive styles might be used to characterize ways to cognizing the information and, thinking styles might be used to characterize how one prefers to think about material as one is learning it or after one already knows it. I learned more about my own styles and how these styles affect my life.

Robert J. Sternberg is IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University. His publication, Thinking Styles, is a study of how and why homosapiens think and could be classified as interactive and reciprocal mental self-government psychology. Its major objective is to show how different thinking styles affect learning preferences and how individual abilities to learn should be recognized and respected. In so doing, Sternberg manages to criticize many accepted views on intelligence testing. These, so called, standards of the day provide only part of an answer to why people learn and perform differently. His criticism of these standards provides us an insight into the special character of his concerns. Sternberg's theory of styles differs from established intelligence and motivational evaluational technique in that he explores the possibility of mental self-government. "The basic idea of the theory of mental self-government is that the forms of government we have in the world are not coincidental. Rather, they are external reflections of what goes on in people's minds. They represent alternative ways of organizing our thinking." Sternberg's theory of mental self government is as follows, "That the kinds of governments we have in the world are not merely arbitrary and perhaps random constructions, but rather in a certain sense are mirrors of the mind. In other words, they reflect different ways in which people can organize or govern themselves. On this view, then, governments are very much extensions of individuals: They represent alternative ways in which collectivities, like individuals, can organize themselves." Societies and individuals both need governmental guidelines. With this definition in mind, Sternberg's theory of thinking styles begins with three different governmental functions, legislative, executive and judicial which he attributes to three classifications of people and how they think. Legislative style people do things their own way, executive style people are implementers, and judicial style people are evaluators. Sternberg then proceeds to four different governmental forms, Monarchic, Hierarchic, Oligarchic and Anarchic, which he attributes to people and how they think. Monarchic style people tend to be motivated by a single goal. Hierarchic people tend to be priority setters, some goals are more important. Oligarchic style people tend to be motivated by several competing goals, without priority. Anarchic style people tend to be concerned with a wide assortment of goals, which they find difficult to sort out. At this point, Sternberg presents us with four different governmental concerns, global, local, internal, and external and two governmental persuasions, liberal and conservative, which he applies to people and how they think. Global style people prefer to address large abstract issues. Local style people prefer to address detail or concrete issues. Inte