Persuadable: How Great Leaders Change Their Minds to Change the World

we shouldn’t maximize decisiveness any more than we should maximize persuadability. When we become too decisive, we also become close-minded and blind to new information. The world is just too fluctuating and unpredictable for this.

one of the ways to access the predictions that underlie your opinions is to ask yourself a simple question: what evidence would convince you that you were wrong?

consider going one step further, and beyond changing your own mind, focus on actively persuading those with whom we have the most influence—our own tribes.

“If I had to bet on the best long-term predictor of good judgment among the observers in this book, it would be their commitment—their soul-searching Socratic commitment—to thinking about how they think.”13

The hardest part of considering the opposite, as mentioned at the start of this chapter, is knowing when to do it. That’s because when we have a model of the world (and we all do), we don’t relate to it as our model of the world; we relate it to as reality. It’s like wearing a pair of contact lenses that change the way we see everything. At some po

They need to courageously change their minds, defying the current social norms. This punctures unanimity and allows for nonconformity within that critical early majority group. These early majority champions prove indispensable by serving as a legitimizing reference to their peers. In addition, now we know—thanks to Christakis and Fowler—that this

The critical attribute here is autonomy, the willingness to reflect on different opinions, rather than to just reflexively dismiss them. Stubbornness is often cherished in the entrepreneurial community. But the reality is that to be truly self-determined you need not be stubborn. What you need to be is autonomous.

Abraham Lincoln, admired his always developing, flexible brand of leadership: Lincoln “was perhaps the greatest figure of the nineteenth century.” He was to be admired “not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet he triumphed. . . . Out of his contradictions and inconsistencies he fought his way to the pinnacles of the earth and his f

There is a reason why Emerson’s and Campbell’s writings have become so pervasive. There is much truth to their core message. Often the people around us do try to prevent us, whether deliberately or not, from expressing ourselves or from leading our lives in the way we desire. We do need to fight against external pressures at times. There is perhaps