It is through social interaction that new concepts and intellectual behav-
iors are formed and grown.
Thinking Interdependently
Success depends, above all, upon people. Build relationships, teams,
partnerships—and motivate people to contribute. Cultivate lead-
ership, creativity, excellence. Listen; seek new ideas and advice.
—Ruth ScottIntellectually effective people seem able to “be at home” in multiple
areas of functioning. They move flexibly from one style to another as the
situation demands it. They have an uncanny ability to gather data through
their senses. They “read” contextual cues from the situation or the envi-
ronment as to what is needed, and then they draw forth from their vast
repertoire those skills and capacities needed to function most effectively
in that setting.
Leaders realize that humans grow intellectually through resolving dif-
ferences, achieving consensus, and stretching to accommodate disso-
nance. They realize there is a greater possibility for making connections,
stimulating creativity, and growing the capacity for complex problem solv-
ing when such differences are bridged. Interdependent learning commu-
nities are built not by obscuring diversity but by valuing the friction those
differences bring and resolving those differences in an atmosphere of trust
and reciprocity.
School leaders bring the teaching staff together to function as a learn-
ing community to make changes that could improve the functioning of
the school even though the leaders themselves may have strong ideas on
the subject. Forward-thinking leaders deliberately bring together people
of different political and religious persuasions, cultures, genders, cognitive
styles, belief systems, modality preferences, and intelligences to work
together on issues and problems. They structure groups composed of rep-
resentatives from different schools, diverse departments, various commu-
nity groups, and different grade levels to envision, to describe learning
outcomes, to plan curriculum, to plan staff development activities, and to
allocate resources.
280 Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind