7 Intelligences
What Does it Mean to be Smart?
by Jim Cathcart, CSP, CPAE

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Several years ago actors Dustin Hoffman & Tom Cruise made a movie called Rainman. In it Raymond, (Rain Man) the title character was Autistic Savant. He was literally a genius and an idiot at the same time. Raymond's greatest intellect was Mathematical. He could count and calculate as fast as a computer. But at the same time he was dysfunctional interpersonally. He couldn't even carry on a normal conversation. The movie was based on truth.

If we were to pose the most common question regarding intellect to Raymond, what answer would we get? Here is the question; How smart is he? You'd get contradictory answers wouldn't you?

What does it mean to be smart? It used to mean you could ace an IQ test or score well on the S.A.T. (Scholastic Aptitude Test). Smart people were the ones who were good at math and spelling and had huge memories. In many schools kids were separated by their scores. The smart kids got more attention and more privileges that the "slower" ones.

In business we have traditionally defined smart as the ability to solve problems and understand things quickly. In fact quickness has been widely accepted as a trait of intellect.

Yet many of the world's great discoveries came not through quickness but through sustained laborious thinking and creativity. Thomas Edison is said to have been "a drudge" before his invention of the light bulb. He reportedly tried thousands of times to create it with no success.

Many of our concepts on intelligence have been shaken up recently. Fore most among the tree shakers has been Dr. Howard Gardner whose book Frames of Mind cites seven types of intelligence. He says we've been measuring smarts too narrowly. Thomas Armstrong Ph.D. extends this concept in his book Seven Kinds of Smart.

These great thinkers have proposed a much healthier question regarding intellect, not how smart are you but How are you smart? If we asked that question of Raymond, the answer would be immediate, He is smart mathematically. That answer would give us a sense of what he would do well, what he would probably enjoy and where his greatest contributions would come from. Gardner and Armstrong have provided us with some valuable new insight.

The basis of their conclusions is this: There are at least seven multiple intelligences, all of which are possessed by everyone, except in different proportions. Your main smarts may be my lesser ones and vice versa.