"entrepreneurs typically have confidence in what they are undertaking and have the ability to make quick decisions and take action. They are also willing to use their knowledge or what they have learned to experiment and try new approaches to improve the process or product."At first sight, this might seem to be inimical to the kinds of skills that theological colleges have traditionally been most into. Our training systems have tended to encourage people to be cautious (that's 'scholarly') and modest (that's humility) which tends to discourage quick decisions and precipitous action. I would also say that experiment and new approaches are not encouraged; rather (through the traditional attitudes and structures) somewhat discouraged.
In fact, in view of that I'm inclined to wonder whether it's not so much about 'practical intelligence' as character (a researcher said: "personal characteristics are important as well in venture creation and growth"). It seems to me that it is possible to be cautious and entrepreneurial: the point is to be cautious about the right things. Modesty is not necessarily something that rules out confidence; it's just a sense of proper perspective: confidence can be well founded. I'm suspecting that it is our cultural interpretations that are at fault. And isn't some of this what is said about Brits and business often? We have an education system that seems still to be set up to train people to be civil servants and our theological formation seems to have aped it in an ecclesiastical key.
This relates to an earlier post on failure (and also here): because the concomitant of some of this is also a willingness to fail, and this is helped or hindered by attitudes in our 'communities of formation'. I have to say that I do find the unwillingness sometimes in college to recognise that people will make mistakes or not do things perfectly, stultifying. We should value 'having a go and learning from it', but we seem to communicate "don't have a go unless you're pretty sure you've got everything tied down". Actually, the two shouldn't be opposites, and it should be a case of both having a go and also having taken due care. But in the latter case; sometimes you don't know until you try, and we need to both let people try and also let them know that we know that entrepreneurial success is borne on the back of a raft of failures. The issue is how well we encourage people to reflect on what happened -and for that to happen they have to 'feel free to fail'. When I was doing my PGCE the tutors were very keen to convey to us that we would learn the most from our failures; that we would fail and that the best thing was to accept it would happen and develop skills to make the best of it. That's good advice for developing practical intelligence.
I suspect that we all do have practical intelligence (whatever the definition). Probably some people excell in it and others really don't but most of us are somewhere in-between. However, we can hone it and make the best of it. And perhaps here too an ounce of perspective may be worth a pound of genius -and perspective comes from reflection.
Via: High level of practical intelligence a factor in entrepreneurial success.
Another article gives a quick overview of what brain research can or can't say about the 'self'. Some of it may be relevant here: ""Ego doesn't exist in the brain," says Kagan. What does exist, he explains, is a brain circuit that controls the intrusiveness of feelings of self-doubt and anxiety, which can modulate self-confidence."
And this is probably something that can be fine-tuned: I'm guessing that there's enough plasticity in our brains that (in normal conditions, all other things being equal) we can learn to adjust things. I'm also guessing that where CBT, for example, succeeds in helping people is going to turn out to be in this vicinity. It would mean that the issues I mentioned above about confidence and humility is something that we can genuinely, I think, expect to learn further.
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