Leading Wisely. Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

he knew that he knew nothing – in short, he recognized the many unknowns in his world. However, does the possession of wisdom imply knowing that you don't know? Is it the acceptance of your own ignorance? Thus, the greatest wisdom may very well lie in the explicit recognition that one is not all knowing.

Hopefully, you have entered a stage of life when you realize how little you know. Of course, you may think, somewhat nostalgically, about your younger years when you thought that you knew everything, but if you are truly in pursuit of wisdom, these thoughts will be fleeting. Only when you realize how little you really know will you make the effort to continue trying to understand what the world has to offer. Eventually, like Socrates, you may have figured out that knowledge is infinite, that knowledge changes at all times, and that all knowledge is transient as it is linked to the world around it. Therefore, knowledge is subject to change as the world is ever in the process of changing. It is for exactly this reason that Socrates felt compelled to continue searching for new knowledge and to understand things even better. This never-ending pursuit of knowledge may have been undertaken with the hope that wisdom eventually would be within reach. To attain it, however, was going to be another story. Wisdom has this infuriating tendency to always remain untouchable.

       A wise old man, a guest of the king, spent his days dressed magnificently, eating the greatest delicacies at the king's table. The advisers sought his advice and the powerful laughed heartily at his jokes, while the relatives of the king showered him with gifts.

       A party of young, arrogant noblemen met the old man one day amidst the lush trees within the royal garden and challenged him about his wisdom: ‘Now tell us Seeker of the Truth, given all the things you know, how many grains of sand would fit in this bucket?’

       ‘My apologies, your fine noblemen, I haven't the faintest idea.’

       ‘Well, how disappointing! But let's ask you something else. Can you tell us this simple thing: Why can you see in a mirror your right and left eye and ear reversed in the reflection but not your face upside down?’

       ‘If I only knew, you priceless offspring of your eminent fathers.’

       But the young noblemen didn't know how to stop pestering the wise old man. ‘Then, tell us at the least, what is the meaning of life?’

       ‘As far as that's concerned, I only know that I don't know, your very honorable people.’

       At this point, the young noblemen exclaimed: ‘You don't know this, and you don't know that! Why then are you, silly, old man, fed and dressed and honored at the royal tables as if you were the wisest of all people?’

       ‘Oh, your noble people,’ replied the old man, ‘I am dressed in silk and fed with good food only for the little that I know. For if I were to be rewarded for what I don't know, all the treasuries of the world put together would not be sufficient.’

Defining wisdom

Socrates did not really define what wisdom meant to him and what would be its various components. Frankly speaking, defining what wisdom is all about is difficult. Wisdom is of a rather ethereal nature. It cannot really be taught; it cannot just be mere knowledge. It is not just intelligence. Although we recognize that when referring to wisdom, knowledge and intelligence may play a role and we also realize that wisdom is a much more complex entity.

      Generally speaking, we feel compelled to acquire knowledge as a way of trying to control the chaos that is life. To gain knowledge can be seen as part of our efforts to make sense of things. In many instances, it is knowledge that we search for when looking for deliverance from our human predicament. We have the hope that knowledge will give us clear answers to existential questions. Frequently, however, knowledge can also be used to mask our biases and to disguise our value judgments. Sadly enough, much of the knowledge we acquire may be misleading, irrelevant, and inaccurate. In the end, it may prove incapable of helping us make sense of whatever difficult challenges we have to deal with. Moreover, the world we live in is now full of factoids or alternative facts that are often presented as knowledge – in other words, ‘knowledge’ that turns out to blatantly false. We may also have discovered that making wise decisions in the ‘real world’ necessitates often something more than just possessing raw knowledge. As the Roman poet Horace would point out, ‘wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.’ To be wise implies having the ability to interpret and act on complex situations, aided by whatever knowledge we have acquired. Unfortunately, resorting merely to knowledge does not necessarily make for wise decisions and actions.

Switching from the concept of knowledge to that of intelligence, we are faced with a similar conundrum. All too often, highly intelligent people can be seen acting in remarkably unintelligent ways. What this tells us is that mere intelligence – like knowledge – may not be enough to decipher the puzzle that is wisdom. As the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, ‘Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.’

      Perhaps a better way of looking at the wisdom conundrum is to define it more as the appropriate, more discerned application of whatever knowledge we possess – the ability to judge complex problems correctly and to subsequently follow the best course of action based on the knowledge that we have available. In other words, having wisdom also includes the anticipation of consequences of our actions – it being a reflection of how well we are dealing with a specific situation.

      Actually, taking a somewhat more ‘rational’, scientific approach, we could define wisdom as being an advanced cognitive and emotional developmental state that is experience driven and, when applied, always takes the common good into consideration. Although this definition may sound forbidding, what I am suggesting is that wisdom seems to be composed of three structural components: a talent in cognitive and emotional integration that helps to solve complex issues, the ability to take the appropriate actions, and the concern that whatever actions are taken will have a positive effect on others and also ourselves.

      Hopefully, a better understanding of what wisdom is all about is beginning to materialize. I imagine, however, that there is still somewhat of a confusion given our tendency – at least in general discourse – to use the terms being knowledgeable, being intelligent, and having wisdom, somewhat interchangeably. Thus, it does not always make it easy to distinguish one from the other. Far too often, knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom seem to be intertwined.

In an attempt to further unravel this conundrum, I should add that you are not born with knowledge. On the contrary, you acquire knowledge. In other words, being knowledgeable is an experiential phenomenon, meaning that knowledge is what you know. You should view it as the sum of everything that you have learned over the years. Clearly, knowledge will grow and change along with you.

      In contrast, intelligence can be described as a measure of how much you understand. It refers to your intellectual or mental capacity. In other words, if you are intelligent, it will be relatively easy to learn new skills, solve problems effectively, as well as comprehend complex ideas. Thus, a large part of intelligence (being really smart) is the result of genetics. I should add, however, that intelligence also has a developmental component. The kind of learning experiences provided to you while growing up also plays a role. How well you use your intelligence very much depends on the interplay of nature and nurture. To recapitulate, in making a comparison between intelligence and knowledge, it is important to note that you can be very intelligent and still not know very much, while you can be very knowledgeable and still be mostly unintelligent.

      Wisdom, by contrast, is a very different entity. Though related to knowledge and intelligence, it is more abstract and subjective. While knowledge and intelligence can be measured to some extent, wisdom is not really quantifiable. It has more of a qualitative nature. It pertains to a subjective measure of the quality of your insights.

What I am also suggesting is that mere knowledge onto itself can be a very sterile proposition. Furthermore, having acquired much knowledge because