What are these things called Capabilities?
Capabilities are the practical cognitive and collaborative skills that are required for the development and exercise practical wisdom, and the making of good judgements.
All four of these capabilities are dealt with below – starting with reflectivity – the founding and enabling capability of the practically wise person.
THE FOUNDATIONAL CAPABILITY
Reflectivity
Reflectivity – What it is:
Reflectivity is the capability to engage in a dialogue with oneself about one’s cognitive, collaborative and emotional conduct – a dialogue with oneself about one’s habits of mind, mouth and ears. It is the capacity to turn a penetrative critical eye onto one’s prejudices and practices.
Reflectivity is the combination of a disciplined reflective habit and evaluative skill. One has to have both the will and the skill!
“One can be very experienced and have little experience.
Useful experience does not just happen – it has to be captured – one has to learn how to learn from one’s experience!”
[Lenney 2016]
ReFLECTivity is the forerunner of ReFLEXivity – as it is the former foundational capability that enables the pursuit of Reflexivity – the foundational disposition of Practical Wisdom!
To accelerate your pursuit of practical wisdom, learn more by engaging with further material, guidance and resources in the Members’ Area.
THE THREE CORE CAPABILITIES
Reason
Reasoning is the crafting and evaluating of reasons for and against things – you should buy our product not theirs because…, we should invest in this country because…, we should not hire this guy because…, etc. It is a fundamental capability that you must develop in your pursuit of Practical Wisdom.
Imagination
Imagination has been termed the missing mystery of philosophy. Philosophy is all about pursuing mysteries and pursuing them vigorously, but the mystery of imagination has received far less demystifying attention than many other topics. This is surprising given how fundamental it is to our humanity, but not surprising given the difficulty of nailing down this remarkably elusive cloud.
Dialogicality
Managers spend the vast majority of their time talking, and mostly to people within their own organisations. When we look at an organization chart we see the lines, boxes, labels, names and job titles but it is in the white space of the chart that the organization and its endeavours are shaped and sustained – it is a white space of perpetual talk! How we talk together determines our effectiveness.