Jennifer Reil: The Rarity Of Truths

“I think that it is challenging to bring our own thinking and our own mental models to the surface because we're not trained to do it. We're not really teaching kids how to be reflective of their own thinking and the role that their emotions play in framing up their conclusions and how they feel about the world. And so we don't have great capability in that. It doesn't mean we can't, there are certainly people who have developed and cultivated a deep practice of reflection and metacognition that enables them to understand not just what they believe, but why they believe it. But I think the truly foundational thing to engaging in this practice for yourself and with others is a recognition that there are very, very few right answers in the world, right?”-Jennifer Reil

In this episode of Control the Room, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jennifer Reil about her experience working at IDEO, metacognition, and teaching at the Management School at the University of Toronto.  We talk about her new book Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking.  We then discuss the difficulty in building the capacity to think about what we think about and opposing modals of thinking.  Listen in to learn how to build empathy, the curse of knowledge, and failing better.