Meetings are hard work and unproductive when colleagues spend most of their time thinking of reasons why something won’t work. Dr Edward de Bono is the world’s leading authority on how to get the best out of people’s thinking.
We have compiled Dr de Bono’s best quotes on negativity in meetings. Here are Indigo’s top 10:
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“A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.” – Extract from How To Have a Beautiful Mind
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“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.”
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“The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.” – Extract from I am Right You Are Wrong
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“Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven.”
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“If you never change your mind, why have one?” – Extract from Think! Before It’s Too Late
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“We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.” – Extract from Six Thinking Hats
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“Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.” – Extract from I am Right You Are Wrong
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“Unfortunately, our existing traditional thinking habits insist that you must attack something and show it to be bad before you can suggest a change. It is more difficult to acknowledge that something is excellent and then to ask for change because although it is excellent, it is not enough.” – Extract from Think! Before It’s Too Late
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“In real-life situations apparently logical lines of argument are often (not always) based on an inability to see alternative possibilities.In a similar way the ability to think of an alternative explanation is by far the best way of destroying the arrogance of an apparently logical line of argument.” – Extract from Teach Your Child How To Think
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“Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.” – Extract from The Use of Lateral Thinking
Find out more about the range of workshops from Edward de Bono…
