Are We There Yet? vol. 248
The other day I was listening to an interview of Malcolm Gladwell by Adam Grant. Gladwell is a journalist and public speaker best known for his books The Tipping Point and Outliers. Grant is an organizational psychologist, Wharton School professor, and author of books such as Think Again and Hidden Potential. I’ve enjoyed all these books, and the two of them going back and forth is always entertaining.
Gladwell raised an interesting point about how he deals with criticism. The two were discussing a chapter in Tipping Point that related the story of Bernard Goetz. Goetz was on a New York subway in 1984 and shot four Black teenagers who he thought might mug him because they asked him for $5. With high crime in NYC during that period, there was a lot of public support for Goetz. Gladwell attributed Goetz actions to his environment and the broader statement that people are products of their environment. Last year, during a somewhat random meeting with a doctor, she told him that she thought he got the Goetz story wrong, mostly because the entire chapter focused only on Goetz and not at all on the four young men he shot.
Gladwell noted that he was shocked by the statement and then embarrassed because she was correct. Most people, when criticized, try to defend their point rather than taking the criticism to heart. Gladwell said that the doctor’s criticism gave him the opportunity to correct himself in front of his audience. None of us like to make mistakes, but I found that his mechanism for turning criticism into a positive experience is one that I may be able to use.
Take care and stay safe.
BOOK:
Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel’s Messiah
George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones.
But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope.
Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.
Learn more about Bob Len here.
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