Reflection of Five Minds for the Future

Reflection of Five Minds for the Future The concepts and arguments about Gardner’s five minds enriched me a lot, and made me think further about the capabilities and skills people should equipped with to handle the new world in the future individually and cooperatively. As a master student, I feel that subjects in commerce will cultivate my cognition and interpersonal skills by developing disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful, and ethical minds.

In a few years time, when I become a business professional, I think those minds are still important to me in order to make bigger achievements. Disciplined mind Disciplined mind means a continuous process of improving one’s skills. No matter what knowledge I have captured now, there are still many unknown areas for me to explore. However, in retrospect, I always thought what I have been told was exactly what I need to learn. And now I figure out that learning is not merely receiving, but is the continuous process of self-education, self-discovery and self-reflection.

The subjects in commerce provide opportunities for me to do further research, to find out the solutions to the issues and get feedback from myself and others, which cultivates my habit of investigating the ideas in the long run. Synthesizing mind Gardner (2008, p3) defined that synthesizing mind is a process of collecting, evaluating and combining distinguished information. As a student, during in-class discussions and exams, I have been given many chances to perfect my synthesizing mind.

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When preparing exams, I will synthesize all the information, ideas, and feelings from separate lectures and combine them to one mind map, demonstrating their inter-relationships. After doing like that, I will have further understandings of the subjects and could put those abstract theories into practice. The group project also encourages me to absorb different views when looking at one problem, and then integrate all together into one idea, which become the main research direction. For an informed business professional, a synthesizing mind is necessary for them to make the most appropriate decision.

Arming with synthesizing mind, they attempt to consider all the horizontal and vertical information before making final decision. Horizontal information means new ideas from other colleagues and knowledge gain from other domains, and vertical information includes the lessons learnt from their past experiences, knowledge about their current circumstances and also new dilemmas they may meet in the coming situations. Moreover, the capability of generating well-informed strategies will lead business professional to higher level in their career, such as manager or leader level.

Creating mind As argued by Gardner (2008, p3), individuals need to think creatively to break new world, or we will be left behind by the overwhelming development of technology. I cannot agree more to his argument because the situations where some people have been “controlled” by computers and internets have arisen. For example, individuals nowadays become more dependent on the ideas and information provided on the internet, which lead them to think superficially and conservatively.

The education method of MCom overcomes the drawbacks of traditional teaching process in terms of encouraging students to think out of the box and to look at one problem from different viewpoints. Creativity is not always welcomed, especially in the domains stated by Gardner (2008, p7), such as accounting, law and engineering. Taking accounting as an example, lots of accounting policies have been used for years and have been a stereotype to all the firms. Major innovation of the accounting policy will rarely happen; however, minor changes will easily occur.

It is necessary for them to adapt to the small changes and make suitable decision based on the updated policy rather than follow the old ways blindly. Respectful and ethical mind Living under the multicultural environment, individuals are supposed to appreciate others’ culture, understand and pardon others’ behavior and build common trust. And we citizens shall do whatever a responsible person will do in our role, standing in our view. As a master student here, I may have some pportunities to work with people from different nations. If I want to be respected by others, I need to welcome and understand them and show my respect sincerely. A respectful mind is vital for a business professional in dealing with relationships between colleagues, customers and friends. When facing a problem, the person who refuses to listen to others’ opinions but insist on his or her own thought will make the problem more complex and finally poison the workplace, and no one are likely to work with this kind of person any more.

As the world becoming globalized, people who can appreciate different arguments, cultures and behaviors will adjust themselves well to the new world. In order to enjoy decent life in the new world, businessmen should not act selfishly, rather, they are supposed to have ethical mind, thinking in a way of making win-win decisions to benefit our society as well as their business. Bibliography Gardner, H. 2008, Five Minds for the Future, Harvard Business Press, Boston, Massachusetts

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