Practical Intelligence: The Art and Science of Common Sense

by Karl Albrecht

Karl Albrecht's bestselling book Social Intelligence showed us how dealing with people and social situations can determine success both at work and in life. Now, in this groundbreaking book Practical Intelligence, Albrecht takes the next step and explains how practical intelligence (PI) qualifies as one of the key life skills and offers a conceptual structure for defining and describing common sense. Throughout Practical Intelligence, Albrecht explains that people with practical intelligence can employ language skills, make better decisions, think in terms of options and possibilities, embrace ambiguity and complexity, articulate problems clearly and work through to solutions, have original ideas, and influence the ideas of others. Albrecht shows that everyone's PI skills can be improved with proper education and training and challenges all of us--from parents and teachers to executives and managers--to upgrade our own skills and help others develop their own PI abilities.

Genres: Psychology, Self Help, Science, Nonfiction, Business

416 pages, Hardcover

First published May 4, 2007

About the author

Dr. Karl Albrecht is an executive management consultant, coach, futurist, lecturer, and author of more than 20 books on professional achievement, organizational performance, and business strategy. He is listed as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in business on the topic of leadership.

He is a recognized expert on cognitive styles and the development of advanced thinking skills. His books Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success; Practical Intelligence: The Art and Science of Common Sense; and his Mindex Thinking Style Profile are used in business and education.

The Mensa society presented him with its lifetime achievement award, for significant contributions by a member to the understanding of intelligence.

Originally a physicist, and having served as a military intelligence officer and business executive, he now consults, lectures, and writes about whatever he thinks would be fun.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading this book on and off for the last few weeks. Its about how to create a more holistic and positive approach to thinking, and to develop the kinds of intelligence in synchony we normally think of as polar opposites. For example, intuition and logical thinking are often considered mutually exclusive or antagonistic. Albrecht creates the term intulogical thinking and shows how to combine these skills. The book should really have been called Holistic Thinking, Expanding your Intelligence, because although the results are no doubt practical there is nothing very common about it. I've learned a lot so far, but it is a bit of a drag that many parts of the book are excerpts from the two previous books of his I recently read. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating read. Parts of it were used in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, but its good to read the original source for more insight.

I'm still reading it and enjoying it, in between other books. Of the 3 books of Albrechts I ordered, I think the most helpful to me personally was The Power of Minds at Work, because I could immediately apply what I learned. But this is a powerful book and I continue to learn from it.

I've been reading this book on and off for the last few weeks. Its about how to create a more holistic and positive approach to thinking, and to develop the kinds of intelligence in synchony we normally think of as polar opposites. For example, intuition and logical thinking are often considered mutually exclusive or antagonistic. Albrecht creates the term intulogical thinking and shows how to combine these skills. The book should really have been called Holistic Thinking, Expanding your Intelligence, because although the results are no doubt practical there is nothing very common about it. I've learned a lot so far, but it is a bit of a drag that many parts of the book are excerpts from the two previous books of his I recently read. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating read. Parts of it were used in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, but its good to read the original source for more insight.

I'm still reading it and enjoying it, in between other books. Of the 3 books of Albrechts I ordered, I think the most helpful to me personally was The Power of Minds at Work, because I could immediately apply what I learned. But this is a powerful book and I continue to learn from it.

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Практический интеллект: Наука о здравом смысле - чрезвычайно полезная книга. Пожалуй даже самая полезная книга которую я прочитал в 2010 году. Хоть в Москве она и дороговата (самый дешевое издание, которое я нашел - 1300 руб.), но стоит каждого потраченного рубля.
Если коротко - автор меняет привычное отношение к мыслительному процессу и дает реальный толчок к новой Осознанной жизни. На всякий случай, отдельно скажу, что "Практический интеллект" - НЕ очередной ширпотреб из разряда "Как стать счастливым". Это действительно 400 страниц очень умных мыслей, сдобренных примерами из жизни, реальными советами и упражнениями на закрепление. В общем, всем думающим людям - крайне рекомендую! Ваша жизнь изменится в лучшую сторону :-)

[Adih Respati · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thinking is a whole-body function (hearts, lungs, legs, arms, etc. included) thus indexing intelligence by merely an IQ is terribly mistaken. To recognize these physiological mechanisms wholistically leads to better exercises of one's true intelligences --developing necessary MENTAL HABITS, or software so to speak (mental flexibility, affirmative thinking, sane language habit, and valuing ideas) and MENTAL SKILLS (bivergent thinking, helicopter thinking, intulogical thinking, viscerational thinking). If one establishes both qualities within him/herself, coping with life's challenges and opportunities would be experienced on a conscious level.

I have never been a sucker for any self-help books, but if one such book is saying something about human brain, I personally think it deserves a reading chance. Practical Intelligence, it turns out, not only contemplates on intelligences in segregations (like all those rubbishes on SQ, EQ, etc), it integrates them based on neurological perspective. It's no science writing, but at least the buildingblocks of the hypothesis IS.

[Brian TramueL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Work and Play. Karl's approach to encouraging us to think "inside" the box to apply critical thinking, practically is written with a balance of childlike and adult behavior. The use of language skills to discuss, deduce and judge so that we may reason logically and accurately. Science! Yes, science is true ... don't be misled by facts.

[Cheong Soon-Fatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second author that I have known to try to model how our mind work, beside Edward de Bono. He have posited that we have multiple minds or subminds. These subminds are not part of the nervous system, such as immune system, digestive system and cutaneous system. He have illustrate the 8 polarity of thinking process

[irfan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enlightening and full of refreshing ideas, some of which challenge the norms of your very own assumptions of how things are. Definitely a must read for those who are into enriching their intellectual capacity of what intelligence presumably is, and what it ought to be, or should be.

[Cynthia Armistead Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvelous book. In fact, I intend to buy a copy, now that I've read the one I checked out of the library.

[Leslie Tyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few good ideas, but you have to wade through a fair amount of tedious stuff about brain function and oversimplified ideas.

[Kārlis Bergmanis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somehow divided on this one.
It felt as there are three very separate parts of this book.
First part was painting background for everything to come. As I have read multiple books on topic, this seemed to be really vague and generic, however, I think that this might be a good place to start, before you move on to something more in depth, like Behave or In search of Memory.
Middle part contained methods on how to approach problems, how to think about them and how to solve them in reasonable way. This was the best part as here it was clear that author is on strong ground and broadcasts his message clearly. Chapters 4 - 11 is the meat and potatoes of this book and this convinced me to keep this in my shelf.
And parts 12, 13 and appendixes seemed like just thrown in there for good measure to make book a bit thicker. For example, five step problem solving - he begun chapter by stating that it doesn't work, and then went on to present ... five ... ZONE ... problem solving. So how it's exactly different?

All in all, I still consider this to be worth reading if you are starting out. If you already have some background in this topic and have done some work, skip this and move on. If you are just looking for a starting point in self improvement, give this one a go!

[Darrell Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this was a decent book. It was a bit hoo-ey in some places, but I actually learned a few things. Some of the content is certainly more for the hippies, but most parts are practical and, indeed, useful in everyday life and its encounters.

Albrecht isn't without his own biases though:

"The spectacular failure of the American attempt to forcibly install democracy in a country like Iraq, with its uniquely different socio-political substructure, raises not only the question of whether those who attempted it really understood the Arab culture, but also the question of how well they understood democracy itself, and how it actually worked in the cultures of their own birth" (257).

Man, that comment didn't age well... Alice Walpole (Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General) just made a speech on 04 Dec 2018 about how Iraq is excelling in its embrace of democracy, even if it still has a long way to go.

[David Grossman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to read only snippets over several months due to time constraints, but still got a lot out of this book. Far transcends the IQ/EQ dichotomy.
Learned a great many areas I need to improve.
2 of the 4 key mental habits, mental flexibility & valuing ideas, seemed natural enough for me but the other 2, affirmative thinking and sane language use, will require a lot of work in thinking and speaking much more positively. I don't question the health and happiness benefits of such changes.
I especially enjoyed the 4 megaskill axes:
Divergent-Convergent
Abstract-Concrete
Logical-Intuitive
Rational-Emotive.
Most of us have our own leaning proclivities on each axis. To be more effective, we not only need to explore the other end of each axis, but become more agile in seamlessly navigating each axis bidirectionallly to maximize benefits.
As I get more time to work on self improvement, I hope to consult this resource in the future.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent in terms of the content of the book, but there were some slow parts. Overall, still informational.

[Matias Infeld Caballier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Múltiples puntos de vista interesantes sobre la manera de razonar y resolver problemas. Algunas cuestiones trilladas pero otras tantas novedosas.

[Dora Okeyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good way of approaching Intelligence and a must-read.