Persuadable: How Great Leaders Change Their Minds to Change the World

people in tribes, when left unchecked, often develop extreme views and become wildly overconfident that these views are true.

opposing tribes who disagree on particular issues grow even further apart—severely

Conformity toward shared beliefs leads to feelings of attachment and solidarity with fellow tribe members.5 It’s like the glue that holds groups together.

Instead of futilely badgering people outside of our tribes and telling them “you’re wrong,” what if we brought change to our own tribes by employing a much more persuasive statement, “we’re wrong.”

“I believe X because my kind of people believe X.”

one of the main culprits was social signaling. Our behaviors and attitudes are governed by what is normal among our peers.

We need to retain a spirit of “keeping the door partly open”—never being 100 percent certain, or 100 percent committed to anything. We should always maintain at least a token willingness to change our minds.

The benefits of decisiveness are speed, efficiency, and action, but they’re at the cost of accuracy.

we shouldn’t maximize decisiveness any more than we should maximize persuadability. When we become too decisive, we also become close-minded and blind to new information. The world is just too fluctuating and unpredictable for this.