The Wisest One in the Room

• Published date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22183
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Author: Tom Pryor

73

© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22183

The Wisest One in the Room

Tom Pryor

BOOK REVIEWED

Gilovich, Thomas and Lee Ross,

2015. The Wisest One in the

Room (New York: Free Press).

If you are a leader of an

organization, one of your most

important tasks is to surround

yourself with wise people. This

book, by two psychologists,

Thomas Gilovich at Cornell

University and Lee Ross at

Stanford University, defines

the characteristics of a wise

person. The authors primar-

ily use the book to make the

reader wise about why people

behave the way that they do,

and wise about how to use that

knowledge to understand and

influence the people in your

organization.

What is wisdom? Who is

wise? The authors list three

types of wisdom:

1. Buddha wise—these people

have accumulated knowl-

edge and scientic learning.

2. Bubba wise—these people

have insight or the ability to

discern inner qualities and

relationships.

3. Buffett wise—these people

have good judgment or

goodsense.

Being wise is not the same

thing as being smart. The

authors state on page 3, “By

the ‘wisest one in the room’ we

do not mean the person with

the highest IQ or the greatest

command of facts and figures.

The smartest one in the room

may lack insight about human

affairs and display poor judg-

ment in both day-to-day inter-

actions and the larger pursuit

of a rewarding and meaningful

life.” The wisest person in the

room is Buddha, Bubba, and

Buffett rolled up into one.

As one might expect from a

book written by two psycholo-

gists, the book stresses that one

cannot be considered wisest

unless one is wise about people.

A knowledgeable person knows

a lot about What and How, but

a wise person understands Why.

Wisdom requires understand-

ing the most common and most

powerful influences on people’s

behavior.

Based on this book review-

er’s 40+ years of corporate

financial management experi-

ence, I feel comfortable with

What and How. Why and the

whole world of psychology

is not something I studied in

college or gained in corporate

or consulting life. Therefore,

I found this book to be new

ground for me, and possibly

forthe majority of this jour-

nal’s readers.

The book is organized in

two parts. Each of the first five

chapters deals with a general

principle of human behavior

that can add to your under-

standing of a wide range of

events and make you more

psych-wise in dealing with

ordinary and not-so-ordinary

challenges. The second part of

the book is four chapters that

use these principles to shed

light on particularly important

concerns we face as individuals

and as a society: the pursuit of

happiness, overcoming barri-

ers to intractable conflict, the

challenge of educating disad-

vantaged and underperforming

students, and the other chal-

lenges, such as climate change.

The authors propose that

there are five activities that

the wisest people in the room

always do:

1. Wise people discipline

themselves not to rush to

judgment about individu-

als until they know and feel

they truly appreciate the

situational forces and con-

straints that are making