The Definition of Smart - Page 2

The term 'smart' is another word for intelligence.

Intelligence is the brain's cognitive ability. Intelligence involves one's mental capacity to learn, solve problems, reason, plan, think abstractly, and comprehend ideas and language.

Heres one credible approach to intelligence:

Intelligence is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings-"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do


Obviously different psychologists define or perceive 'intelligence' differently.

Heres another definition of Intelligence from "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" a report of a task force convened by the American Psychological Association

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena

I have always been taught that everyone is smart in a different way and my experience in the military, living and working closely with others I have found this to be true.

One particular individual, if you didn't know, you'd think he was retarded. But he went to just about every Navy school there was and he past them all top of the class. They sent him to all these schools believing he would fail and they could get rid of him because he made a poor leader. He used to come up to me and ask the dumbest of questions and I used to get angry with him explaining to him that he knew the answer.

While I knew another who grew up in a Korean orphanage and could not read but was extremely disciplined always giving advice, and we all quickly learned that his advice was good, he baffled us many times. He seemed to just know things most of us couldn't know.

To be successful in accomplishing a mission, a good leader recognizes that each person has a special gift to contribute to the mission.