If you think you have nothing to learn from your kids (or even someone else’s kids), check out this amazing video from TED Talks, which I discovered at the blog Natural Papa.

“Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs “childish” thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids’ big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups’ willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.”

Turns out you don’t need to be a prodigy to have amazing ideas either.  My daughter Ingrid, who recently turned 3, has been on a re-branding campaign for the Big Bad Wolf.  She says he’s not bad as much as he’s misunderstood.

I’m willing to bet you make the same mistake with people.  A guy cuts you off on the freeway, and you imagine he’s innately rude.  A co-worker pushes his own ideas at the expense of yours in a meeting, and you assume he’s a self-serving jerk.  But you may be falling prey to the fundamental attribution error, a well known cognitive bias, where we overvalue personality-based explanations of behavior over situational ones.

We accept doctors can be highly skilled with poor bedside manners, but somehow forget the same applies to our co-workers.  Check out this post on “Confident Dumb People.”  Have we all experienced this?  Yes.  The point is, no one is smart or “dumb” all the time.  Smart people occasionally have dumb ideas and “dumb” people occasionally have good ones.  The trick is to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until you can discern the difference on an idea by idea basis.  Who knows, the idea might be so good, it’ll blow your house down (figuratively speaking, of course).