Changing Minds From Principle to PracticeCaron Van Stroe05/17/2014In today's ever-changing world it is important that both organizations and people are able to change and adapt to meet needs of consumers. As leaders, we must create ways to shift a person's mental representations to create changes in behaviors and thoughts. “Changing Minds” by Howard Gardner discusses three factors of mental change, the four entities, the six arenas and the seven levers. This document will identify the key messages contained in the book and provide examples of how Gardner's seven levers can be used in real-life situations. Today's world is characterized by continuous and rapid changes. Organizations must be able to adapt and change quickly to meet the needs of consumers and the environment. For organizations to change, the people within them need to change. This involves identifying ways to replace one mood with another in order to create a change in behavior. Howard Gardner's book “Changing Minds. The Art and Science of Changing the Minds of Ourselves and Others” (Gardner, 2006) explores techniques and principles that can be used to facilitate successful change. This document will review the key messages and provide examples of the seven levers used in real-life situations. Gardner (2006) suggests that changing minds requires three elements; mental contents, the arena and the use of levers. Changing minds involves altering a person's mental contents not only by spreading ideas of change through stories, but by providing the theoretical basis for change, key concepts of change and ensuring that the skills needed to implement change are supported and developed. The second element talks about… middle of paper… way of providing care and struggling to understand that there are better ways to do it. When asked why they do something a certain way, the common answer is “because that's how we've always done it.” Alternatively, when attempting a change, we are constantly faced with “oh, we already did this and it didn't work,” which tells us that the desired change is doomed to fail. Perhaps, when trying to implement change with this group of people, we could get some help from them, to minimize this resistance. Mental change is believed to be the result of a slow, almost unidentifiable, change in point of view. A key to changing minds is to produce this change in a person's mental representations. To inspire change in others, you need to present the idea with enough frequency and variety that they understand it, remember it, and most importantly, embrace it.