During the methane gas boom, a landman stopped by my parents’ house to make the case for signing a lease. He spent about 15 minutes explaining how the wells and pipelines worked.
Dad excused himself, went to his study, and returned with his diploma in petroleum engineering from what is now the Colorado School of Mines.
He handed it to the man and suggested they start the conversation over.
The landman had looked at a farmer and made an assumption.
He saw the occupation and decided what level of understanding came with it.
The diploma corrected him, but the larger lesson goes beyond the diploma.
No one succeeds in agriculture without understanding weather, soil, plant science, machinery and economics. Farmers make decisions every day that require judgment across several fields.
The degree exposed the assumption. It didn’t create the intelligence.
We make similar assumptions because most of us inherited a narrow definition of what it means to be “smart.”
Here’s the thing: In 1983, psychologist Howard Gardner argued that intelligence isn’t one thing you measure with IQ tests and classroom performance.
He identified a whole range of human capacities. Some show up through language or mathematics. Others appear through spatial awareness, movement, music, relationships, nature or questions of meaning.
That matters because narrow standards don’t just cause us to misjudge others. They cause you to misunderstand yourself.
A good friend of mine struggled in school because of dyslexia. School gave him reasons to question his intelligence. Yet he’s one of the best mechanics and welders I know.
He can listen to a machine, recognize what’s wrong and understand how separate parts affect the whole. He can visualize a repair before beginning, work with precision and create something durable from raw material.
Those aren’t lesser abilities because they don’t appear on a written exam. They’re expressions of intelligence.
We also assume one visible ability tells us the whole story. You see a job title or hear how someone talks, and you think you already know what you’re facing.
A horse wrangler may also be an artist. The patience, physical awareness and judgment required to work with horses don’t exclude imagination or visual perception.
A person can read the movement of an animal, understand space and proportion, then carry those same sensitivities into a painting or sculpture.
Intelligence often appears in combinations others don’t expect.
Some forms are easier to overlook because we describe them as personality.
Consider a pastor people seek out during grief, illness, family conflict, financial strain or community crisis. A good pastor listens for what people are saying, and what they’re avoiding.
They recognize when someone needs guidance, reassurance or silence. They help people sort through fear and loss without taking control away from them.
We may call this compassion, or wisdom. It’s also interpersonal intelligence.
The standards we absorb can do lasting harm. Some people spend years believing they aren’t intelligent because they struggled in a classroom, didn’t earn a credential, speak plainly or work in a job others overlook.
Others receive praise for one form of intelligence and assume it proves sound judgment in every area.
Both errors come from mistaking the signal for the thing itself.
Credentials, education, vocabulary and expertise matter. They tell us something. They don’t tell us everything.
But here’s what Gardner’s framework is really pointing at: we’re surrounded by forms of intelligence we were never taught to see.
Families, organizations and communities include people who understand through words, numbers, movement, relationships, observation, reflection, creativity and practical experience.
Each person carries a different mix. Some abilities are obvious. Others become visible only when a problem arises and someone quietly knows what to do.
We don’t always see these forms of intelligence because we weren’t taught to look for them. We notice what we were trained to notice. We value what institutions taught us to measure.
That changes when you decide it does.
Look more closely at the people around you. Name the abilities on which you rely.
Tell the mechanic you value his judgment, the pastor you value her understanding, the artist you value his perception, and the person who holds a family together that you recognize the skill involved.
Then extend the same fairness to yourself. Don’t judge your intelligence only by the form of “smart” you found hardest to demonstrate.
Pay attention to what you understand, what you solve, what others trust you to do and what you create.
Wyoming has never had a shortage of capable people. We’ve had a shortage of recognition. Start there.
Gail Symons can be reached at GailSymons@mac.com
