When we were growing-up your intelligence (IQ) was your main asset: Your parents touted you for how much smarter you were than your siblings, in spite of the fact that this invidious comparison rubbed your siblings the wrong way and that they resented you for it; in school you were the first to raise your hand when the teacher threw a curveball question to the kids. This sense of superiority about yourself lasts as long as the role the IQ plays in what you do counts more than anything else. School work and getting your degree with top grades directly relate to your IQ scores. In fact, the correlation between high IQ and good grades is over 95%!

But, wait! What happens to these Mensa kids after they enter their careers and start earning a living based on their natural gift? Studies have shown that despite the high correlation between IQ and grades the correlation between IQ and success or even achievement is much lower—20%!

Why is that?

As you come in contact with the realities of living, other “Intelligences” increasingly play a greater role in your success. There are five different intelligences that go in shaping a person’s ability to deal with life’s challenges:

1. Raw Intelligence (IQ)
2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
3. Political Intelligence (PQ)
4. Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
5. Contextual Intelligence (XQ)

In the scheme of things each factor contributes about equally to how we successfully deal with our own challenges. Now it is easy to see why the correlation between success in life and your IQ is about 20%!

Let’s briefly discuss each one.

1. Raw Intelligence (IQ): This is our divine—natural—gift and we are born with it. No amount of efforts you expend after your birth will help you improve your IQ. This is why it is so much harder to compete with anyone in matters that require superior intellect, no matter how hard you try. Academic and analytic problems need application of raw intelligence to their resolution. This is why highly intelligent and gifted individuals migrate to academia.

2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ): This intelligence is a nurtured quality. It has to do with how you relate to other human beings, not things (as IQ does). EQ itself has five components: Awareness of self, Self control, Motivation, Empathy, and Communication. Each of these attributes can be learned in dealing with others. Since success in life depends on your ability to getting things done through others EQ become increasingly an important factor in your success as you start relaying on cooperation from others for your achievements. This is not the case in school, where you alone could do the test or your homework using your raw intelligence.

3. Political Intelligence (PQ): This element is driven by how “politic” you are in dealing with others and in protecting their agendas. Politic means shrewd; if you show shrewdness in managing, contriving, or dealing with matters on hand when teaming with others you have high PQ. In the corporate world PQ plays a major role in how you move in the right circles.

4. Cultural Intelligence (CQ): This intelligence comes from being aware of how different cultures and those who come from them deal with each other with other cultures. In the increasingly global economy high cultural intelligence has become a main requirement for business success. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell cites stories of planes crashing because the crew did not have enough understanding of cultural differences between how the language exchange took place between the pilot and the control tower and among the crew members themselves.

5. Contextual Intelligence (XQ): Contextual Intelligence is an integrating quality that prompts you to know which intelligence is germane in what situation. XQ allows you to use the right “intelligence” in a given situation to create the desired outcome. It is often context-based and is a learned skill, as are the preceding four counterparts.

Now that you know the relative importance of IQ in dealing with your life’s challenges I hope that you ease up on yourself because of your moderate IQ and focus on working on the other four to get to where you want to go!

Good luck!

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) has to do with how you manage yourself and your relationships with those around you. At higher levels of management it is the relationships that drive how things happen and it is not how clever you are in your area of specialty. Similarly Political Quotient (PQ) has to do with how well you are able to form alliances with those who can make or break your initiatives. In this context, IQ can be seen as a maker, but not a breaker. Whereas EQ and PQ can be breakers–if you do not posses adequate levels of these ingredients they can end your career or at least stifle it. Let’s examine these two “Qs” in more detail:

Emotional Intelligence–EQ

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is increasingly being regarded as a major factor in professional and personal success, not just in the corporate world, but in general. Many regard this single factor as being more important than the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Some of the more successful people today in various areas of human endeavor are those regarded as having a high level of emotional intelligence, whatever their IQ. The concept of EQ has to do with how you relate to other people and to yourself successfully. This is one of the factors in the portfolio of soft skills that have become increasingly important in today’s world, growingly dehumanized by the ubiquity of high-technology in our everyday life.

With the growing emphasis on soft skills, employees and managers alike are expected to have the EQ savvy to be able to relate well to others socially and in a business situation. A survey of 1200 successful leaders conducted in late 2005 revealed that the one characteristic that stands out common among all is “affection.” This implies their ability to show affection–even “tough love”–and, in return, be loved stands out as a single attribute that defines a successful leader. This can also be seen a admiration in a constructive way. This does not mean that they are also a successful manager. That entails a different filter, with characteristics such as creating shareholder value, profitability, and other “Wall Street” yardsticks. But, to be a successful manager, at least some ingredients of a leader are required.

John D. Mayer, a noted psychologist, defined Emotional Intelligence as the ability to perceive, integrate, understand, and reflectively manager one’s own and other people’s feelings.

Most people experience a range of both positive and negative emotions at work. For example:

• Satisfaction: You have done a great job at work
• Exhilaration: You just won a major contract or a recognition award
• Pride: You have helped someone out of a difficult situation
• Anger: Someone has sabotaged your work and taken credit for it. Your contribution is not acknowledged properly. Someone trashed your work.
• Frustration: Your recommendation get enthusiastic nod, but then they go nowhere
• Anxiety: You are having trouble keeping up
• Worry: You are wondering if you are next on the chopping block
• Paranoia: You wonder if everyone is talking negatively about you behind your back
• Disappointment: Your project did not get funded and a “lesser” one did

We, as humans, are bundles of emotional energy first, intelligent machines second. When any one or more of these emotions bubble up during the course of everyday work experience, an emotional response is triggered first. As a result even how our brain—the source of our intelligence—is programmed is governed by this response. Acting on such impulses can lead to a response that can cause us regrets later. Emotional intelligence is acknowledging such feeling—positive and negative—but is not acting on them behaviorally. In this regard what Socrates said nearly 2500 years ago still holds true in the context of this topic: “Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs. Therefore, avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity.” The implication of this suggestion is twofold: It behooves us to always act rationally in our own behavior and to show emotion and concern when it relates to our dealing with others.

Emotional intelligence is not a natural gift but a nurtured one. This is why it is worth the effort to understand how to increase your awareness of this factor. The advantages of developing your emotional intelligence are several:

• Improve your self awareness
• Improve your relationships with colleagues, partners, and associates
• Help you keep yourself under control and centered
• Help you lower your stress and keep your emotions under check
• Improve your approachability: this is particularly important for managers and senior executives
• Enable your communication: Dialog openly with others and influence others with less conflict
• Enhance your standing: Influence your colleagues, managers, and customers
• Develop trust: In times of anxiety and turbulence, people will look up to you for guidance, not because you are smarter, but because they will trust you to be centered.

Theories of Emotional Intelligence

The phrase “emotional intelligence” was first coined by two U.S. psychologists John D. Mayer and Peter Salovy in the 1980s. Daniel Goleman, another U.S. psychologist built on their work and later published several books on this topic. He proposed a five-element framework to define EQ:

• Self-awareness: An understanding of yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and how you appear to others.
• Self-regulation: the ability to manage yourself and think before you act
• Motivation: the drive to work and succeed
• Empathy: how you understand other people’s view points
• Social skills: the ability to communicate and relate to others

Other contributors have expanded on this model and added more elements to the list.

To be able to relate to others, managers, especially, must possess the following competencies in today’s corporate environment:

• To be able to manage themselves and not vent their frustrations on their staff
• Have self-awareness of their real strengths and weaknesses
• Have self confidence in their ability to lead
• Counsel or coach others within their organization and offer advice
• Encourage and mentor others
• Develop good working relationships

Despite a plethora of literature there is no standard way to test for emotional intelligence. There are many free tests available on the Internet and they reflect the flux of where this whole notion is in terms of different views and how EQ is measured. The tests are useful in making people aware of different factors and how they influence the final outcome. Developing your EQ is a lifelong process and hence needs constant attention and vigilance in your everyday social interactions. IQ, on the other hand, is a natural gift, not a nurtured one

For more information visit any of these sites: www.eip.org; www.eiconsortium.org; or www.eicenter.org

Political Quotient (PQ)

If Emotional Quotient has to do with relationships, Political Quotient deals with situations. Situational awareness and knowing of how to deal with emerging situations to best get what you want requires a skill that goes beyond what EQ alone can provide. PQ has little to do with playing politics. There are many disparaging descriptors for that behavior. The following elements can be listed as those that comprise PQ:

• Situational Awareness
• Aptness/Wit; your ability to quickly mobilize your savvy to ace a difficult situation
• Recovery from slips: How you are able to own up your mistakes and finesse corrections to get back on track or even come out on top.
• Ability to build trust both ways in an ongoing relationship
• Communication finesse: ability to communicate with the right mix of emotions and facts to make others follow you and your leadership.

Just as EQ is a nurtured attribute so is the PQ. Savvy managers take special efforts to develop their EQ and PQ attributes because they know the ultimately it is they that will give them the edge in their ongoing career growth.