lead·er·ship
/ˈlēdərˌSHip/
noun
The art of motivating a group of people to act towards the achievement of a common goal.
quo·tient
/ˈkwōSHənt/
noun
The magnitude of a specified quality or characteristic.
The 3 Qs of Next Level Leadership
To become a next level or quantum leader, one must understand the Leadership Quotient. LQ comprises the fundamental pillars from which to build both confidence as a leader and the ability to sustainably shepherd your organization forward.
The 3 Qs or pillars of the Leadership Quotient:
➤ IQ – Intelligence Quotient
➤ EQ – Emotional Quotient
➤ PQ – Percipience Quotient
IQ: Chief Head of State
IQ is about our institutional and experiential learning narratives. Certifications, exams, acquired skills and the stories we carry about our past experience belong to the realm of IQ.
In the world in which the majority of us have been raised, IQ has reigned supreme. We have been taught to target and hold in the highest regard the development of what we can build, attain, process, and deliver from our intellectual brains. However, this myopic focus has truncated the growth and expansion of other ways in which we, as humans, were designed to collect and process vital information.
EQ: The Soft-Skill Emerging Leader
How many times have we heard the words “empathy,” “collaboration,” “vulnerability,” and “self-awareness” mentioned in leadership articles, talks and trainings over the past 5 years? EQ focuses on our ability to genuinely connect and build trust and rapport within our human relationships (with others and with ourselves). Without this, well, we begin to see trends like ghosting and the mass exodus of individuals from their jobs (the Great Resignation). When we don’t have connection, we aren’t motivated to stick around, learn and grow through engagements, and work through to a conclusive solution. We simply bolt, taking our habits and beliefs with us, only to repeat them again and again.
EQ in leadership allows for the capacity to understand, manage, and utilize our emotions to effectively connect with others and move things towards positive outcomes.
The evolution of EQ is vital both in leadership and life. We can intellectually understand one another through our IQ, but to build the critical trust, rapport, and connection we require in healthy, thriving relationships, we must develop our EQ.
PQ: The High Priestess – Guardian of the Intuition
Imagine a Far Side scene with two bucks, at dawn, standing in an open field at the edge of the woods. With perked ears, one buck turns to the other, “Hey Frank, did you hear that?” Taking a second to munch another mouthful of grass, the other buck slowly lifts his head and responds, “Was probably just a squirrel. Ya know, Tom, we got to get to that herd meeting in 5, so we better take the grazing opportunity while we can.”
As they choose to ignore their instincts and go back to eating, we see a large pack of hungry wolves slowly approaching the unsuspecting prey.
Of course, in the wild, we would never see animals choose to override their instincts, because they can not. As humans, our thinking brain has allowed us to do this, and time and time again, we have. This has not only weakened our ability to tell the difference between intuition and thought, but has led us to make countless mistakes, many of them extremely costly.
Some of the world’s greatest leaders have learned to trust their hunches and followed their instincts, even when what they sensed flew in the face of what appeared to be the most rational and realistic solution or the “right way.” This ability to override the heavily conditioned values of the IQ is the very thing, much of the time, that has great leaders standing out from the rest. This type of leader knows when and how to tap into the different areas of their Leadership Quotient to access, process, prioritize, and act upon the information that is most essential.
PQ is our instinctive ability to cut through the vagueness of what is unknown to our other quotients to find certainty in what we intuit. It moves us outside the box to do what we sense is right.
By developing one’s awareness that IQ, EQ and PQ together determine the success of one’s leadership capacity, there is an increased chance of having the influence, making the impact, and creating the outcomes desired in both the personal and professional arenas of life.
To better understand what the Leadership Quotient looks like in action, check out Quantum Leadership: A Story of Next Level Leadership in Project Management.