After discussing the topic with Bay, initially, then Davin, and then both Davin and Adam, the subject of intelligence has been at the forefront of my mind. Intelligence has always been something that I have great admiration and respect for, and something that I seek out in anyone that I intend to enter any kind of relationship with. Friendships, employment, project teams, and most importantly, my spouse - all of these relationships are far more rewarding when they are shared with other intelligent people. (Did you catch the backdoor brag there - of course you did, you're probably intelligent too.)
However, intelligence has many forms, and the more I work, contemplate, and talk about it with friends, the more apparent it seems to me that we generally focus too much attention to only one of those forms.
What is intelligence?
Intelligence has many forms, but, at least in North America, we are generally raised to consider only one narrow aspect of it - the ability to do well on standardized tests. It's unfortunate that it is necessary to determine some way to measure the progress and success of certain students as they move through school, and the main way by which our society has evolved to do this is by giving them material to learn, and then testing their ability to regurgitate this information without applying a lot of thought to it.
I refer to these kinds of tests as narrow in focus because they typically only measure and reward a student's ability to read, memorize and repeat information that they are presented with. In more formalized systems of learning, such as math, it is possible to test not only their ability to repeat information, but also their ability to apply that knowledge in different manners, depending on the situation.
The many faces of Intelligence
As I've suggested, intelligence can appear in many forms. Below are just a few of them.
Standard Intelligence
This is intelligence as we typically think about it, and hence the name used. I'm not implying that intelligence of this nature is common - I believe it's considered, to some extent, to be distributed along a bell curve. The ability to take in new knowledge, parse it, and comprehend it. The ability to understand how to apply that knowledge to what we already know, as well as new situations and scenarios as they arise. Some people refer to this form of intelligence as book-smarts, as these people are typically able to do quite well on tests.
This form of intelligence is generally well-measured (or at least as well as we can hope from standardized testing) and valued (though not as highly as I think it should be). This is also the form of intelligence that is typically decried as being elitist, whatever that is supposed to mean.
Since standard intelligence is already a fairly well-understood quantity, I won't spend too much time on it. Hopefully you, as the manager, are able to recognize this type of intelligence when it appears, and utilize it well.
Wisdom
Wisdom is, in my opinion, a more abstract type of intelligence. It isn't as easy to define as our standard form of intelligence, but perhaps that is just my own lack of articulation.
Wisdom is the ability to apply our own experience to that which we observe around us, and the future. It is the ability to act with foresight, based on what we have observed and experienced in the past, and to make decisions that will affect ourselves positively in the long term.
Some of the common terms used to describe some who is wise include: common sense, thoughtful, and able to think long-term. These terms all typically apply to people that are able to make intelligent decisions that are informed and require thinking more abstractly than simpler decisions. The wiser the individual, the more likely I have found that they are able to conceptualize ideas and concepts over the long-term, and across a broader spectrum of individuals. In many ways, wisdom represents your capacity to apply knowledge that you hold. The wiser you are, the better able you are to apply your knowledge to a multitude of people and situations.
Wisdom and standard intelligence are not necessarily mutually inclusive, nor mutually exclusive. We have all met the tech-guru, able to tell you with annoying accuracy what the first hundred digits of Pi are, but is unable to understand why something he said would offend half of the people you work with. This individual is capable of acquiring a large amount of knowledge, but can only apply it within his own narrow spectrum of experience. Contrary to that, I have a friend that is not able to rapidly pick up new and complicated concepts, but he can apply the knowledge that he does acquire to many different situations and concepts outside of his own breadth of experience thus far in life.
Wisdom is a valuable concept in management, allowing you to apply what has happened in the past to what may occur in the future. A manager with wisdom will be able to apply their own experience to that which their team members are currently dealing with, and aid them in this manner.
Creative Intelligence
Creative intelligence is arguably the least tangible type of intelligence, and may very well just be creativity in the general sense. Nevertheless, in my experience, the ability to think creatively, and apply it to the problems at hand, is a skill I place a premium on.
Creative thinkers are typically able to think outside of the box and come up with innovative solutions. Additionally, these kinds of people will see areas where innovation and creativity can be applied to the existing business and production lines. The drawback to creative thinkers is that they can exist so far outside of the box that their suggestions and feedback may not be realistic.
Creative intelligence, as I choose to describe it, exists within the overlap of intelligence and creativity. The ability to know and understand your existing boundaries, see solutions that lay beyond that and that are unrestricted by those boundaries, but also to understand how they can integrate and fit within your existing goals, practices and workflows.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence seems to be gaining better recognition as of late, being recognized as an important part to human resource and management resources. Emotional intelligence is occasionally referred to as empathy, or sensitivity.
An individual that is emotionally intelligent will be able to understand the impacts that given actions may have on members of your organization, and how different people will perceive a given action. Emotionally intelligent people are capable of taking themselves out of their own headspace, and looking at things from another person's perspective.
Empathy is a very important skill for a successful manager. Being able to understand what someone in your group really means when they make a statement, and how a given mandate or request from you is going to be perceived, allows you to proactively make decisions that will facilitate change and lubricate the potentially complex social dynamics that are inherent to any group. Remember my post about optics? Well, emotionally intelligent people are the ones that will best be able to understand and explain this factor to you.
Likewise, people working in human resources need to be able to understand how their company's policies and actions will affect and be perceived by employees. Effective emotional intelligence will also enable your HR departments to ensure that new employees are hired with personalities that will not just fit in with the existing dynamic, but also synergize and enable further progression and growth.
The need for balance
In order to maintain a successful organization, and a positive, efficient group dynamic, a team, as well as a company on the whole, needs to ensure that a delicate balance of the above types of intelligence is fostered and cultivated.
A company composed of people that only possess book smarts will have a tendency to alienate important stakeholders, both inside and outside of the company. Employees (arguably the most important stakeholder for any project) will be alienated by company policies and decisions that appear to have been made without any consideration given to how it affects the employees, and clients will be alienated by poor communication and the way that information is radiated outwards from the company.
On the other side of things, a company dominated by emotionally intelligent people, but without enough resources thinking about the bottom-line and efficiently achieving objectives will become inefficient, spending too much time considering how every decision will affect every stakeholder, leading to inefficiency in executing your objectives and plans.
How do I get me some of this?
As I mentioned above, it's usually fairly easy to determine the level of standard intelligence someone is when hiring them, especially if they are coming straight out of school. Due to the testable nature of this type of intelligence, their school transcripts will give you at least some kind of an indication of what they are capable of. Unfortunately, the other types of intelligence are a little more elusive, and there are no convenient ways to ascertain just how much of a capacity a given individual has for these ways of thinking.
The easiest approach is if you already have someone within your organization that possesses these characteristics. Bring them to the interview, and they will likely be able to determine whether or not a given candidate has the chops. Barring this option, you can try to use some scenario-based questions to determine these qualities. As a last result, you can simply hire me to consult for you and seek these skills out.
The importance of honesty
Knowledge is a great thing, but before it's even possible to put any of the above to use, it's important to take an honest, reflective look at both yourself, and your company, in order to determine exactly what it is that you are working with. Many of us have difficulty in turning our view inwards and asking ourselves, which, if any, of the above forms of intelligence we possess, and which we are lacking. If a company cannot honestly perform this type of reflection, barring good fortune, it will likely end up with an imbalance, and the inevitable inefficiencies that flow from that state.
Turn your sights inwards, and look for the places that are lacking, and treat these as opportunities to improve. A good company should always be striving for improvement, and places that have a known hole to be filled represent low-hanging fruit; areas that you are lacking in and are cognizant of are much easier to resolve than those that lie outside of your current scope (obviously). Treat these opportunities for what they are: a chance for continued growth and improvement.
In conclusion, I'm finding it quite enjoyable to write about the things that, up to this point, I've just considered intuitive. However, I'm always on the lookout for new ideas or subject matter to write about. If you or anyone else have any suggestions for further discussion, please leave me feedback in the form of a comment.
However, intelligence has many forms, and the more I work, contemplate, and talk about it with friends, the more apparent it seems to me that we generally focus too much attention to only one of those forms.
What is intelligence?
Intelligence has many forms, but, at least in North America, we are generally raised to consider only one narrow aspect of it - the ability to do well on standardized tests. It's unfortunate that it is necessary to determine some way to measure the progress and success of certain students as they move through school, and the main way by which our society has evolved to do this is by giving them material to learn, and then testing their ability to regurgitate this information without applying a lot of thought to it.
I refer to these kinds of tests as narrow in focus because they typically only measure and reward a student's ability to read, memorize and repeat information that they are presented with. In more formalized systems of learning, such as math, it is possible to test not only their ability to repeat information, but also their ability to apply that knowledge in different manners, depending on the situation.
The many faces of Intelligence
As I've suggested, intelligence can appear in many forms. Below are just a few of them.
Standard Intelligence
This is intelligence as we typically think about it, and hence the name used. I'm not implying that intelligence of this nature is common - I believe it's considered, to some extent, to be distributed along a bell curve. The ability to take in new knowledge, parse it, and comprehend it. The ability to understand how to apply that knowledge to what we already know, as well as new situations and scenarios as they arise. Some people refer to this form of intelligence as book-smarts, as these people are typically able to do quite well on tests.
This form of intelligence is generally well-measured (or at least as well as we can hope from standardized testing) and valued (though not as highly as I think it should be). This is also the form of intelligence that is typically decried as being elitist, whatever that is supposed to mean.
Since standard intelligence is already a fairly well-understood quantity, I won't spend too much time on it. Hopefully you, as the manager, are able to recognize this type of intelligence when it appears, and utilize it well.
Wisdom
Wisdom is, in my opinion, a more abstract type of intelligence. It isn't as easy to define as our standard form of intelligence, but perhaps that is just my own lack of articulation.
Wisdom is the ability to apply our own experience to that which we observe around us, and the future. It is the ability to act with foresight, based on what we have observed and experienced in the past, and to make decisions that will affect ourselves positively in the long term.
Some of the common terms used to describe some who is wise include: common sense, thoughtful, and able to think long-term. These terms all typically apply to people that are able to make intelligent decisions that are informed and require thinking more abstractly than simpler decisions. The wiser the individual, the more likely I have found that they are able to conceptualize ideas and concepts over the long-term, and across a broader spectrum of individuals. In many ways, wisdom represents your capacity to apply knowledge that you hold. The wiser you are, the better able you are to apply your knowledge to a multitude of people and situations.
Wisdom and standard intelligence are not necessarily mutually inclusive, nor mutually exclusive. We have all met the tech-guru, able to tell you with annoying accuracy what the first hundred digits of Pi are, but is unable to understand why something he said would offend half of the people you work with. This individual is capable of acquiring a large amount of knowledge, but can only apply it within his own narrow spectrum of experience. Contrary to that, I have a friend that is not able to rapidly pick up new and complicated concepts, but he can apply the knowledge that he does acquire to many different situations and concepts outside of his own breadth of experience thus far in life.
Wisdom is a valuable concept in management, allowing you to apply what has happened in the past to what may occur in the future. A manager with wisdom will be able to apply their own experience to that which their team members are currently dealing with, and aid them in this manner.
Creative Intelligence
Creative intelligence is arguably the least tangible type of intelligence, and may very well just be creativity in the general sense. Nevertheless, in my experience, the ability to think creatively, and apply it to the problems at hand, is a skill I place a premium on.
Creative thinkers are typically able to think outside of the box and come up with innovative solutions. Additionally, these kinds of people will see areas where innovation and creativity can be applied to the existing business and production lines. The drawback to creative thinkers is that they can exist so far outside of the box that their suggestions and feedback may not be realistic.
Creative intelligence, as I choose to describe it, exists within the overlap of intelligence and creativity. The ability to know and understand your existing boundaries, see solutions that lay beyond that and that are unrestricted by those boundaries, but also to understand how they can integrate and fit within your existing goals, practices and workflows.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence seems to be gaining better recognition as of late, being recognized as an important part to human resource and management resources. Emotional intelligence is occasionally referred to as empathy, or sensitivity.
An individual that is emotionally intelligent will be able to understand the impacts that given actions may have on members of your organization, and how different people will perceive a given action. Emotionally intelligent people are capable of taking themselves out of their own headspace, and looking at things from another person's perspective.
Empathy is a very important skill for a successful manager. Being able to understand what someone in your group really means when they make a statement, and how a given mandate or request from you is going to be perceived, allows you to proactively make decisions that will facilitate change and lubricate the potentially complex social dynamics that are inherent to any group. Remember my post about optics? Well, emotionally intelligent people are the ones that will best be able to understand and explain this factor to you.
Likewise, people working in human resources need to be able to understand how their company's policies and actions will affect and be perceived by employees. Effective emotional intelligence will also enable your HR departments to ensure that new employees are hired with personalities that will not just fit in with the existing dynamic, but also synergize and enable further progression and growth.
The need for balance
In order to maintain a successful organization, and a positive, efficient group dynamic, a team, as well as a company on the whole, needs to ensure that a delicate balance of the above types of intelligence is fostered and cultivated.
A company composed of people that only possess book smarts will have a tendency to alienate important stakeholders, both inside and outside of the company. Employees (arguably the most important stakeholder for any project) will be alienated by company policies and decisions that appear to have been made without any consideration given to how it affects the employees, and clients will be alienated by poor communication and the way that information is radiated outwards from the company.
On the other side of things, a company dominated by emotionally intelligent people, but without enough resources thinking about the bottom-line and efficiently achieving objectives will become inefficient, spending too much time considering how every decision will affect every stakeholder, leading to inefficiency in executing your objectives and plans.
How do I get me some of this?
As I mentioned above, it's usually fairly easy to determine the level of standard intelligence someone is when hiring them, especially if they are coming straight out of school. Due to the testable nature of this type of intelligence, their school transcripts will give you at least some kind of an indication of what they are capable of. Unfortunately, the other types of intelligence are a little more elusive, and there are no convenient ways to ascertain just how much of a capacity a given individual has for these ways of thinking.
The easiest approach is if you already have someone within your organization that possesses these characteristics. Bring them to the interview, and they will likely be able to determine whether or not a given candidate has the chops. Barring this option, you can try to use some scenario-based questions to determine these qualities. As a last result, you can simply hire me to consult for you and seek these skills out.
The importance of honesty
Knowledge is a great thing, but before it's even possible to put any of the above to use, it's important to take an honest, reflective look at both yourself, and your company, in order to determine exactly what it is that you are working with. Many of us have difficulty in turning our view inwards and asking ourselves, which, if any, of the above forms of intelligence we possess, and which we are lacking. If a company cannot honestly perform this type of reflection, barring good fortune, it will likely end up with an imbalance, and the inevitable inefficiencies that flow from that state.
Turn your sights inwards, and look for the places that are lacking, and treat these as opportunities to improve. A good company should always be striving for improvement, and places that have a known hole to be filled represent low-hanging fruit; areas that you are lacking in and are cognizant of are much easier to resolve than those that lie outside of your current scope (obviously). Treat these opportunities for what they are: a chance for continued growth and improvement.
In conclusion, I'm finding it quite enjoyable to write about the things that, up to this point, I've just considered intuitive. However, I'm always on the lookout for new ideas or subject matter to write about. If you or anyone else have any suggestions for further discussion, please leave me feedback in the form of a comment.
I find that the three main types of intelligence you speak about are all complementary - that is to say, if your focus at the time is on one of these three things, practicing the other two secondarily will help you get through or excel at what you're focussing on.
Of course, that is easier said than done. When one understands emotional intelligence and the options it gives you, it becomes easier to employ it any time there's a chance to respond or lead.
Creative intelligence is an interesting one, because as you mention, it's easy to over do it. It can be especially tempting to always think outside of the box in an effort to be distinctive, but sometimes that creativity will not match the objectives of the task or project you're working on. In these cases, where creative energy and passion will fuel themselves, it's really good to have multiple creative outlets so that ideas can find the right match. I recommend a scratch pad for this, or a shoebox where ideas get thrown in. Bored? Never again in your life.
I don't have much to say about standard intelligence other than I find it easier to grasp concepts as life goes on and I'm looking less and less at hypothetical situations and more at cases that have happened within my lifetime, or scenarios that I can envision without too much of a leap. Reading, as a habit, makes the gathering of new ideas much easier instead of the obligation that it once was in high school.
Great post on a tricky subject.