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While there are many different approaches to the concept of IQ, it is no longer considered the main key to success although it does help. No one can deny that a high IQ certainly impacts your ability to earn a good income, achieve academic success, and maintain good health until old age. However, a high IQ score on its own is no guarantee that you'll use the superior intelligence you were born with to achieve outstanding results. With children and young adults, it is up to their parents and teachers to spot their exceptional intelligence and support them, so they make the most of it. With adults, it's up to their own emotional maturity, determination, and perhaps vision; to what extent they will use their gift. So, what exactly is IQ and how is it measured? IQ tests usually evaluate someone’s ability to understand, calculate, and solve complex spatial problems and reason. They focus on four main elements of intelligence: verbal, numerical, spatial, and logical intelligence.
There are different types of IQ tests for children, for adults, and for people with disabilities but most have certain limitations. Namely, they test only specific kinds of knowledge, like vocabulary, problem-solving skills, and so on, but do not measure practical knowledge or knowledge you need for activities such as music, arts, or sports. Besides, we now know that it takes much more than a high IQ to become a successful professional many other factors, such as a stimulating environment, a personal talent, and perseverance, play just as big, or even a bigger role in determining your chances of success. Although scholars disagree on the importance or even relevance of IQ tests, and many claim that its importance has been overrated, everyone agrees that a high IQ definitely helps in some jobs. But, even so, we know that the difference between a mediocre and an outstanding performance often has more to do with one's creativity or motivation than with their intelligence, and these qualities cannot be measured with an IQ test.
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| There is also the issue of how relevant an IQ score is in different cultures. In societies where intelligence and academic performance is highly appreciated, such as in the West, having a high IQ gives you a much better chance of "making it." While achieving exceptional results will also depend on your personal motivation and self-confidence, a high IQ score in Western culture is appreciated and rewarded. On the other hand, in societies where strong family and social bonds are key to happiness and success in life, a high IQ may be completely irrelevant to one's societal standing. A high IQ may or may not help you achieve great things in life, because for true, long-lasting success, your personal efforts will have to be boosted by many other factors, such as family support, available opportunities, cultural values, and more. |
Is Intelligence Overrated?
Despite evidence that IQ is not directly linked to one's success in life and that other skills are more, or at least equally important, in Western culture, intelligence still receives a lot of attention. This in spite of numerous studies which show that your communication, negotiation, and leadership skills are much more likely to affect your professional success than your intelligence could.
For example, having good relationships with your customers can bring you more work thanks to the trust you’ve developed; or knowing how to negotiate the best possible deal for your company, or for yourself, can make you more professionally successful; or skillfully leading your team through a difficult transition period can help you retain your best employees. Even people with less education and a lower IQ, but who are highly motivated, will have a better chance of succeeding than someone who is exceptionally intelligent and highly educated, but lacks the vision or optimism to keep going through difficult times.
Daniel Goleman, an expert on emotional intelligence, points out that IQ accounts for only about 20% of a person's success. The remaining 80% depends on their emotional intelligence the various social skills that even those with no access to high education, or those with a lower IQ, can easily master. Whichever way you look at it, a high IQ is not what you need most to succeed professionally. Things like honesty, flexibility, willingness to work hard, specific skills (like building, driving, IT programming, financial, and so on), good management, and emotional maturity are what, eventually, help you achieve outstanding results.
As it turns out, IQ is not as important for our overall success in life as we were led to believe. Whether we are aware of it or not, we often subconsciously choose to be, or work with, people we believe to be honest, efficient, trustworthy, reliable, kind, or helpful, regardless of how intelligent they are. When you choose someone to share your life with, be it personal or professional, their character qualities are much more relevant than their intelligence. As Robert Sternberg pointed out, the better one's IQ test result is, the worse his practical skills, and vice versa.
How Managers Gauge Emotional Intelligence?
If hiring managers are seeking to hire candidates with high emotional intelligence, the question that naturally follows is this: How are they able to tell who is high in EQ and who isn’t? Do they give a test? Are they silently judging you without your knowledge? It’s more of the latter, but instead of judgment, it’s more of an observation. You can tell a lot about a person without asking them direct questions. Hiring managers will know if you are emotionally intelligent by checking how you have worked with teams in your previous roles.
They will want to know how well you got along with these teams and whether you held any leadership positions in your past. Be sure to mention any leadership positions that you are or were responsible for during interviews. Do not downplay the very important role this little fact plays in determining how the hiring manager sees you. If you have been to an interview in the recent past, you were probably asked about a challenge that you faced and how you tackled it. Human resource divisions do not ask this question for the sake of entertainment or to fill space. Rather, they want to understand what approach you take when faced with challenges. Do you run and take cover or do you face challenges head-on with equal parts courage and creativity? The answer to this question could very possibly mean the difference between being hired or receiving that infamous regret letter.
The other popular question that hiring managers love to ask is: What is your biggest weakness? This leaves many candidates feeling the need to lie that aiming for perfection is their biggest weakness. This answer has been given so many times in interview rooms that recruitment teams have grown to anticipate it and possibly roll their eyes whenever they hear it. Now, whether you are the perfectionist you claim to be or not, the whole point HR is asking is because they want to know if you are self-aware. You need not lie about your weak points; you only need to demonstrate that you know what those points are. Of course, you also do not want to shoot yourself in the foot in order to demonstrate how self-aware you are. Saying that you often oversleep and arrive late for work is exactly how you do not get hired for the job.
How to Teach It to Your Employees
The main difference between IQ and EI is the focus. While IQ focuses on academic abilities and pure intelligence, EI is about one's ability to identify, control, and express emotions. While people with a high IQ make excellent scientists and academics, those with a high EI make good leaders and team players. The answer to which quality is more important lies partly with who you ask, but also with what qualities are sought for a particular profession or situation. It would be fair to say that both IQ an IE are important for a fulfilled life. However, they relate to different qualities: IQ compares one's mental age with their chronological age, while EQ measures one's ability to receive, process, and manage emotions. For a long time, IQ was believed to be the much more important of the two types of intelligence, and even though IQ is one of the keys to success it does carry two major limitations which are:
A High IQ Score Is No Guarantee of Success
Superior intelligence on its own without hard work, optimism, and drive will not get you very far. Only if combined with other important factors, such as vision and social skills, can it bring longlasting success?
IQ Tests Are Not Always Relevant
Even a highly intelligent person cannot know everything, especially if a specific knowledge is completely irrelevant to the culture they come from. This means that IQ tests are applicable only to those from a similar cultural and social background. Besides, most tests consist of written and spoken elements, so non-natives can never do as well as native candidates. The greatest advantage of a high IQ is that it makes it easier to win a scholarship. Intelligent people enjoy learning and do so easily, so a high IQ makes one a very sought-after candidate for a scholarship.
Additionally, in certain professions particularly those related to science a high IQ is a definite sign that the individual, able to learn quickly and willing to constantly improve and upgrade their knowledge and skills, will help advance the field in which they specialize. However, many people with a high IQ are known to suffer from depression and anxiety, possibly because they tend to overanalyze personal experiences and dwell too much on details, often causing themselves unnecessary tension and problems.
Despite the obvious benefits of a high IQ, there is an ongoing debate over how relevant and unbiased intelligence tests are, because it's well known that individuals from more affluent backgrounds, with better learning opportunities, usually do better in IQ tests though this doesn't mean those with fewer opportunities are any less intelligent. While this debate will likely continue to rage on indefinitely, perhaps the dilemma of IQ vs. EI is best summed up with the following statement: “IQ gets you hired, but EI gets you promoted.”
Food for Thought:
- Would you prefer to have a high IQ or EI? Why?
- Which of the two do you think is more important for overall success in life? Why?
Social skills and emotional intelligence are just the beginning. If you really, want to give your social skills a boost, there’s something else that you need to add into the mix, charisma. Individuals who ooze charisma seem to have this uncanny ability to just draw people into their circle the minute they start talking. They have confidence, and they just seem to charm you with every word they say right from the beginning. That’s charisma working its magic. There are some lucky few out there who have been fortunate enough to be blessed with a natural charismatic ability. For the rest of us? We need to work on developing it. Just like confidence, charisma is something that you need to work on and exercise daily. It is going to take time and practice, so you’re going to need to be persistent with it until you get there eventually. If you’re ready to start working on becoming the charismatically cool cat you’ve always wanted to be, here’s how you can get started:
It’s All about That Smile
A smile should be genuine, never forced. A smile should reach your eyes, not something that is stiff and giving away how uncomfortable you really feel. Practice smiling in front of the mirror every day until the smile that you see is one that is warm, genuine, friendly, relaxed and natural. That is the smile of someone who has charisma. A genuine smile lights up your face and makes you appear more pleasant, likable, and approachable. You will rarely find someone who won’t return a genuine smile. When you smile, you put the people you’re interacting with socially in a more relaxed, comfortable and happy state, which will make them gravitate towards you even more because you make them feel so good. Maintain eye contact when you smile too, don’t forget that bit.
Eye Contact in the Right Dose
Too much eye contact and you come off as someone who is creepy and uncomfortable. Too little and you appear aloof and unapproachable. Mastering just the right amount of eye contact is the key to becoming more charismatic. In every social setting, no matter who you may be speaking too, having the right amount of eye contact is very important. Eye contact lets the other person know that they matter and are worthy of your time and attention. Keep eye contact, but not to the point that it seems as though you’re staring them down, trying to intimidate them. The best eye contact length to maintain is to hold a person’s gaze for one second longer than what you would normally do. Just like smiling, practice this at home in front of a mirror until you are happy with what you see. Where possible, seek feedback about how you’re doing from family or friends and get them to give you their honest opinion.
Work Place & Emotional Intelligence
Ever since the world started paying more attention to emotional intelligence, thanks to Goleman, there has been a segment of society that has been particularly engrossed in understanding what EQ can do for them. That segment is the business world or the corporate workplace. C-suite executives and hiring managers all over the world are keen to reap the benefits of emotional intelligence. Since the 1990s, there has been plenty of research to support the claims that emotional intelligence makes a person a better employee. The baby boomers of the world did not care much for emotional intelligence in the workplace. They simply did their jobs, collected their paychecks and went home. Today’s workplace has changed. Millennials want more from their jobs than a mere paycheck.
Robert Walters, the recruitment company based in the United Kingdom, undertook a survey of millennials that sought to understand various aspects of their jobs and professions. From this survey, the recruitment company was able to determine that millennials are motivated by things that are totally different from what motivated the generations before them. Millennials are not content to settle for a job for the sake of having a job. Rather, they want a job that gives them a bigger purpose. They want to feel that they are fulfilled and growing. They want to feel like they are part of a bigger community. The millennial workforce also wants the freedom to plan their work days without feeling as though they are under a microscope. They want to be able to be social in the workplace. They want a life outside of work, otherwise referred to as work/life balance. They also want to be rewarded for the things they do through pay increases, promotions, and recognition.
When compared to the older generations, it is clear that millennials have set quite a high bar. It is no wonder that hiring managers have sleepless nights trying to determine who is the best fit for their company. Against this dynamic backdrop, it goes without saying that hiring decisions can no longer be influenced by IQ only. While hiring managers still want to hire smart candidates, they are being swayed more and more by emotional intelligence. In fact, in one survey carried out by Harris Interact for Career Builder, 75 percent of hiring managers said that they would rather hire an employee that is emotionally intelligent over one who has a high IQ. This is not to mean that hiring managers all over the world are united in downplaying book smarts. Rather, it shows that companies have finally come around to the fact that it takes more than knowing about the knowledge contained in books to survive in the workplace of today.
Significance of Emotional Intelligence at Workplace
Emotional intelligence in the workplace is not just a fad that people are excited about that will go away after a while. There are true benefits to hiring an emotionally intelligent workforce.
Emotionally Intelligent Employees Handle Pressure Better.
Just as the workforce of today is different from the workforce of yesteryear, the workplace has also changed. Before, workplaces tended to be more relaxed. The modern workplace looks to be more cutthroat and pressure-filled. With this in mind, hiring managers know that emotionally intelligent employees will be better placed to thrive in an environment of pressure. This is because they are able to manage their emotions even when the going gets tough. Imagine an environment where employees are unable to manage their emotions. What is likely to happen when a critical deadline is coming up? Probably lots of yelling and scapegoating. This would definitely be a recipe for disaster.
Emotionally Intelligent Employees Are Better Decision Makers.
Decision-making is an everyday activity in the business world. You need to make decisions about how to solve client problems, which clients to pitch to, which colleagues to include in particular teams, how to format a report for a client, how to manage your workload efficiently, and a myriad of other decisions. The more emotionally intelligent you are, the more capable you are of making good decisions. When you know how to manage your emotions, you are able to make decisions that are not simply emotional. Emotions are good and all, but they don’t usually make for very good catalysts in decision-making.
Let’s say for instance that you are a team leader working to deliver a project for a client. There is one colleague that is very good at performing financial due diligence, a skill that you need for this project. Unfortunately, this colleague does not really like you, for reasons best known to them. They have made this clear, to the extent of being publicly disrespectful. What do you do? A person that is lacking in emotional intelligence might be tempted to engage in a power struggle with this colleague. After all, the colleague should respect the team leader regardless of their differences.
However, if you are emotionally intelligent, you will devise a way to deal with the colleague because you realize that getting into it with them is only going to ruin the progress of the team. You will figure out a way to play the role of team leader without giving them an arsenal that they can use against you. Instead of playing their game, you will kill them with kindness. You will be fully invested in being the bigger person, and you will not allow said colleague to drag you to their level. This is because you are self-aware, self-regulating, motivated from the inside, and well equipped with the social skills needed to handle a colleague that is behaving like a petulant child.
Employees with High EQ Handle Conflicts Better
The workplace is a convergence of many personalities. When different personalities meet in one place, there is a high likelihood of clashing. Colleagues will not always get along. You may have potlucks or staff parties every other weekend and there still will be differences and conflict between the employees. In the face of conflict, you need employees that can resolve their differences with as little drama as possible.
High EQ Employees Are More Motivated
Let’s say you are a business owner who has worked hard to build your brand and hire a reasonable number of people to work for you. You invested your life savings into starting a company because you believed in your vision and mission. Two years after hiring your employees, you start to notice that all of them are coming in late, dragging their feet in their delivery to your clients, and sometimes not even showing up for work. Your brand starts to decline. Your clients are no longer satisfied. You feel defeated. Where did you go wrong? You hired employees who were not emotionally intelligent.
Emotionally Intelligent Employees Respond Better to Criticism.
Imagine having an employee that sulks every time they are criticized about something. How annoying would that be? As an employer, you do not have the energy or time to deal with employees who view feedback as a personal attack. Employees who are emotionally intelligent understand that there will be moments when they need to be corrected. Their self-identity and sense of worth are not pegged on what their boss has to say about them. They are secure in themselves and accepting of feedback, both negative and positive. Outside of regular employees, workplaces also benefit from hiring emotionally intelligent managers. Such managers are better able to manage teams, communicate the vision of the company, and even resolve conflict. A manager that is low in EQ might cause the downfall of the company that they work for. Such a manager will try to impose their authority on the rest of the employees using intimidation, threats, and other unwarranted tactics. The same goes for Csuite executives and anybody else that is in a management position at the workplace.