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Emotional Intelligence, and the associated Emotional Quotient (EQ), has been getting a lot of publicity these last years, especially since the work of David Goleman

During the same period intellectual Intelligence and the associated Intellectual Quotient (IQ) has been pretty much decried and relegated to the side-lines.

But there is more to leadership than EQ & IQ; there are also PQ and SQ the Physical and Spiritual Quotients that correspond to our Physical intelligence and Spiritual intelligence.

Effective leadership is about integrating Head, Heart, Body and Soul; it isn’t just about facts and logic, or just about spontaneity and passion, or just about values & beliefs.

Leadership is about showing that you are knowledgeable, exuding empathy, looking the part and that you are in it for something bigger than yourself.

Physical intelligence is a function of both your self-awareness and of how well you are attuned to your physical wellbeing.

If emotional intelligence is about actively managing and working with, rather than against, our emotions; then, physical intelligence is about actively managing our physiology; taking into account natural cycles, be they Infradian (long-period cycles), Circadian (twenty-four-hour cycle) or Ultradian (short-period cycles). It is about understanding our body, creating a positive relationship between our mind and body, actively working with our physiology to create better conditions for our body to thrive and ensuring we take steps to minimise harm to our body.

Having confidence in our body and our ability to perform, particularly in difficult situations, is crucial to effective leadership

Throughout our waking (and even sleeping) days, we are impacted by a myriad of stimuli, some externally (the weather, disasters, other people’s emotions …) and, many, internally (hormones, enzymes, heart rate changes, …); these stimuli, collectively, influence what we feel and how we experience the world.

When our experience of the world is negative, it limits our ability to thrive, by impacting things like decision-making, our attitude to interpersonal relationships and our ability to concentrate. Therefore, we need to (pro)actively manage the stimuli to shape our experience of the world to be positive.

Emotional intelligence helps us manage our emotional experience of the world, whereas, physical intelligence helps us to both manage the effects of our physiology on our experience of the world and actively promote healthy physiology to improve our experience of the world.

If emotional energy helps us to build constructive and healthy relationships, physical energy helps us to build stamina and recovery time.

Spiritual intelligence is what we use to develop our capacity for meaning, vision and value. It underlies the things we believe in and the role our beliefs and values play in the actions that we take. It contributes to decision-making and priority-setting by helping us to identify and clarify our values, purpose and mission.

Acquiring knowledge is important, as is emotional and physical wellbeing; however, to make life fulfilling and satisfying, there is a need for something more.

It’s our spiritual intelligence that helps us to increase our awareness of our life purpose and transform our actions to become more purpose-driven and value-driven; it helps us to find our path – our intellectual, emotional and physical intelligence enable us to reach our destination.

Leadership in today’s context is not just about being intellectually smart, emotionally connected and physically invigorated; but going way beyond. It’s about being in it for something bigger than yourself, bigger than your organisation, bigger than your country. The more we understand the interconnectedness of all forms of life, the more strength we have in being a wise and effective leader and change agent.

 

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