In 1996 I read Daniel Goleman’s book, ‘Emotional Intelligence.’ And while emotional intelligence or ‘EQ’ has made its way into the lexicon of business today, at the time of its publication in 1995, it was groundbreaking and unique. Self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and relationships, it turns out, could be more critical to success in leading our companies than the traditional ‘Intelligence Quotient’ or IQ. Some twenty years later, Dr. Daniel Siegel, the adolescent psychiatrist and author of ‘Mind’ suggested that we should, in addition to the three ‘R’s; Reading, wRiting, and aRithmatic, be teaching our children three equally important ‘Rs’; Reflection, Relationships, and Resilience – all attributes of emotional intelligence.
First adopting, and then embracing EQ’s importance into consciousness was a leap forward for me and my company. In the early years, I had been unable to reconcile IQ with the success we were having, and the gap cast doubt on future success. Adding EQ to the equation was an easier reconciliation and quashed some of the doubt. Over time we incorporated an EQ measure into our assessment protocol. We found it to have value and help us make better decisions for working with prospects and current employees.
While attending a leadership summit, in 2018, I was introduced to the work of Raj Sisodia and John Mackay. In their book ‘Conscious Capitalism,’ they reference a third type of intelligence: ‘Spiritual Intelligence’ or SQ. The name ‘Spiritual Intelligence’ was coined by the author, Danah Zohar, in her book ‘Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence.’ In the same way that incorporating ‘emotion’ into the broader spectrum of perceived intelligence was a step forward, embracing ‘spirit’ was a further progression.
Traditional IQ is a measure of cognitive intelligence – the ability to learn, remember, reason, solve problems, and make sound judgments. In considering EQ and SQ, we add ‘perspective’ and ‘context’ to IQ. EQ would add a situational perspective that provides situational appropriateness. SQ would add a more holistic view that provides a more spiritual sense or metaphysical understanding of purpose or meaning. Danah Zohar states that “business increasingly needs to know its place in the wider world.” That “business needs to have values and a sense of purpose that goes beyond making money.” In the journal of Humanistic Psychology, Frances Vaughan writes, “Spiritual intelligence calls for multiple ways of knowing and for the integration of inner life of mind or spirit with the outer life of work in the real world.” When applied to the workplace, a principle of SQ is to have a sense of higher purpose or meaning in our business or work. It is an existential intelligence that queues the question of business, “why do we exist?”
I became acquainted with the essence of ‘meaning’ when I read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’ by the Austrian Psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl. I read Frankl first while in college, and have re-read several times, since. Frankl developed ‘Logotherapy’ – therapy that strives to help individuals find meaning or higher purpose in life, and life’s circumstances. Logotherapy postulates that finding ‘meaning’ or ‘higher purpose’ in life and life’s situations is paramount – and that the restoration of emotional health can be facilitated by our doing so.
Parallel paths in the more mature years of my company were the corporate path of organizational health (through the work of the business consultant Patrick Lencioni), and the personal path of conscious leadership through my engagement with contemplative practice and exposure to ‘Conscious Capitalism.’ These two separate and parallel paths achieved a rendezvous at the point of ‘higher purpose.’ In Lencioni’s program for organizational health, we work through a process of discovery to answer our businesses’ question of ‘why do we exist?’ At the same time, one of the four pillars of a ‘conscious company’ is ‘higher purpose.’ In taking our company through the Lencioni program and discovering why we exist, we can satisfy the conscious pillar for ‘higher purpose.’
Higher spiritual intelligence provides an ability to access meaning and purpose. As I increasingly viewed SQ as a continued progression beyond EQ, I thought of the work by Viktor Frankl as a validation of the value of SQ. It seemed that the people who survived adversity, either by finding meaning or purpose within or outside of their circumstance, would likely be the same people with a higher or more elevated SQ. And that Logotherapy would be a therapeutic endeavor in the development of SQ – in a quest for functionality and emotional health when facing adversity.
(We should recognize that the adversity that Viktor Frankl experienced and that which inspired his work was far more tragic than that which we would ever encounter in the workplace. To compare his circumstances to our everyday business challenges runs the risk of diminishing the magnitude of atrocity and the importance of its remembrance and recognition).
But with this contextual understanding, and after having read and re-read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’ I developed the habit of assuming a more profound meaning or higher purpose in adversity, and exploring what that purpose may be. With this came a level of acceptance – not an acceptance that precluded response, but an acceptance that provided the emotional freedom for clarity. This clarity allowed responses to be less reactive and more constructive. It afforded the luxury of creating a strategic response to adversity, rather than merely reacting. This process is our pre-frontal cortex having dominion over our limbic system – reason over ’emotion,’ or creation over ‘reaction.’ In research from William Adams and Robert Anderson, in their book ‘Mastering Leadership,’ they conclude that the transition from reactive to creative leadership is essential to our effectiveness as leaders. If higher SQ moves us away from reactive behaviors, then higher SQ would indicate more effective leadership.
The exercise of answering the question of our companies “Why do we exist?” is a lengthy and arduous undertaking. The answer is the company’s higher purpose, and once discovered, it becomes the company’s ‘true north’ and instructs company culture. It is an exercise in discovery. When we talk about the higher purpose of our businesses, this is a more functional higher purpose. It is the practical reason that our companies exist. This deliberation is different than answering the same question – “Why do we exist?” as individuals or as a people, collectively. Here finding a higher purpose or meaning is in a spiritual or metaphysical sense. However, it is reasonable to think that affinities for either come from the same place.
Discovering the higher purpose of our businesses by understanding why our company exists is an essential piece of overall organizational health. Through the same process of discovery that answers this question, we also discover our core values – another critical part of organizational health. Core values are discovered, not created. They are unchanging, and there can generally not be more than two or three. Core values have to be consistent with the reason for existing, as this reason for existing is the company’s higher purpose – and core values have to satisfy this purpose.
In the same way that finding a higher purpose or meaning provided ‘emotional’ freedom and clarity for me individually, discovering our company’s higher purpose provided ‘functional’ freedom and clarity for the business. When we have contemplated and then discovered why our business exists, and discovered the core values within our business, we can indelibly weave the higher purpose and the core values into the internal narrative. The company’s inner dialogue and guidance become anchored to them. This anchoring will help provide for clarity of purpose across the company and allow for individuality to self- organize in a unified direction. The company culture can become ‘values-based’ rather than ‘behaviors-based.’ This orientation is not to say that rules and behaviors are not necessary. But it is to say that ‘rules and behaviors’ should be subordinated to ‘values and purpose.’ The freedom afforded in this subordination will result in a practical, optimal, and minimalist application of rules (applied as prohibitions and where necessary) rather than a prescribed application which quashes talent, creativity, engagement, morale – and ultimately organizational health. And it can actualize the full potential of the company’s newly discovered higher purpose.
