- ….sine qua non of leadership effectiveness and performance
Being an effective leader of people in today’s world seems to be much more complicated than in years past. Employees are always on the lookout for more stimulating and rewarding work as well as inspiring work environments where they can make a difference and grow themselves and their careers. The situation calls for serious leadership thinking and consideration.
Leaders face unprecedented challenges every day. The challenge is that, leaders must be able to identify and understand the systemic impacts of their company’s climate and be willing to look deeper to understand cultural norms that are impeding agility, innovation, sustainability and performance. Meanwhile, they must have the finesse to weave the day to day task into the big picture and inspire their people to give it their all for the sake of the mission.
The need to understand the people is crucial and remains at the core for business success. With this, the consideration for excellent business performance should be measured on the intelligence and the leader’s ability to drive the effort. Intelligence in leadership can be honed over time to provide greater success and build stronger teams. Leadership Intelligence speaks about the commitment, character, competency and culture of the leader.
The leader’s intelligence is demonstrated in his vision, conscience, passion and discipline. His vision talks about path finding, conscience speaks to modeling, his passion drives empowerment and discipline encourages alignment. Leadership intelligence relies on the leader’s ability to grow, learn and master new ways to lead the people through the guiding principles of self-awareness, executive brain function and response agility.
With this series, we seek to deal with the impactful role leadership intelligence have in causing organizational change, effective team management, driving organizational performance and results. Let’s do Leadership Intelligence, sine qua non of leadership and organizational effectiveness and performance.
What is intelligence in Leadership?
According to David O. McKay, the greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul” and that, if the leader wins the battle there, he settles the issues that inwardly conflict and that brings about the sense of peace, a sense of knowing and what the leader is about. With the deep understanding of our center and our purpose as leaders, we can renew our commitment to our dreams, goals and functions.
Intelligence and creativity are different from one another, yet related. Organizational as well as individual effectiveness requires development and renewal of all the dimensions of the leader’s intelligence. Leaders are responsible for such task as developing strategies, solving problems, motivating employees and monitoring the environment. These issues are critical intellectual functions of the leader and having strong verbal ability, perceptual ability and reasoning appears to make one an exceptional leader.
Intelligence is demonstrated by the ability of the mind to comprehend, use thought and reasoning for problem solving, the ability to acquire knowledge and use it practically. The leader’s capacity to function well is connected to his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. With that, leaders who are emotionally intelligent know how their team members react to different situations and how they deal with them. Intelligent Leaders have deeper understanding of human emotions and are able to capitalize on the strengths of their team for positive gains.
An intelligent leader understands the strengths and weaknesses of his team and can make his team click due to his self-awareness. Intelligence allows leaders to evaluate others opinion and hypothetically place them into the plan and see if they fit in. Intelligent leaders plan ahead and often lead to leaders knowing how certain strategies are going to work out and adjust their plans accordingly. Intelligent leaders let their team members know if things are not working out in an ideal manner.
The Leader’s Intelligence:
Intelligent leaders know how to build alliances. Not all team members are compatible with each other and they might have contradicting philosophies. Making different people work on a common goal can be possible by an effective and intelligent leader’s effort. Let us consider the various intelligence dimensions of the leader:
PHYSICAL INTELLIGENCE:
The physical intelligence dimension involves caring effectively for the physical body needs of the leader. The leader’s endurance test comes from his ability to exercise and stay fit for the job, tenacity, competence, decisiveness and focused mentality exuding the discipline for maintaining and or enhancing standards for greater performance.
The essence of renewing the physical dimension of the leader’s intelligence is to sharpen the saw to exercise the body on a regular basis in a way that will preserve and enhance the leader’s capacity to work, adapt and enjoy. Through effective exercising and discipline, the leader is able to improve his self –esteem, self- confidence and integrity for managing the people and the task.
MENTAL INTELLIGENCE:
The leader’s security lies in his power to think, learn, create and adapt. The mental intelligence development and study discipline comes through formal education. The continual education, honing and expanding the mind is vital mental renewal for the leader. Therefore, proactive leaders often seek ways to educate themselves and also read broadly so to expose their minds to great minds.
To develop the mental intelligence of the leader is to cultivate the habit for writing. Keeping a journal of thoughts, experiences, insights and learnings that equally promote mental clarity, exactness and context. Writing good letters, communicating on deeper level of thoughts, feelings and ideas rather than on shallow, superficial level of events also affects the leader’s ability to think clearly, to reason accurately and to be understood effectively.
The saying that, wars are won in the general’s tent brings to the understanding that, the leaders ability to organize and plan represent a renewal of his mental power. To demonstrate the ability to visualize, imagining with the power of the mind to see the end from the beginning is mental intelligence.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE (EQ):
The leader’s emotional intelligence is centered on the principles of interpersonal leadership, empathic communication and creative cooperation. The emotional dimension has to do with human relations with how people are treated. Most people are a function of the social mirror, scripted by the opinions, the perceptions, and the paradigms of the people around them.
However, it must be emphasized that, the leader’s intelligence exudes vision, discipline, conscience and passion. The intelligent quotient (IQ) is necessary but not sufficient to determine leadership capability. It is a leadership strength when the leader’s followers are impacted by his emotional strength and power.
Understanding the needs of team members and what keeps them going at work is necessary if one expects the leader to be successful. Each employee has his own set of values and principles and understanding them and keeping them motivated, so they can perform is important. It’s very important therefore to understand the role Emotional Intelligence play in leadership success. Arguably, emotional intelligence is not the opposite of Intelligence, it is not the triumph of heart over head-it is the unique intersection of both.
Emotional intelligence is an important skill set in leading, hence leaders identified to be effective have an appreciable level of this skill set. The ability of the leader to identify, understand, manage and use emotions is crucial for leadership success. Moreover, to be emotionally intelligent as a leader is to possess the skill to accurately assess self and be confident, show empathy, demonstrate the will power to positively affect relationships whiles remaining optimistic and transparent. The emotionally intelligent leader is a source of inspiration for the team, very adaptable and goal oriented.
SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE (SQ):
To develop the spiritual intelligence of the leader is to stay connected to his or her sources of meaning and purpose and to activate this connection in others. This capacity can be measured and be developed with practice.
Spiritual intelligence talks about the leader’s ability to behave with compassion and wisdom while maintaining inner and outer peace (equanimity) regardless of the circumstances. To be spiritually intelligent is about how leaders behave and act, take decisions in the everyday stressful world of interacting with difficult people and situations. A high spiritually intelligent leader can feel the activation ego defenses and empathy and can intuitively discern or feel in the body or mind whether the activation is just an outdated.
The Spiritually Intelligent Leader:
Is the leader spiritually intelligent? The leaders intelligent spiritually is measured through whether those he serves grow as persons. Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, or likely to become servants? Spiritual renewal takes an investment of time. It deals with finding meaning through purpose or contribution and through organizational integrity.
The traits associated with spiritual leaders include honesty, high integrity, authentic, walk the talk, loving, compassionate, kind, peaceful, patient, persevering in the face of difficulty, seeing the good in others and helping to bring it forth, wise, humble, committed to service, helping others, inspiring, generous and open-minded. Spiritual leaders emotionally move people through inspiration, feeling touched or changed in a deep way. Through physical and mental actions they impact their people with ideas.
Spiritual intelligence is described as taking elements of emotional intelligence and blending them with an awareness of personal and interpersonal energy. One can think of this energy in business teams as the vibe in the room, sensing that something is off or naturally grasping how people feel about ideas. Having great Spiritual intelligence can make the leader resilient through challenges and help adopt a positive, long-term company, relationships and morale and it can let people reach a deeper place of valuable creativity.
Spiritual Intelligence gives us our ability to discriminate. It gives us our moral sense, our ability to temper rigid rules with understanding and compassion and an equal ability to see when compassion and understanding have their limits. We use spiritual intelligence to wrestle with questions of good and evil and to envision unrealized possibilities, to dream, to aspire, to raise ourselves out of the bad situations.
Developing the Leader’s Spiritual Capacity:
A telltale sign of great Spiritual intelligence is a sense of claim that showcase that the leader has true compassion, listens to customer needs exceptionally well, keep sight of the big picture goal without getting lost in details, and recognizing the need for rejuvenation, recognize the potential in others and helping them manifest it. But these capabilities cannot be developed overnight.
Growing the leader’s Spiritual Intelligence starts first with the realization that the leader has a deeper level of existence and then move to engage practices that improve self-awareness and connection. Besides, leaders need to understand and excel in communicating the connections between the leader, team and organization missions.
Much more, deepening the leader’s Spiritual intelligence should involve deep inner-searching and questioning to resolve the most difficult issues affecting creativity and break out of existing parameters of thoughts. Attempts to enhance the leader’s spiritual Intelligence must help him find meaning and value in chaotic situations of team and organizational change.
How do intelligence and creativity affect leadership?
The leadership trait and intelligence are associated with many social advantages and economic benefits. Employment, economic self-sufficiency, affluence and economic achievement are but a few critical viewpoints. Notably, there is a strong statistical link between intelligence and general job performance.
Intelligence brings Motivation:
Intelligent leaders do not only get work done but get work done efficiently. Motivation at the workplace is important to keep everyone at work. Therefore, the act of motivating is the biggest responsibility of leaders who are intelligent.
Intelligence builds alliances:
Not all team members are compatible with each other and they might have contradicting philosophy. Making different people work on a common goal can only be possible by an effective leader with much intelligence. Being able to communicate effectively and helping others achieve goals together for mutual benefits is a sign of great leadership intelligence and it’s the only way to make incompatible people work together.
Intelligence Plans ahead:
Intelligence often leads to leaders knowing how certain strategies are going to work out and adjusting their plans accordingly. Intelligence is the honest appreciation of facts and knowledge for change. Intelligence in leaders are demonstrated by letting their team members know what works and what is not working with a planned idea put in place. Intelligence allows leaders to evaluate others opinions and hypothetically place them into the plan and see if they fit in.
Intelligence ensures listening and learning:
Successful leaders who double as intelligent leaders listen to others and take in input from their team for planning. They not only try to comprehend how to get work done, but also know how others are willing to strategize and plan accordingly. Leadership intelligence ensures the ability to lead the entire team or organization to success devoid of dictatorship and on grounds of cooperation and collaborative team spirit.
In summary, if leadership intelligence is moving people emotionally (motivating, engagement), intellectually (new ideas) and physically (to stop, modify or start some action) then is developing one’s spiritual skills helpful in becoming a leader in the world of complexity sine qua non of effective leadership performance and success.
Discovery….Thinking solutions, shaping visions.
Written By:
Frank Adu Anim in Collaboration with Dr. Genevieve Pearl Duncan Obuobi (Lead Consultant on Cx. Leadership & SME, Country Chair, Ladies in Business)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank is the CEO and Strategic Partner of AQUABEV Investment and Discovery Consulting Group. He is an Executive Director and the Lead Coach in Leadership Development and best Business Management practices for Discovery Leadership Masterclass.
Dr. Genevieve Pearl Duncan Obuobi (Lead Consultant on Cx. Leadership & SME, Country Chair, Ladies in Business
