What Could Be More Important Than EQ and IQ For Leaders?

I have had the goal of creating the next generation of Legendary Leaders for a number of years now.

However, around 4 years ago I came across some interesting research that completely changed how I approached my work.

80% of Leadership Development completely FAILS to produce Leaders.

I found this extremely intriguing because it means that between $315 Billion to $348 Billion is WASTED every year in the "Leadership Development" world.

I am someone that doesn't believe in living to the standards of the Status Quo, and I found this completely unacceptable.

So, I began to research WHY the industry was completely ineffective at developing leaders, and what we could do instead to ACTUALLY create Legendary Leaders.

The Odd Finding

This is when I started to find something REALLY interesting when I actually looked at successful and unsuccessful leaders.

I began to see that some Leaders had ALL of the Leadership Development courses under their belt, having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on it (or more), YET were still extremely ineffective as Leaders.

On the other end, I found that some Leaders had taken NO Leadership Development courses, and had spent NO money on courses, YET were EXTREMELY successful Leaders.

How could that be?

I also noticed that there were things that these successful Leaders did and said that "in theory" would actually hurt their ability to Lead.

Yet it didn't seem to impact how well they did as Leaders!

What was the missing factor?

What could AID a Leader DESPITE the fact they obviously lacked "Leadership Skills"?

What could also HINDER a Leader DESPITE the fact they obviously had ALL of the "Leadership Skills"?

The Missing Link

That is around when I figured it out -

The problem wasn't the skills!

The REAL issue we were seeing was actually BIOLOGICAL!

We aren't seeing a gigantic Leadership deficit in the world because we lack the skills!

We are seeing it because we have so many things going wrong biologically!

More specifically we all have extremely messed up Psychophysiology.

So many aspects of our lives are actually working AGAINST our human design.

As these factors combine together, they prevent us from utilizing aspects of our design, which LITERALLY prevents us from being able to lead well.

The Leaders who were succeeding, despite lacking skills, appeared to have stumbled across certain aspects of this without realizing it.

The Leaders who were failing were also being undermined without their knowing.

So I began down a rabbit hole to see how far this really went.

What Is More Important Than EQ And IQ?

For 4 years now, I have been researching, learning, and finding the best institutions I could, to see how we can overcome the challenge of ACTUALLY creating Legendary Leaders.

I have worked on certifications with 11 different institutions in order to get a better scientific understanding of what I was seeing.

What I found was that our typical measures of "intelligence" - Both IQ and EQ - can be aided or hindered by another kind of intelligence.

It has been a popular theory for nearly 30 years how dramatically important EQ is to success for Leaders.

It is true, EQ is important.

What Daniel Goleman's research actually showed from back in 2001 was that a mix of EQ, IQ, and Experience had the best levels of success!

Though, in Goleman's research, EQ had a higher tendency to predict success than IQ, and Experience dramatically improved both.

However, what I found was that there is another type of intelligence that can actually increase BOTH IQ and EQ!

What is really interesting about this is that there has been a long-time belief that IQ itself is static, unchanging over our lives.

But what I've found is that this is not true, there are a lot of factors that can both increase and decrease IQ!

Along with this, it has the ability to improve other types of intelligence that people have postulated over the years, such as PQ and SQ.

So, what is the type of intelligence that I have been researching?

I am calling it - VQ or Vitality Quotient.

What Does This Intelligence Entail?

Now, the idea of VQ is technically not a "new" term.

I can find records of it dating back to the 90s (at a similar time EQ was making its mark).

However, the idea never caught on at that time and hasn't since.

Why is that?

From what I have been researching, I believe that we simply hadn't connected enough dots yet to really understand what VQ actually is.

It was more of a concept as opposed to a cemented idea.

However, I now believe we have a solid basis upon which we can actually start to test and measure VQ, and have the science to show how it impacts our lives (including how it improves or hinders IQ and EQ).

So though the idea of VQ is not a new idea, I have not been able to find anything, anywhere, that is able to define it as I am about to now.

These are the aspects of VQ that we can actually measure, improve, and which also have a marked effect on Leadership.

➼ Stress Damage

What I have been discovering is that in our world today, there is a way to track the damage that Stress has had on our bodies over time.

This can be done with Blood tests and HTMAs, and we can see how much damage has happened in the past, and create action plans to recover from that damage.

We can also see that there have been many barriers placed in the past 50 years that have been making it more difficult to recover from our stresses.

This can also help explain why we have been seeing increased levels of stress, across all age samples, in that same period of time.

So understanding what inhibits stress recovery, and what fuels stress recovery, is extremely important.

➼ Current Stresses

We know that in today's world, Burnout is one of the more pressing issues for Leaders.

This comes from the idea of "Allostatic Load" in stress research.

It essentially means that ALL stress adds together - good, bad, or otherwise.

So, as we fix the damage from the past, we also need to track and analyze the current stresses we have, to get out of Burnout (which some research shows rates could be as high as 90% in the US).

Then, we also need to analyze Stress to get to Eustress (beneficial stress) which allows us to access Flow States (which is where we do our best work and feel our best).

We also know from the Stress research that Dis-Stress does decrease IQ and EQ, and literally prevents us from thinking well!

➼ HRV and Coherence

Science is showing that our Hearts actually have a "brain" of their own.

The science is called Neurocardiology.

It is showing that Neurocardiology plays a critical role in how we interact with people.

The main way we can track this is through HRV - Heart Rate Variability.

However, for Leadership, there are actually 2 different types of measurements that are important!

How high HRV is, and how coherent HRV is.

Both play a role in our personal health and how well we communicate with others.

It is also important to know that both of these can be tracked and improved on!

➼ Diet

I mentioned that our hearts have a "brain", but science today shows that we have yet a third brain that resides in our Gut!

What we put into our gut plays an incredibly important role in our energy supply (via the mitochondria and Mg-ATP) as well as in our interactions with people!

Our guts communicate with our other "brain systems" and help inform them what we should be able to do given the nutrients that are coming in.

This can impact how we think, how we feel, and how we interact with others.

➼ Breathing

How we breathe impacts how we create energy (Mg-ATP) in our bodies.

However, in recent years we have seen a dramatic decrease in our body's ability to handle Carbon Dioxide.

What this means - we are less able to turn Oxygen into Carbon Dioxide.

This is an essential process to creating energy in our body, and we are losing that ability.

This further means we are extremely hindered in the type of energy and how well we are able to make energy.

However, we can track and improve this in our lives!

➼ Natural Movement

How well we are able to move in our environments has a lot of impact on our lives.

Research is showing that it impacts how we think, how we feel, and even how we are able to interact with people!

There are also ways that we are able to move which allow us to directly aid our Nervous System!

This does not require you to lift heavy weights, or even run crazy distances.

All of the natural movement that is required can actually be done fairly easily with no supplies needed!

➼ Being An Exemplar

This factor is much more psychological but plays a huge impact on how we perceive ourselves, how we interact with others, how we process incoming information, and even impacts all of the other systems mentioned above!

Important factors include Identity, Values, and Positive Psychology to name a few.

There is actually a whole field of science called Epigenetics which shows that our psychology has an impact on our Genetics!

When we have the right fuel and the right psychology that proves us to be Exemplars, we have the physical ability to rewrite aspects of our Genetic Code!

Along with everything else described above, we are able to track this over time and see how it impacts us in different ways!

The Final Takeaway

We are in a Leadership deficit in the world today.

We have been for over 5 years according to Empirical Research, and significantly longer according to Anecdotal Evidence.

Throwing money at developing skills isn't having any effect, the proof is there in the $1+ Trillion that has been WASTED over those 5 years.

We need a new approach to developing Leaders, and we have science to help us do it.

IQ and EQ haven't saved us on their own, and our problems have only increased over the years.

We need something different, something more fundamental, something that can also increase both IQ and EQ to help us overcome the most challenging issues society has ever seen.

What we need is to improve VQ.

This is the key that will unlock the next generation of Legendary Leaders.