Your mind is your best friend, but it can also be your worst enemy. An example might be the difference between you trying to manage and control your employees versus trying to change that paradigm to trust and inspire your employees. Your brain as your enemy will have you think of all the ways this will not work; employees will play video games instead of doing their work, or they will not take the project seriously, or will not complete the project timely, or all of the above. However, when your mind is acting as your best friend and you are able to trust and inspire your employees, they will feel energized, curious, laser focused, more creative and innovative, and complete the project early. Isn’t this the kind of employee we all want? Wouldn’t it be nice not to constantly worry and spend energy on controlling your employees? Since the pandemic, our world has changed and managing and controlling employees is no longer a model that works.
Positive Intelligence measures the relative strengths of these two modes of your mind. High positive intelligence means your mind acts as your friend far more than your enemy. Low positive intelligence is the opposite.
The leader who trusted and inspired her employees had high positive intelligence, while the leader who was managing and controlling her employees had low positive intelligence. Don’t we all want high positive intelligence? How freeing would that be?
Think about a challenging project you just completed. How often did you worry about completing it on time or worry that the project would fail versus how many times you felt positive about how the project was going and was excited about making a positive impact for your clients?
Positive intelligence is an indication of the control you have over your own mind and how well your mind acts in your best interest.
PQ stands for Positive Intelligence Quotient. Your PQ is your positive Intelligence score, expressed as a percentage of time your mind is acting as your friend rather than as your enemy or it is the percentage of time your mind is serving you versus sabotaging you.
You may be thinking this sounds crazy and just another fad! However, there is significant research that shows this works.
Let us look at the research. More than two hundred different scientific studies collectively evaluated more than 500,000 participants from fifty different countries. These participants included hundreds of CEO’s and their executive teams, Stanford students, World-class athletes, many Young President’s Organization (YPO) families and Forums. They concluded that higher PQ leads to higher salary and greater success in the areas of work, marriage, health, sociability, friendship and creativity. The following are just a few of the results that have been found:
- Salespeople with higher PQ sell 37 percent more than their lower-PQ counterparts.
Higher-PQ workers take fewer sick days and are less likely to become burned out or quit.
- Doctors who have shifted to a higher PQ make accurate diagnoses 19 percent faster.
- Students who have shifted to a higher PQ perform significantly better on math tests.
Research in psychology and neuroscience has assumed that we work hard so we can succeed and with that comes happiness. In reality, increasing your PQ results in greater happiness and performance, leading to greater success. Success without happiness is possible with low PQ but the only path to greater success with lasting happiness is through high PQ.
How amazing would it be to be a trusted and inspired leader whose employees were creative, inspired and worked at peak performance, instead of a leader who had to manage her employees so they would perform, didn’t gossip and were respectful. How great to be parents who didn’t have to constantly stress about their child getting into trouble, or whether one might lose their job because of a conflict with the boss.
As a coach, I love the whole concept of Mental Fitness. I have found from personal experience that it works, and I only wish I’d known about this 20 years ago. I would have had a lot less sleepless nights stressing about my work!
Consider having a free 45-minute coaching session for a transformational coaching experience,
Next month I will discuss what the brain looks like and how Mental Fitness works. Do you like what you see? Want to learn more? I would love to hear your thoughts. Please comment below!
“Positive Intelligence” by Shirzad Chamine or visit their website at www.positiveintelligence.com