At Gail Golden Consulting, LLC, our second area of research interest is a new concept, Organizational Intelligence. In our work as experts in executive selection, we constantly seek to identify the qualities that predict success at senior executive levels. Like many others, we know that two kinds of intelligence are critical to executive success:
- Cognitive intelligence (IQ) – the capacity to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas, use language, and learn.
- Emotional intelligence (EQ) – the ability to engage in sophisticated information processing about one’s own and others’ emotions and use this information to guide thinking and behavior.
Our experience in selection and our consultation with hiring managers has suggested that a third kind of intelligence is equally important:
- Organizational intelligence (OQ) – the ability to think strategically about how to get things done in an organization and use that analysis to guide behavior.
Some of the abilities associated with organizational intelligence are:
- Understands multiple agendas
- Understands who needs to be at the table
- Demonstrates a sophisticated ability to see how groups and systems operate, how the pieces fit
- Builds strategic alliances – up, down, and across
- Skilled at compromise
- Separates business issues from personal issues
- Can influence without authority
- Flexible communication style – shifts to fit context without losing authenticity
Because this is a new construct, we are currently engaging in a literature review to explore similar ideas that have been developed and researched by others. We are also seeking to interact with other researchers who are interested in this aspect of successful leadership. Our research program will be designed to test the following hypotheses:
- IQ and EQ are necessary but not sufficient for executive success.
- OQ is the independent third dimension that predicts executive effectiveness.
- OQ can be defined as a specific set of receptive, organizational, and interpersonal skills.
- Developing specific tools to assess OQ and incorporating them into executive assessments will increase accuracy of predictions.
- The skills associated with OQ can be developed, although some executives will have more aptitude than others.