Why Just Your Raw IQ Does Not Cut It Anymore?!

Dilip Saraf
Career & Life Coach; May 15, 2009

When we were growing-up your intelligence (IQ) was your main asset: Your parents touted you for how much smarter you were than your siblings, in spite of the fact that this invidious comparison rubbed your siblings the wrong way and that they resented you for it; in school you were the first to raise your hand when the teacher threw a curveball question to the kids. This sense of superiority about yourself lasts as long as the role the IQ plays in what you do counts more than anything else. School work and getting your degree with top grades directly relate to your IQ scores. In fact, the correlation between high IQ and good grades is over 95%!

But, wait!

What happens to these Mensa kids after they enter their careers and start earning a living based on their natural gift? Studies have shown that despite the high correlation between IQ and grades the correlation between IQ and success or even achievement is much lower—20%!
Why is that?
As you come in contact with the realities of living, other “Intelligences” increasingly play a greater role in your success. There are five different intelligences that go in shaping a person’s ability to deal with life’s challenges:

1. Raw Intelligence (IQ)
2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
3. Political Intelligence (PQ)
4. Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
5. Contextual Intelligence (XQ)

In the scheme of things each factor contributes about equally to how we successfully deal with our own challenges. Now it is easy to see why the correlation between success in life and your IQ is about 20%!
Let’s briefly discuss each one.
1. Raw Intelligence (IQ): This is our divine—natural—gift and we are born with it. No amount of efforts you expend after your birth will help you improve your IQ. This is why it is so much harder to compete with anyone in matters that require superior intellect, no matter how hard you try. Academic and analytic problems need application of raw intelligence to their resolution. This is why highly intelligent and gifted individuals migrate to academia.

2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ): This intelligence is a nurtured quality. It has to do with how you relate to other human beings, not things (as IQ does). EQ itself has five components: Awareness of self, Self control, Motivation, Empathy, and Communication. Each of these attributes can be learned in dealing with others. Since success in life depends on your ability to getting things done through others EQ become increasingly an important factor in your success as you start relaying on cooperation from others for your achievements. This is not the case in school, where you alone could do the test or your homework using your raw intelligence.

3. Political Intelligence (PQ): This element is driven by how “politic” you are in dealing with others and in protecting their agendas. Politic means shrewd; if you show shrewdness in managing, contriving, or dealing with matters on hand when teaming with others you have high PQ. In the corporate world PQ plays a major role in how you move in the right circles.

4. Cultural Intelligence (CQ): This intelligence comes from being aware of how different cultures and those who come from them deal with each other with other cultures. In the increasingly global economy high cultural intelligence has become a main requirement for business success. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell cites stories of planes crashing because the crew did not have enough understanding of cultural differences between how the language exchange took place between the pilot and the control tower and among the crew members themselves.

5. Contextual Intelligence (XQ): Contextual Intelligence is an integrating quality that prompts you to know which intelligence is germane in what situation. XQ allows you to use the right “intelligence” in a given situation to create the desired outcome. It is often context-based and is a learned skill, as are the preceding four counterparts.

Now that you know the relative importance of IQ in dealing with your life’s challenges I hope that you ease up on yourself because of your moderate IQ and focus on working on the other four to get to where you want to go!

Good luck!