Category Archives: Management Development

Management Development

IQ vs EQ. Are they Correlated?

Thinking Skills Mind Mapping Starter KitA student of mine recently asked whether there is a correlation between so-called EQ and IQ?

So what is EQ? Actually my delegate meant EI, or emotional Intelligence, as discussed in a doctoral dissertation by William Payne in the 1980s and popularised by Daniel Goleman in the mid-90s.

EI has been defined as having to do with perceiving, understanding, managing and using the emotions. We know that the Amygdala is deeply involved in processing emotions.

IQ as you know has to do with the ability to solve the kind of problems that face a student or academic. We know this is what the neocortex is about.

IQ, proposed by psychologist William Stern in 1912, is generally measured with standardised IQ tests developed by Raven, Wechsler, Stanford,  Binet and others.

It has been used to predict scholastic achievement, job-performance and even income.

Did you know that the average IQ score from many countries has been rising at around 3 points per decade since the early 1900s? That’s about 33 points. See, we are getting cleverer. This is called the Flynn effect .

It has been believed that fluid intelligence generally declines of age while crystallised intelligence remains intact. This view has been challenged by recent studies on meditating subjects who demonstrated increases in fluid intelligence even in later life.

So are EI and IQ correlated?

Apparently not! Which surprised me. Part of the problem is that there are no standardised ways to measure EI.

But thinking about it, EI or EQ is a very different idea from IQ. One measures abilities related to academic performance and the other related to life skills. You may want to have a look at Andrew Weaver’s well reasoned post here.

Another useful link is here. The conclusion of this writer is that it depends how you measure EI. If you use self-report measures correlations with IQ are very low, while if you use ability-based measures the correlations are slightly higher.

My view is:  to hell with IQ, EQ is the thing that matters.

But to pass that exam leading to the higher qualification, you need IQ.

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Creative Thinking, Management Development, Mind Mapping®

Thinking Skills mindmap testimonial videos

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Thinking skills teaches mindmaps for brainstorming and learning as a core business skill. A mind map is a great way to keep meetings tight and a great way to maximise creativity in a brainstorming session.

Mindmaps are also useful for accelerated learning. Workshop delegates typically study 10-30 times faster after the thinking skills workshop.

Doctor Grace Saw is information services director at Bond University in Australia. She recently attended a session I ran in Brisbane. Grace is an enthusiast and like all of us is operating in the thick of information overload, too little time, too much to do and unbelievable changes in the work and even our home environment.

And we bring to our lives a genetic inheritance which is judging by recent estimates somewhere between 50,000 and 2.4 million years old.

What I’m trying to say is that we’re all human. And anything we can do to cope with our circumstances we’re going to take on board. See what Grace had to say about her workshop here (in only 90 seconds). Grace describes her Thinking Skills workshop

Here is a second video clip running just three minutes. Three delegates discuss a thinking skills workshop at the Australian Institute of Management in Perth, WA. Julian, Lisa and Ian say how they plan to use mindmaps in their businesses. Lisa runs a rapidly expanding hire firm with an inventory of over 700 vehicles. Ian has responsibilities covering hundreds of staff. All three are concerned by the need to maximise creativity at work. Brainstorming is one thing they do a lot.

Finally, here is another short (80 seconds) clip of a Perth group discussing the workshop on the last day, last October. They had fun!

For more information on upcoming workshops, and lots more short videos, visit our Thinking Skills brochure page.

CONTACT US TO REGISTER, FOR INFO, OR TO ASK A QUESTION. USE THE FORM TOP RIGHT.