In a podcast recorded recently, I was asked about the role of judgement in being a marketing leader.
Good judgement is key to being a good leader.
But what is the relationship between judgement, intelligence, intellectual curiosity, emotional bearing and experience ?
Firstly, Intelligence is a capability, whereas intellectual curiosity is a temperament
However :
– Does the judgement that goes into decision-making come from experience (including that of many failures) ?
Or
– Is judgement independent of experience, and dependent on raw intelligence which in many ways, trumps experience ?
And
– How is judgement related to intellectual ability and emotional ability ?
These are important questions.
In my view, judgement emerges from a combination of IQ, EQ and experience.
The obvious combinations are:
1. High IQ, low EQ: Can dissect issues, but can’t rally a team to a creative solution.
2. Low IQ, high EQ: Intellectually shallow but able to build a team’s creative energy.
3. High IQ, high EQ: great combination!
The value of experience is also dependent on your IQ and EQ. Your intelligence dictates what you are able to derive from your experience and EQ enables what you do with it thereafter.
For marketers, I would argue with conviction that intellectual curiosity is more important than plain intelligence.
A marketer must always look for new information, perspective and anecdotes.
A marketing ship run with an excel sheet as a navigator heads to no port.
If you do objectively disciplined “decision-making by hunch” you are far better off than purely relying on numerical facts.
Therefore – in my understanding – judgement is developed by EQ followed by IQ followed by experience in that order .
I have seen leaders who have solid experience but no “tuning“.
As a result, their experience has only perfected a certain “standard operating procedure“.
They are very good with the issues that are from within a bandwidth of the type of problems they have solved in the past.
Leadership requires inner security and an ability to reach out to others, to listen to them rather than think you have all the answers.
IQ simply refers to knowing what. It is not possible to raise IQ and it cannot be learned. IQ is the brain
EQ refers to knowing how and why. It is possible to raise your EQ and it can be learned. EQ is the heart.