How Do You See Your Business IQ?

Is a high business IQ in your genes or is it more about developing new skills and growing in several areas? Watch a charasmatic leader in action, and you'll often hear the comment, "She's a born leader." On the other hand, more than a few leaders work up the ladder, earn management degrees and try things on for size as they take new risks in the business world. Do you ever make comparisons and wish you were more of a "natural?"

Business IQ Can Be Developed Good news is that people who believe their IQ can be developed will put forth more of an effort to grow new skills and acumen and view setbacks as stepping stones to more positive results. Mindset guides us more than we may realize. If you believe you can learn and grow, here's why it pays off...

People believe that their talents and abilities can be developed through passion, education, and persistence. For them, it's not about looking smart or grooming their image. It's about a commitment to learning--taking informed risks and learning from the results, surrounding yourself with people who will challenge you to grow, looking frankly at your deficiencies and seeking to remedy them. Most great business leaders have had this mindset, because building and maintaining excellent organizations in the face of constant change requires it.

Business IQ Is Natural Talent If you believe business intellgence is fixed, then you might experience a decline in leadership savvy as you attempt to solve new problems or take financial risks. Carol, Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success provides a bigger picture of how beliefs can limit your growth as a leader...

Many years of research have now shown that when people adopt the fixed mindset, it can limit their success. They become over-concerned with proving their talents and abilities, hiding deficiencies, and reacting defensively to mistakes or setbacks-because deficiencies and mistakes imply a (permanent) lack of talent or ability. People in this mindset will actually pass up important opportunities to learn and grow if there is a risk of unmasking weaknesses. This is not a recipe for success in business, as ultimately shown by the folks at Enron, who rarely admitted any mistakes.

Differences in leaders' beliefs about IQ can be observed in ways they select personnel, for instance...

Many people (in a fixed mindset) think that personnel selection is simply about selecting the brightest people and turning them loose. Yet years of research have shown that we are not good at predicting future success on the basis of current assessments of talent. In other words, we can measure people's present skills, aptitudes, and strengths, but this does not translate well into their future performance. Why? Because it doesn't tell us about people's potential for growth in the future-how they might perform with the right commitment, effort, and training. In fact, more and more research is showing that people's level of commitment, effort, and continued training is what eventually separates the most successful people from their equally talented, but less successful, peers. This is true in sports, science, and the arts-and it is becoming clear that it is true in business, too.

This means that the best strategy is not simply to hire the ablest people we can find, but also to look for people who embody a growth mindset: a zest for learning (and teaching), openness to feedback, and an ability to confront and surmount obstacles.It also means training leaders and managers to believe in growth, in addition to training them in the specifics of effective communication and mentoring.

Ready to act on a new mindset today? New research about the brain provides even more tools to grow our business intelligence.