FAQs
About Leadership Intelligences
- What are Leadership intelligences (LI™)?
“Leadership Intelligences™ are the abilities that allow a person or anorganization to make rapid, but wise decisions in dynamic circumstances. It means leading in “unremarkable ways” in everyday situations to produce outstanding results. Leadership Intelligences inspire a culture of leadership and constant innovation throughout an organization.”
- What is Analytical LI ™?
Analytical intelligence is the source of intellectual leadership. It helps define problems, identify solutions that have worked in the past in similar situations and monitor performance. It is the root of learning as it helps us to systematically acquire new knowledge.
- What is Operational LI ™?
Operational intelligence is the source of leadership through action. It helps transform ideas into action efficiently and is an agent of change. It teaches a person to be implementation-oriented and lead by example. It helps organizations to adapt to environments and become efficiency-oriented.
- What is Inventive LI ™?
Inventive intelligence is the source of visionary leadership. It helps the creation of new solutions, products & processes and solve problems not seen before. It allows organizations to operate in areas where no codified precedence exists. Inventive intelligence typically involves lateral thinking. It is the root of imagination, vision & inspiration.
- What is Communicative LI ™?
Communicative intelligence is the source of emotion-oriented leadership. It helps the exchange ideas and to persuade, motivate and convince others of the value of ideas through words and speech.
- What is Ethical LI ™?
Ethical intelligence is the source of ethical leadership. It trains a person to recognize the ethical importance of decisions and go beyond parochial self-interest and expedience. It enables the discrimination between right and wrong and judgement of short-term incentives versus long-term principles.
- Isn’t this just IQ? What’s the difference?
Have you ever noticed the intelligence of a basketball player who can predict a dodge and shoot a basket? Why does he often score low on a traditional IQ test? That’s because IQ tests capture only a small facet of our intelligence. Leadership intelligences go beyond IQ and beyond EQ (Emotional Intelligence), but include both. They build on more than thirty years of research by psychologists at Harvard and Yale in the area of multiple intelligences. The result is a comprehensive framework that drives leadership and innovation.
- What is the relationship between innovation and leadership?
Every leader is an innovator, and so innovators are a subset of leaders. On the other hand, good innovation goes beyond ideation–it also considers the analytical and operational aspects, it uses persuasion to convince others of the value of the innovation, and above all, it focuses on the ethical issues involved in the innovation. Thus, we see innovation and leadership as the two faces of the same coin, linked by the Leadership Intelligences framework.
- What is agility?
Agility is the ability to adapt, to change, to discard old methods and procedures and adopt new ones. It is most needed in times of turbulence and rapid change.
- Why is LI™ so important nowadays?
We live in times of dramatic change. Globalization is pushing us in new directions. The fall of a foreign government or the growth of a new market have unexpected effects on our organization. Technology is rapidly changing bringing new customers who have new expectations. Economies in many countries are tanking, unemployment is high, and growth, if any, seems a jobless growth. These are times of crisis. You have a choice—stay where you are, continue to do what you have been doing and let the world leave you behind. Or you can make these the best of times—seize new opportunities, make new products, or reach new markets. To make these the best of times, however, you need the resilience, the innovation, and the adaptive capacity that comes with discovering and developing your LI.
- Can I see examples of where this framework has worked?
Yes. Please go to our Downloads link where you will find case studies relating to the use of leadership intelligences.
- I’m not a manager or a team lead. Why does this concern me?
By this time in your career, you would have realized that there is a singular lack of leadership at the middle-management level. The only way to career growth is by developing leadership skills. Even outside your workplace, you are constantly being pushed into leadership roles–as a parent, as a sibling, as a neighbor, or as a community citizen. You can become a better, more respected, more loved individual and also achieve dramatic career growth if you assess and start using your LI™.
- Is this framework based on research?
Yes. We have developed the Leadership Intelligences™ framework over years of research at some of the best business schools in the world–-the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania), the Krannert School (Purdue University) and the Carlson School (University of Minnesota).
About the Methodology
- Is there a way to assess Leadership intelligences?
Vivekin Group has a well-researched assessment that allows you to develop a comprehensive picture of your leadership intelligences and develop a strategy around them. The assessment comprises both a set of multiple-choice questions and a group of caselets. Together, they help you discover your leadership intelligences profile (which ones are you strong in and which ones need development) and also determine how you use the intelligences in practice. When it comes to teams and organizations, we use a mixture of ethnographic methods and capability analysis to determine the LI of the group or organization.
- How do you use LI™ to develop cultures of innovation and leadership in a client organization?
What is Vivekin’s methodology?
Once we have identified the LI™ profile of our client organization, we study the organizational processes and practices that are inhibiting the organization from exercising its LI. We then use management thinking and ethnographic methods to change status quo in the organization and push our client toward developing and using LI to become an industry leader.
- How can we bring Vivékin into our organization?
You can use Vivékin’s services in many ways. You could have Vivékin conduct its eye-opening workshop for senior management to bring home the tremendous potential of this revolutionary framework. Alternatively, you can bring Vivékin in for a long-term study of your organization in a project that lasts for 6 months (2 quarters) or longer for which we can together set timelines and deliverables. Vivékin could also work with an individual CXO or a small group of executives, coaching the executive(s) one-on-one in the application of LI™.
