Are you more intelligent than you think?

Sitting in Max Brenner (yum) with a close friend the other day, sharing a cinnamon chocolate babka, and sipping my latte, we were discussing an incredible opportunity I have been offered, I have been asked to write an article for a woman I consider to be inspirational, and I am honoured she has asked me, (blown away really), my question was not should I do it (of course I will), my question was regarding the content I had written as it was very personal.

Surprisingly my friend, Jazz who knows me back to front said to me “I don’t know if I am intelligent enough to guide you!” I was shocked, “WHAT?” This women is very smart, but quite self critical. She started talking about her sisters one who is a scholar and the other who breezed through school with ease.

Jazz has a great life, she has run a very successful business, knows every answer to every quiz, has awesome kids and a really happy marriage, oh and I should add ‘me for a friend’ *insert a cheeky wink here*. Jazz’s sisters are intelligent, no doubt about that, but it made me question how we define intelligence and success.

I know for a fact that Jazz’s sister the scholar Lori, is highly successful in her field of study, but she has confessed to me and to Jazz that she is envious of Jazz’s life. She considers Jazz to have a happier life. It is not that Jazz wants Lori’s life, or Lori wants Jazz’s, it is more that Jazz wishes she was smarter and Lori would like more emotional stability in her life.

I think my friend is perfectly qualified to guide me, despite her self doubt. My question was not one that required a scientific answer, it simply required an answer from someone who has experienced life, someone real and honest. After my initial shock at her response I said to her, “don’t you think there is different levels of intelligence?” “Don’t you think there are things you are more intelligent in than your sisters?” As much as her instinct was to say NO, she couldn’t help but admit that there is in fact different ways of being intelligent. I wouldn’t ask Lori for advice on personal matters, both Lori and Jazz have different areas of strength, but they are equally intelligent.

So I came home and decided to see what I could find on intelligence, if you google ‘intelligence’ you find a lot about Intelligence quotients, (or IQ tests as most of us know them), but the truth is these only measure a certain type of intelligence and don’t really tell us much about other aspects of intelligence. If you are a fan of the TV series ‘The Big Bang Theory’ you will know who I am talking about when I mention ‘Sheldon Cooper’ (pictured below), if not bare with me, Sheldon as you may or may not know is an incredibly smart man, he is a theoretical physicist, a child prodigy and has an IQ of a genius, he does however lack empathy and basically has no social skills. Although Sheldon is a fictional character, he is the perfect example of someone I couldn’t ask social advice from (he would find my question pointless), so although he has a high IQ what he lacks is ’emotional intelligence’.

According to Wikipedia

“Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour.”

Quoted from

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

So does emotional intelligence matter? Well personally I believe so, and I am not alone. According to an article in the Huffington Post, emotional intelligence can be the difference to whether or not you have a successful career and part of the key to a happy life.

The Harvard business review notes that no matter how high an individuals IQ is it does not make them a good leader in business, this is because to be successful you require the ability to form good social networks. Good leaders need to be able to gauge people, empathise, build rapport, and get people to trust them.

Personally I believe these skills are crucial to also being a good friend, the ability to listen, to empathise, to laugh at ourselves, to be trustworthy, and to help encourage us to keep a positive “can do” attitude in the face of defeat (or during a break up with our loser boyfriend, or leaving the job where our boss is a world class A-hole).

Tweet me “I’m an awesome friend because I’m emotionally intelligent!”

So what have I discovered? I have discovered that there are in fact different types of intelligence, the world requires some Sheldon’s or we wouldn’t have cures to many illnesses, ways to treat Cancer, or even a light-bulb to switch on at night, but the world also needs friends who love you and support you, who laugh with you, cry with you, or share chocolate cinnamon babkas with you! We don’t need a degree to give advice to our friends, just common sense, a good heart and emotional intelligence.

Thanks for joining me, love Makenzie xx

Tweet me “Keep Calm and be emotionally intelligent”

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