Spiritual intelligence – the next generation
October 8, 2009
I read a really interesting article the other day about ‘Generation Y’ employees, and what they are seeking in their jobs or careers, in comparison to Generation X employees or the ‘Baby Boomers’ before them. Generation Y employees are generally considered to be those born in the 1980s and 1990s. The article looked at the concepts of our intellectual intelligence (IQ), emotional intelligence (EQ) and spiritual intelligence (SQ) as a continuum which has evolved and become more relevant to later generations of workers. For past generations, like the baby boomers, IQ was all important, but as generation X came along, the importance of EQ rose as the need to make effective relationships at work became as vital to workers’ success as the intelligence to carry out the work. Now, the article argued, the new generation of workers is developing a third level of this concept, which relates to their need to contribute to their social surroundings and maintain a sense of purpose in what they are doing. SQ is:
“the intelligence with which we address and solve problems of meaning and value and through which we assess whether one course of action or one life-path is more meaningful that another”
The author talked about young graduates who had told him that they wanted some experience in the private sector before taking their commercial experience to work for a charity, which would provide them with the opportunity to fulfil their spiritual intelligence as well as their IQ and EQ. This is quite an overt example, but I think a lot of people do not need to take such direct paths to social contribution to achieve some kind of SQ.
SQ can be fulfilled within most organisations for a lot of employees, as it could come down to how the employee feels about what their company does and its impact upon its customers as well as the wider society. It is about helping employees to define their personal values and working out where they align to the aims and values of the organisation. For example, does the organisation produce products or deliver services that are a genuine benefit to the customer? This may sound like a strange thing to say, but I recently interviewed someone for a sales role whose present company was selling debt solutions to unwitting customers that did not really need them – the candidate’s SQ was virtually non-existent. I think that the employee’s impact on society can be at a very basic level such as ‘are we an ethical provider?’ regardless of what the service is, and still have an effect on their spiritual intelligence.
An important factor in this is the communication mechanisms within organisations. Does the company shout about its positive impact on customers (successes, case studies) or society (environmental policies, corporate social responsibility practices)? Or is it the case, as in many organisations, that the positives are there but employees are left to wallow in the negative issues without being given a balanced viewpoint of how the company is doing ‘socially’? A difficult question could be ‘how do you address the SQ of your employees that work in the customer complaints department?’ These are the considerations within organisations in relation to SQ that I think come way before considerations of a direct link between employees and their contribution to society.
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