What’s your LQ?
What’s your genuine desire to learn new things?
Not the things you are required to learn to obtain CPE credit, complete a degree, or solve an immediate problem. Compliance learning and the YouTube video that teaches you how to change the flat tire on your bike are fine. But it’s different than the desire and passion to learn new things.
How much does your curiosity drive you to try, learn or master new things?
What’s your ability to learn, adapt, and grow in response to new challenges?
These questions that I encourage leaders and aspiring leaders to reflect on determine your LQ or Learning Quotient.
The more I work with the “I”s and “Q”s that form the metrics of leadership as an Executive Coach – the more I’m convinced that a leader’s LQ (Learning Quotient) is the super-differentiator. IQ, EQ, CI/CQ, PQ, and AQ are behaviours or measures that provide insight into leadership. With the exception of IQ - learning is the key to developing the rest of them.
I validated the theory using the leaders in my career before I became an Executive Coach as the “sample.”
As an executive in global professional services, my sample was at the high end of the IQ curve. These firms attract the brightest of the bright and continue to train them. Those with high Emotional Intelligence (EI) rose to the leadership ranks. They demonstrated what was then labelled “soft skills.” These skills helped them cultivate relationships and communicate effectively, transforming them into leaders and influencers in their organizations. A subset of this group possessed a higher level of curiosity, a drive to learn, and a willingness to adapt - a high LQ. These were and are the Super Leaders. Through mergers, transformations, geographic relocations, expansion and contraction of the scope of service and regulatory changes, these leaders had an outsized ability to adapt, keep learning and growing – and help their teams to do the same.
Any human reading this likely has a high IQ and the knowledge that their IQ has hit its set point. Most agree EI has eclipsed IQ in terms of importance as it relates to leadership. Leaders must possess the awareness and ability to manage their emotions and read and relate to others’ emotions. Those who also possess a genuine passion and capacity for learning - a high LQ are the leaders who will be leaders tomorrow and will influence future cohorts of leaders.
The value of a high LQ has risen as the pace of change has accelerated – it’s more than a cliche. Think for a moment about the decades it took to develop EI and the months it’s taken to transform the workplace, the half-life of skills that leaves 50% of what we’ve learned obsolete in five years vs two decades, or the shift to and impact of remote work. If a leader is not curious enough to wonder about what’s coming, interested in testing and trying new things, open to challenge and diverse options and willing to take risks and make change, they won’t have the skills to lead.
Being time-starved or burdened by additional responsibilities or new challenges is the status quo for leaders. It doesn’t remove the responsibility a leader has to keep their LQ high. Learning needs to hold an appropriate slot on your priority list – a high priority!
So, intelligent, experienced, busy leader with an impressive EQ - it’s time to reflect on your LQ.
I take my clients through a longer list of reflective questions to assess their LQ. “What have I learned lately?” is an excellent place to start the conversation with yourself.
A single question asked frequently and reflected on can nudge you to keep learning, broaden your interests, and identify what’s hard for you to learn and what’s easy to pick up.
A single action can be a game changer.
So, what are you going to learn today?
