It’s time to add another form of intelligence to the list. We have IQ to measure cognitive intelligence, EQ for emotional intelligence, CQ for cultural intelligence. Why do we not encourage people to enhance their JQ – their capacity to find and express joy through their work? We’d advance their quality of life and their leadership acumen and stamina if we did.
There’s nothing simple about raising your JQ. In the same way you can’t boost your IQ by reading one book, enhancing JQ takes time and effort. Three steps can set the process in motion. (I’ll tackle one today, the others in subsequent posts.)
STEP I: Find your passions, true talents, and contributions. A high JQ isn’t hedonism. Nor is it hakuna matata or a don’t worry-be happy philosophy – although an easy going spirit and the ability to wear life loosely are good life traits to possess.
We raise our JQ as the result of self-reflection and thoughtful experimentation over time that enable us to (a) identify our true talents and passions and (b) find ways to express those. True is the operative word.
We are all good at many things, but our true talents coincide with our deep interests and passions. They energize us with use. Engaging in activities that use them makes time fly. What are your true talents? How can you identify them for yourself?
In their chapter “The Traces of Talent” in my edited book Business Leadership (Jossey-Bass, pp. 79-86), Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton suggest monitoring four areas:
1. spontaneous reactions – the ways you naturally respond to similar situations over time. Rising successfully to the challenges of project organizer in every crisis, for example, tells you something about your organizational and executive talents.
2. yearnings – things that have fascinated you from an early age. Architect Frank Gehry remembers building avant guard wooden structures at age 4 from wood scrapes on the floor of his father’s hardware store. At 10, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were meeting regularly at school to plan their creative projects. Picasso was in adult art school by age 13 and loving it.
3. rapid learnings – things that come quickly and powerfully. Matisse was a sickly law clerk when his mother gave him a box of paints to pass the time. A new world opened for him, and he never looked back. He filled his days with paining and drawing from then on and was accepted into Paris’s most prestigious art school four years later.
4. deep satisfaction – consistent good feelings from an action. In neurobiological language, this is a physiological response to the use of your strongest synaptic connections. Gregg Breinberg, music director of the PS 22 Chorus, and Gustavo Dudamel of the LA Phil (discussed in previous posts) are good examples of this.
We alone know our true talents. We need time and a process to find them — and the confidence to believe in what we discover.
Sometimes advice from others is helpful: it can give us an outside perspective on ourselves. But be forewarned: not always. It may encourage us to short-cut self-discovery or be unduly influenced by the contributions important others want us to make. “You can’t make money with an art degree, so major in business.” “Be a teacher. You’ll have summers off with your children.” “You’re good at math. Take a job on Wall Street where bonuses are still big despite the economy.”
A joyless life is one spent convincing ourselves that we should like what others value in us more than who we really are.