What is Your Leadership Quotient from a Business Coaching Perspective?
12th Feb , 2018
At International Business Mentors, we use Leadership Quotient concepts to match each business coach to individuals requiring business coaching, but what exactly is a Leadership Quotient? The dictionary definition of any Quotient is the degree to which a specific quality or characteristic exists. While you might be familiar with the original IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, researchers have also developed EQ or Emotional Quotient, or more commonly, Emotional Intelligence. Recently, this trend has been extended to the concept of LQ or the Leadership Quotient, which is a measure of a person’s leadership capability.
What Are These Quotients and Do They Matter?
The oldest of the three Q measures mentioned above is the well-known IQ. It measures cognitive ability and assigns a value to those who complete the test. This value describes how our measured intelligence falls within the whole population, with 100 being the average score of the population as a whole. Meanwhile, EQ is often defined as Emotional Intelligence and is a measure of ‘the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how well you can work cooperatively with them’. Businesses and other major organisations have begun to consider EQ in potential hires, particularly leaders. They claim that the EQ is a better predictor of executive success and the ability to develop business growth strategies than other measures, including IQ.
Another ‘Q’ has recently joined the Quotient revolution within emerging leadership thought and is another important measure of the ability to lead well: the Leadership Quotient, or LQ.
What is a Leadership Quotient?
A wide variety of researchers, authors and organisations have developed ways to measure LQ. Steven Covey’s Leadership Quotient is the most popular. It measures ability against the four main imperatives of a leadership: to develop trust, clarify purpose, align systems and unleash talent.
The Leadership Quotient is a sum of competence, character and capability (LQ=IQ+EQ+XQ). Others propose Leadership Quotient as a sum of morality + power.
Limitations of the Quotients
These efforts are well-intentioned and can be valuable. At International Business Mentors, we know the value of our experience when it comes to business coaching, particularly in developing CEOs, MDs, business owners and directors of companies, i.e. leaders. We have two important reservations on the current LQ trend:
The Leadership Quotient, and indeed all the Quotients, have the drawback of allowing someone else to define us. We are measured, categorised and defined within someone else’s model of how the world works. How many lives have experienced long-term negative effects from a poor IQ score? Or how many have developed a pompous ego because of an exceptionally high IQ? In either case, someone else defines us in ways that can have profound impacts on how we view ourselves, and this can be unhealthy.
The many Quotients, particularly the Leadership Quotient, measure what we do as leaders; Covey’s four imperatives are all active. At International Business Mentors, we are much more interested in developing leaders according to their potential facilitated by our business coaches with practical experience.
Leadership Quotient Questions
It is compelling for our business mentors to help develop business leaders to reach their potential and facilitate those leaders to better lead, devise business growth strategies, and survive.
Here are four crucial questions of leadership to facilitate a better Leadership Quotient or LDQ. Note that none of these can be easily measured by a simple test – but developing leaders who thrive is neither easily done nor measured.
How strong is my leadership and the business’s core?
At the core of every business leader’s core are the key questions of who are we and what is our and the business’ purpose? How will we achieve these purposes?
How healthy are you and your business?
Are you and the business thriving on all strategic and operational aspects of performance, and is your own leadership and the business developing?
How well are you helping the people in the business to perform and develop?
A true leader becomes strong with a widely developed skills base and helps their people and the business develop performance.
How well integrated are your own ambitions coupled with your potential and experience to succeed in leading the business forward to improve your strategic outcomes?
With a business coach giving you confidential and honest feedback, you can work through what you want for the business and for yourself.
Your business coach or mentor is there to encourage you to ask what you want to do as a leader. They’ll also help you with their experience so you can add it to your own, as well as facilitating the increase in your Leadership Quotient while supporting you in your development and acting as a sounding board for business growth strategies.
At International Business Mentors, we have a process that matches you to a great business coach or mentor who has overlapping and complementary experience, with a view to increase your contribution in leadership and develop you and your business. We consider all the lessons from the Leadership Quotients from a practical stand point.
Contact International Business Mentors today to learn more about business coaching for leadership.