Much has been written about leadership personality and style, but the most critical factor in executive success, intelligence, is sometimes neglected. Thinking critically is the primary responsibility of any manager, in any organization, and a leader’s ability to do this is largely determined by his or her intelligence. But until recently, the only reliable measure of intelligence was the standard IQ test, which measures the cognitive skills central to success in school, not success in business.
In this article, Justin Menkes proposes that there actually is a measurable intelligence that characterizes great leadership and management. He defines the critical-thinking skills that make up Executive Intelligence — the problem-solving capability, understanding of people and self-evaluation skills that business leaders need to perform at the highest level. He also introduces the tools that enable companies, for the first time, to assess these abilities as a predictor of executive success.
This article was originally published in the November 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review.