How an integrated approach helps you transform your personal performance

Image credit: Natalia Bulatova | shutterstock.com

Consider these five individuals – in each case, they excel in one area and need to improve in another:

• A Latin American senior lawyer with stellar upward feedback and reputation as a friend among clients, but who was easily distracted (including late at night) by social media and his smartphone.
• A member of the US armed forces who was in peak physical condition yet repeatedly became negatively triggered by small things that friends would say (or omit to say).
• A European public figure whose mental focus helped her have significant impact in bilateral trade relations, yet regularly stopped herself in her tracks due to uncertainty about why she was on the path she was on.
• A senior British management consultant who had charted a clear life and career plan but lay awake at night stressing about broken relationships at work.
• An English mother who is extremely sensitive to others’ feelings, thereby regularly gaining deep trust and respect, yet who has struggled to lose weight which contributes to her not feeling good enough.

I have met each of these people. They all have one thing in common: Though successful in some ways, they all veiled their greatness by excelling in at least one intelligence and falling short in another.

I believe that people flourish when they master four intelligences:

• Physical sustainability – the extent to which you sustain peak levels of physical energy.
• Mental focus – the ability to focus attention intently on one thing, without getting distracted.
• Emotional intelligence – the awareness of, and management of, your own and others’ emotions.
• Purpose – the ability to align what brings you joy with what the world needs.

Mastering these intelligences does not mean becoming the best in the world in each, but being aware of your levels and taking steps to improve.

All five of the individuals described above excelled in one intelligence and needed to improve in another:

• The senior lawyer excelled emotionally and needed to improve mental focus.
• The US army excelled physically but needed to improve emotional intelligence.
• The European public figure excelled mentally but needed to improve her sense of purpose.
• The British management consultant excelled in understanding purpose but needed to improve emotional intelligence.
• The English mother scored highly in emotional intelligence but needed to improve in physical sustainability.

At nickchatrath.com, we try our best to walk the talk in all four intelligences:

• Physical sustainability – encouraging each other to rest well, eat well, and exercise.
• Mental focus – developing work practices that optimise focus, such as taking regular breaks and reserving your best work time for key tasks (e.g. a 90 minute burst in the morning, free from phones and social-media).
• Emotional intelligence – being open about how we are doing (without over-sharing!) and being sensitive to where each person is at.
• Purpose – connecting the work we do with what brings us joy, and where we are aiming in life

In itself, a four-intelligence approach is not new. In combining these four elements, I am standing on the shoulders of Ken Wilbur’s Integral Approach, Jack Groppel’s Corporate Athlete work and Tony Schwartz’s four-part model in The Way It’s Working Isn’t Working. Recent research also underpins the importance of the four intelligences. For example, increasingly validated findings on the toxicity of fructose are relevant to physical sustainability. And organisational research provides a strong underpinning to the centrality of having a growth mindset, which is an element of emotional intelligence.

The distinctiveness of my approach lies in also bringing the power of wearables and other leading-edge technology to bear. You can read about this throughout my blog.

All over the world, and over nearly two decades, I have coached hundreds of executives, students, middle-managers, NGO leaders, spiritual mentors and others. The feedback I have received, and my experiences of their success, tell me that committing to an integrated approach to the four intelligences yields results.

You may think it is a paradox to improve on all four intelligences at the same time. Maybe you think that someone can be good at mental focus, or emotional intelligence, but very rarely both. Maybe you doubt your own capacity to improve both at the same time. But in this case, the four intelligences are mutually reinforcing. Far from being a paradox, big increases in your impact will come from small gains in each of these ‘big four’ areas.

Think back to the five people I talked about at the beginning of this post. Each of them were at various stages of developing in the ‘big four’ intelligences I’ve talked about. None of their stories needed to end there. Each of them had the potential to improve in areas where they were further behind, and did so. And the same is true for you as well.

What next

Which of the above resonate with you?

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