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New heading: Semantics and the Superior Nature of Spiritual Intelligence

There has been an enormous amount of study, observation and research in the area of intelligence, particularly over the last twenty years. There are numerous books and an entire body of literature. Different words are sometimes used to describe the same things. Part of what I call spiritual intelligence some people may call emotional intelligence, and vice versa. I fully acknowledge this semantics difficulty. Again, I encourage you, the reader, to not get hung up on word definitions but to search continuously for the underlying meaning.

Howard Gardner’s book on the theory of multiple intelligences, Frames of Mind, is a brilliant treatment of the concept of separate, yet overlapping, intelligences. I’ve also gained greatly from both Robert Cooper’s and Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence. I have heard their presentations in different settings and know that their approaches are research-based and comprehensive, and include some of the elements I’ve spoken about under spiritual intelligence.

Some books separate out visual intelligence from verbal, analytical, artistic, logical, creative, economic and other intelligences. I appreciate their contributions but again believe you can put them all under the four areas of body, mind, heart and spirit the four dimensions of life.

I’ll never forget an experience in Hawaii with the Young Presidents’ Organization. A small group of corporate presidents gathered for breakfast with some of the leading authorities in the field of management and leadership, each of whom had written notable bestsellers and were widely respected and quoted. In a forum where no one was being quoted and where there was a great deal of mutual respect, one of the presidents asked, with a real sense of humility, “Aren’t you guys basically saying the same thing?” To a person, they acknowledged that they were. Each had his or her own semantics and definitions and often had some unique insight not voiced by the others, but in terms of the most basic elements, they were the same. They talked more in terms of underlying principles than practices.

I’ve really had to work hard to avoid the semantics problem myself and do so by always trying to look for underlying meanings. But I do believe there is another dimension of intelligence that has not been treated in great depth elsewhere. And that is the role of spiritual intelligence in guiding and directing the other intelligences. In that sense, it is superior to the other intelligences.

Let me share an experience that may help make the point of spiritual intelligence being the highest of our capacities. I am enormously impressed with the work of the late Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, in his efforts with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to bring about the Camp David Peace Accord between Israel and Egypt.

While being given a tour of the grounds of Camp David in a golf cart a few years ago, I was shown, by the president of the United States, the exact location where that accord was signed. It was a very emotional experience for me. I’ve come to see Sadat as a person that knew about the space between stimulus and response. He developed enormous space as a young man while in solitary confinement in cell 54 of the Cairo central prison. Just sense the depth of that understanding reflected in his words: He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.13 Before his shift in perspective concerning Israel, Sadat had become an enormously popular president, deeply devoted to the Arab cause. He went around Egypt giving political speeches about how he would never shake the hand of an Israeli as long as they occupied one inch of Arab soil, shouting “Never! Never! Never!” The enormous crowds of people would shout back, “Never! Never! Never!” We invited Sadat’s wife, Madame Jehan Sadat, to be the keynote speaker at our International Symposium. I had the privilege of having lunch with her. I asked her what it was like living with Anwar Sadat—particularly at the time he made the bold peace initiative of going to the Knesset in Jerusalem, a move that culminated in the Camp David Accord.

She said she had a hard time believing his change of heart, particularly after all he’d been doing and saying. Here’s my paraphrasing of what she recounted: Confronting him directly in their living quarters of the palace, she asked him, “I understand you are thinking about going to Israel. Is this correct?” “Yes.”

“How could you possibly do this after all you have been saying?”

“I was wrong, and this is the right thing to do.”

“You will lose the leadership and support of the Arab world.”

“I suppose that could happen; but I don’t think it will.”

“You will lose the presidency of your country.”

“That, too, could happen.”

“You’ll lose your life.” (And, as we know, he did, to an assassin’s bullet.)

He responded, “My life is ordained. It will not be one minute longer or one minute shorter than it was ordained to be.” She embraced him and said he was the greatest person she had ever known.

Then I asked her what it was like when he returned from Israel. She said it normally takes thirty minutes to travel from the airport to the palace. That day it took over three hours. The highways and streets were thronged with hundreds of thousands of people, cheering Sadat in enthusiastic support of what he was doing—the same people who just one week earlier had been cheering for the exact opposite approach. He was doing what was right, and they knew it. Spiritual intelligence is a higher endowment than emotional intelligence. They recognized that you cannot think and live independently in an interdependent world.

Sadat had subordinated his ego and EQ (social sensitivity, empathy and social skills) to his SQ (conscience), and the results resonated through the whole world. The leadership of his spiritual intelligence elevated his other intelligences, and he became a person of tremendous moral authority.

This pathway to moral authority, personal fulfillment and influence for good is not the realm of great world leaders alone. The potential for simple, great, quiet moral authority lies within each one of us.

DEVELOPING THE 4 INTELLIGENCES/CAPACITIES

Because these four dimensions of life obviously overlap, you really can’t work exclusively on any one without touching directly or indirectly on the others. Developing and using these intelligences will instill within you quiet confidence, internal strength and security, the ability to be simultaneously courageous and considerate, and personal moral authority. In many ways, your efforts to develop these intelligences will profoundly impact your ability to influence others and inspire them to find their voice.

To assist you in further developing your four native intelligences, I have prepared an action guide in the back of the book that will provide you with several well-founded, practical ways to develop each of the intelligences. It is called Appendix 1: Developing the 4 Intelligences/ Capacities—A Practical Guide to Action and can be found on page 331. Though you may find some of it to be simple common sense, remember, common sense is not common practice, and I guarantee that if you will focus your efforts in these areas, you will find that great peace and power will come into your life.

I have also found that by making four simple assumptions in our lives we can immediately begin leading a more balanced, integrated, powerful life. They are simple one for each part of our nature but I promise you that if you do them consistently, you will find a new wellspring of strength and integrity to draw on when you need it most.

1. For the body—assume you’ve had a heart attack; now live accordingly.

2. For the mind—assume the half-life of your profession is two years; now prepare accordingly.

3. For the heart—assume everything you say about another, they can overhear; now speak accordingly.

4. For the spirit—assume you have a one-on-one visit with your Creator every quarter; now live accordingly.

FILM: A.B. Combs Elementary

When in life can we start developing the moral authority and inner strength that flow from the four human intelligences? I’ll illustrate with a film that you’ve got to see. It is the story of a woman who is principal of A.B. Combs Elementary School (K–5) in Raleigh, North Carolina—a magnet school with a mission to produce leaders for society. It shows her in, perhaps, her finest hour, but I suspect there will be many more in the future.

But before you watch it, let me first ask this one question: When is the best time to learn the software that enables you to find your voice? When in one’s lifetime is the best time to get the cultural overlay, the software, to be completely in harmony with our “hardwired” gifts? I think we would all agree it is in our childhood—primarily, in our early home life. But what if people have bad early home lives and learn the software of victimism, scarcity, and the metastasizing cancers of competing, complaining, contending, comparing and criticizing. Could one’s early home life take place at school? Could a teacher or a school administrator become a surrogate parent to perhaps compensate for the dysfunctionality of the home when the children are very young and impressionable and innocent and uncorrupted?

Better still, what if you could get a partnership between home and school so that there is continual reinforcement and alignment from both sides at all times with the child? Can you imagine the result if the software and the hardware were aligned during those first few years of childhood—the kinds of people it would produce and the kind of achievements that would flow from their characters and competencies?

In its very low production quality, the film you are about to see is more like a home movie than a professionally produced film. It is about a great partnership between a school and the homes of its students, fashioned largely by the leadership of the principal, Mrs. Muriel Thomas Summers.

Mrs. Summers got a vision of the possibilities of introducing principle-based character education into the curriculum of a K–5 school (little children ranging from ages five through ten), and of involving fellow administrators, faculty and families in the preparation. She chose The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as their curriculum. You will see in the Action Guide at the back of the book how 7 Habits is a powerful framework for developing our human intelligences, particularly EQ.

Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed by this film and hesitate to even share it because it talks about the “Covey” Habits. So when I visited the school, I reinforced to the people that the Habits are nothing more than universal, timeless principles belonging to all humanity that I organized into an actionable, sequential framework of thinking. I quoted T.S. Eliot, who said, “We must never cease from exploring. At the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive at where we began and know the place for the first time.” You’ll notice in the video of this school celebration assembly that it’s the little children who conducted this assembly and gave the speeches. You can’t see the families in front, but they are there—you can hear babies crying, so you sense their presence. There was a true partnership formed, and the principles of responsibility, purpose, integrity, win-win, seeking first to understand, synergy and sharpen the saw became integrated into their total curriculum.

Many people feel there is no real connection between academic performance and character; many people also feel there is no connection between subject learning and principles. But the whole concept behind Finding Your Voice and Inspiring Others to Find Theirs is a synergistic concept. It is the integration of our intelligences and capacities, which unleashes human potential. I directly asked the principal what impact introducing principle-centered character training into the curriculum had on academic performance. She said the impact was profound. I asked if she had any numbers. She answered, “Yes. Eighteen months ago, sixty-seven percent of our students performed at or above grade level in national academic standards; today ninety-four percent are at or above grade level.” Just consider the significance of what she said the same families, the same facilities, the same core curricula and learning materials, the same buildings only one variable: Character principles were introduced and integrated into the classes and lives of these students. Eighteen months!

Talk about overlaying principle-centered software and the freedom to choose with hardwired gifts! How marvelous this would be if this could happen in the homes and the schools of young people throughout the world; the people who are the future. It’s an answer to the dilemma expressed by author and founder/CEO emeritus of Visa International, Dee Hock: “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.”16 One more word before you watch the film. The “Wall of Wonder” they talk about and that they asked me to help unveil is somewhat blurred and difficult to discern, but it’s basically made up of 560 ceramic panels, each painted by a child, all blended into a montage of beautiful colors. At the center it talks about the four parts of our nature, as manifested in the four needs to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy. This whole film was not prepared or staged everything was authentic, spontaneous and real time, as I’m sure you’ll be able to tell at the outset. This is a school of fifty-six different nationalities. When I arrived at the school, many of these children had on their native costumes and carried their native flags. I’ve never seen a level of diversity in one location that even compares to this.

A.B. Combs has received numerous awards, including the following:

• National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence (given by the U.S. Department of Education)

• National Magnet Schools of Excellence Award, three years running (the highest award given by the National Magnet Schools of America). Named one of the top five magnet schools (out of thousands) in the U.S. in academic performance, with 98 percent of their students performing at or above grade level.

• North Carolina School of Excellence (based on academic achievement)

• North Carolina Governor’s Entrepreneurial Award (awarded for leadership and risk-taking in education)

• Winner, National Schools of Character

• Invited to present at the Model Schools Conference, 2004

• Finalist for the 21st Century Award for Educational Excellence, 2004

Enjoy watching A. B. Combs Elementary now by going to www.The8thHabit.com/offers and selecting it from the Films menu.

QUESTION & ANSWER

Q: Are we basically a product of nature (our genes) or of nurture (our upbringing and environmental conditions)?

A: The very question itself is based on a false dichotomy. It is based on a false paradigm or map of human nature, that of determinism. We are a product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger. Little children and people who are mentally handicapped may not have that space, but the overwhelming majority of adults do. Determinism is deeply imbedded into present-day culture and is reinforced by the terrifying sense that if I do have choice, then I am also responsible for my present situation. Until a person can honestly say “I am what I am” and “I am where I am because I so choose to be there,” that person cannot say with conviction, “I choose otherwise.” Q: Are leaders born or made, meaning environmentally conditioned and trained?

A: Again, this question is based on a false dichotomy, a flawed paradigm of determinism. Because of the space between stimulus and response, people have the power of choice; therefore, leaders are neither born nor made meaning environmentally trained and nurtured. They are self-made through chosen responses, and if they choose based on principles and develop increasingly greater discipline, their freedom to choose increases. In the book Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders, authors Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas make the case that leaders are made, not born.17 The basic concept is that because of one intense transformational experience, they make those choices that enable them to become a leader. Dr. Noel Tichy also basically says that leaders aren’t born, they are taught. Again, the implication is that people make the choice to be taught and to follow the teachings. In both instances, the authors are really saying that leaders aren’t made or born, they are self-made leadership is a function of choices.

Q: Must you develop all four capacities or intelligences?

A: Yes, because you won’t really be able to develop any one of them to its mature, sustainable level without working on all four. This is what integrity means. It means the whole of our life is integrated around principles. Our capacity for production and enjoyment is a function, in the last analysis, of our character, our integrity. This takes constant effort to develop the physical muscle fiber, the emotional/social muscle fiber, the mental muscle fiber and the spiritual muscle fiber by getting us out of our comfort zones and doing those exercises that cause the fiber to break (pain); then it is repaired and enlarged and strengthened after a proper period of rest and relaxation. See The Power of Full Engagement by authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.18 Q: What about retirement?

A: Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and of contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly, your intergenerational family. If you want to die early, retire to golf and fishing and sit around swallowing prescriptions and occasionally seeing your grandkids. Want evidence for this? Study Hans Selye’s book, Stress Without Distress.