How are you intelligent?

Looking at 'smart' in a whole different way...

“I always do well, but I still worry I'm not as smart as my peers, in management meetings they zing ideas around so quickly my head spins." Ever wondered how smart you are?

Traditionally intelligence has been understood as a single measure of ability that is largely immutable from birth. In this conventional view, smart people have greater abilities and resources they can apply to any situation. The smarter you are, as measured on an IQ test, the better you can handle anything in your path. Much research supported this; showing that people with high IQs did better in school, regardless of the subject. Over time this view has taken hold and shaped our popular understanding of intelligence.

However, since most schooling draws on the same narrow range of performance that IQ tests measure, that correlation means little in understanding 'smart' in everyday life and work. Advances in neuropsychology, evolutionary biology, and child development show us the 'one-horse' view is tragically flawed. Flawed, because it can't account for performance outside of school, across the full range of human activity - intelligence as a chef, as an author, as an athlete, as a mother. The traditional view of intelligence is ill-fated, because we dampen human potential as long as we believe there is one linear scale of intelligence.

To find a better way to express human potential, Harvard education professor Howard Gardner spent years studying intelligence across disciplines and across cultures. He synthesized what he learned in his model of Multiple Intelligences (MI), and identified eight distinct intelligences:

1. Bodily-Kinaesthetic – Using your body with comfort and skill.
2. Interpersonal - Understanding and connecting with others.
3. Intrapersonal - Understanding yourself and managing your thoughts and emotions.
4. Logical-Mathematical – reasoning using math or logic.
5. Musical-Rhythmic – Making music or making sense of tone and rhythm.
6. Naturalist - Understanding processes in your environment.
7. Verbal-Linguistic – Reading, writing, speaking and listening.
8. Visual-Spatial - Conceiving and mentally manipulating images.

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Working with a Move Beyond Coach is a highly effective way to make the changes you want in your life - it will help you get from a level 5-8 of success, to a level 9-10. You will get support, motivation and most of all accountability - someone who will hold you to your "word" so you follow-through and step-out of your comfort zone to make it real!

We invite you to schedule a free no obligation consultation with one of our coaches to discuss the suitability of our programmes for your needs and find out how we can help you get from where you are, to where you have want to be.

Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there...

(Will Rogers)