Recently, all of the fulltime MBA students completed a series of surveys and received a CQ score. What might that be? Well, clearly CQ stands for cultural intelligence. (Don’t worry, I had that confused look on my face, too.) The person running the survey told us that there are many kinds of intelligence, so she figures cultural intelligence is one of them.
I have heard this multiple intelligence thing before, and I had a special 5th grade class that was supposed to exploit this fact. It was a cool class, but I don’t agree with the eight-category theory of multiple intelligences (i.e. logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intra-personal and inter-personal). If we are going break it down, it seems to me that intelligence has 3 parts:
- Thinking/Reasoning
- Knowledge/memory
- Execution
The thinking category includes comprehension, observation, calculation, and other types of rational thought. The knowledge category describes the body of knowledge one currently have as well as one’s ability to remember new information. The execution category generally involves your ability to convert your thoughts and knowledge into physical acts: speaking, moving, playing instruments, and playing sports. Execution also includes less mobile activities such as written communication.
While I am sure most people exhibit correlations between these three parts, they seem to be independent. From someone’s musical or sports performance, I do not know their ability to think or remember. It is more difficult to separate thinking and knowledge because one’s ability to reason is shown by their ability to compare a new idea to previous ideas they remember. And one’s ability to structure information greatly improves recall. However, it seems like there should be a way to show these are independent.