Book Review: Experiential Intelligence – Harness the Power of Experience for Personal and Business Breakthroughs

The main thesis of this book, written by Soren Kaplan, is that “Experiential Intelligence reveals how our past experiences impact our present success and future opportunities in ways we often don’t recognize.” The author claims that, while we cannot change what has happened to us or how we have responded to it, within our unique stories are hidden strengths waiting to be discovered. He argues that “Just as memorizing facts doesn’t give you a high IQ, your Experiential Intelligence (XQ) isn’t merely what you’ve learned over time.” It is how we perceive challenges, view opportunities, and tackle goals. He claims that “XQ is our unique internal fingerprint.”

The twenty main takeaways that I got out of this book are presented below:

• We all have the opportunity to more deeply understand and then explicitly leverage what we’ve gained from our life events, whatever they may be… We can create our desired future more easily when we intentionally draw upon our inherent strengths while overcoming the invisible limitations created by our past. It’s not always easy to do. And it can take time to learn to do… Yet, when we develop awareness of our strengths, lean into our assets, and move beyond the self-limiting beliefs that hold us back from fully embracing the whole spectrum of what we’ve gained from our unique experiences, we can tap into and apply a new type of intelligence in our lives — Experiential Intelligence (XQ).
• The experiences that influence us can be big events, even traumatic ones, but they can also be little things that add up over time to shape our thinking and behavior. The opportunity is to embrace our experiences, decipher them, and use them to our advantage… Experiential Intelligence is a simple, intuitive concept. The idea that our experiences shape our mindsets, abilities, and know-how is a no-brainer. And that’s why it’s so important. In today’s increasingly uncertain world, we need simple ideas to help us understand complexity. The most powerful concepts, like our most powerful personal assets, are often those that, upon deeper inspection, we realize have been hiding in plain sight all along.
• Companies including Google, Apple, Tesla, IBM, Home Depot, Bank of America, Starbucks, and Hilton no longer require a university degree for an interview. These organizations understand that future success relies on way more than diplomas… For a long time, a person’s IQ served as the symbol of intellectual prowess and a general predictor of future achievement. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) then expanded our view of what leads to success across business, relationships, and life. EQ elevated our awareness of the importance of tuning into our emotions and the emotions of others for personal and professional growth.
• Here’s the problem. Even with all the available models and measures, something’s missing today that doesn’t quite capture how our individual intricacies can, and do, contribute to both success and satisfaction in life. We need a way to understand how everything we’ve obtained from our unique life experiences – no matter how mundane or significant – holistically contributes to our ability to show up in the world and achieve our goals. We need a way to articulate and justify why we might want to hire someone who’s not “officially” qualified for a job, but who we know will do a great job anyway. We need a way to recognize the inherent wisdom and strength that exist in all of us because of what we’ve done and experienced in both our personal and professional lives. And we need a way to make the process of understanding, appreciating, and leveraging the power of unique experiences and differences something that we embrace in our teams, organizations, communities, and personal lives.
• “You’re the sum of your experiences” is a common catchphrase. But what does it really mean? Experiential Intelligence is much more than the set of accomplishments on your résumé. It also isn’t merely what you’ve learned over time. Just as memorizing a bunch of facts doesn’t give you a high IQ, your list of life lessons is not “intelligence” in and of itself. That’s where XQ comes in.
• Experiential Intelligence provides a new lens from which to view what makes you, you—and what makes your team and organization unique. It provides a framework for harnessing your past while not being bound by it, so that you can proactively create your desired future… XQ consists of three elements: Mindsets: Your attitudes and beliefs about yourself, other people, and the world; Abilities: Your competencies that help you integrate your knowledge, skills, and experiences so you can respond to situations in the most effective way possible; and Know-How: Your knowledge and skills.
• We all possess Experiential Intelligence because we all have past experiences that influence where we are today. Your XQ increases as your level of self-awareness of your mindsets, abilities, and know-how increases. XQ is dynamic because how you might describe the mindsets you hold and abilities you possess at one point in your life could differ at a later point. The more you do something and have experiences in a certain area of life or business, the more you’ll develop greater abilities and know-how. Your mindsets can also evolve based on insights that you gain about yourself, others, and the world in general over time.
• Here’s how Experiential Intelligence works: 1) Experiences shape mindsets that involve attitudes and beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world; 2) Our mindsets influence our thoughts and behavior and either help us or hold us back from achieving our full potential; 3) When we become aware of our underlying mindsets, we see with a new lens; 4) With a new lens, we can change our attitudes and beliefs, allowing us to tap into and apply our abilities in new ways; and 5) When we vulnerably share our experiences with those we trust, we accelerate the entire process for everyone involved.
• Today, many people view experience as a cornerstone of the learning process itself. Some people refer to it as “learning by doing,” while others call it “hands-on learning” or “learning through reflection On doing.” Whatever you call it, when you have experiences that give you hands-on practice, you can assimilate the learning into your deeper being and then apply what you ve learned in other future contexts.
• Over the last hundred years, there’s been a lot of focus on the topic of intelligence. The most common measure of someone’s smarts is the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ for short. The idea that we all have IQs was introduced in 1912 by the German psychologist William Stern? Since then, IQ tests have become the most prevalent form of intelligence testing. Many today refer to intelligence measured on these tests as “general intelligence,” or the “g factor,” to describe someone’s level of cognitive performance. The numeric scores that result from these tests are typically used by psychologists and educators to assess and predict an individual’s current and future success… More recently, Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, has become a mainstream concept. While the term Emotional Intelligence also originated in the ’60s, it was popularized in the 1995 bestselling book by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence.” The appeal of EQ is that it broadens the overall definition of intelligence. Those with high EQ, it’s argued, are more emotionally regulated and empathetic to others. These attributes give you a leg up in navigating personal relationships and when working in groups, teams, and organizations.
• EQ has become a big focus within leadership development programs in business. The more emotionally intelligent a person is, the more successful they are with collaboration and leading others. EQ filled a void in our com-mon-sense understanding of intelligence; there must be more to intelligence than pure intellect as a predictor of success.
• Understanding how experiences shape us on an individual level is important. Yet were all part of different social groups, like families, teams, organizations, and communities. When we have shared experiences with other people, we often develop similar mindsets. That’s what creates culture: when people share similar attitudes and beliefs, which in turn influences people’s behavior… Shared experiences are powerful. When people are part of groups with intense shared experiences, like military units, police departments, fire stations and battalions, and hospital emergency departments, very strong cultures can result. Whole societies can also have shared experiences, like when the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001. These types of experiences can create dramatic shifts in collective mindsets almost overnight, just as PTG transforms individual mindsets.
• Experiential Intelligence gives you the opportunity to expand how you think about what happened in your past and how it affected you. Even your most trying experiences, especially your setbacks and struggles, most likely helped you develop unique assets that you can leverage to shape your future… In the broader scheme of things, moving forward isn’t just about addressing past wounds. Sure, the thousands of experiences you have had in your life can impact you, stick with you, and affect your hap-piness, social and emotional functioning, and quality of life. And yes, some of these impacts may be bigger than others, and some may need some healing. But growing your XQ isn’t about getting back to your baseline. It’s about discovering and tapping into your inherent capacity for growth and resilience, and then taking yourself to the next level.
• Your past is in your past. You can’t change what’s happened to you or how you’ve responded. But you can change how you view your personal history and, as a result, what you can learn from it and how you’ll let it affect you. When you do this, you can also reframe your current circumstances based on your new perspective, which al lows you to take a fresh look at the things you’re currently doing and whether you want to change them… You will have both positive and negative experiences for your entire life. You can choose to lean into them and embrace the surprises they reveal, or you can resist what they’re communicating to you. It’s rewarding to make friends with your past, learn from it, and proactively apply it to your next set of experiences. That’s how you continue to grow your XQ. But you may first need to deal with your past to fully embrace your future. And to do that, you might need a little confidence in your own resilience. Having confidence gives you the courage to explore any unresolved past challenges head-on. Looking at your past won’t cause you to get stuck there. If anything, avoiding the past will.
• The concept of “forecasting the past” is simple: your past experiences influence your present thoughts and behavior. Forecasting your past involves finding the direct link between your past experiences and how they influence you today. These experiences will likely impact your ability to achieve your goals… It also involves looking at how certain experiences helped you develop strengths that you can draw upon to achieve your goals… Looking at your past in a thoughtful and methodical way empowers you to see yourself and your circumstances in a new light. And it’s an essential step to understanding, appreciating, and growing your Experiential Intelligence (XQ)… Forecasting the past isn’t just about finding the root cause of your limitations. Your experiences also give you strengths that set you up for future success. That’s why parenting experts often say it can be beneficial to let your kids experience the consequences of their mistakes… It’s one thing to be told to do something; it’s another to internalize that insight from learning directly from a mistake. Those mistakes, however devastating they may feel at the time, can teach lessons that make kids more effective adults.
• Negative big impacts are significant, often traumatic events like those listed by the National Council of Behavioral Health. They’re the type of traumas discussed widely today, including different forms of abuse, significant family discord, mental illness, and events that cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Most people are severely impacted when they experience a trauma. The feelings from the experience and the associated physical response of those feelings can stay with them for a long time, sometimes decades. Trauma can also lead to self-destructive behavior, like addiction as a coping mechanism for avoiding painful feelings… On the other end of the spectrum are big impacts that have a profoundly positive influence on our lives. These are events that cause a dramatic positive shift in how we think. A trauma that leads to post-traumatic growth would be an example of this, so in this sense, trauma doesn’t always have to be negative. But usually, positive Big I’s are associated with positive experiences… Positive little impacts are experiences that helped you learn something or develop a new skill. They may also have led to a shift in how you view yourself, other people, or the world in general. Because of these experiences, you changed your attitude and belief toward what feels like a positive direction for you… As you get in touch with your impacts, you may find that your negative impacts can be understood and reframed as positive ones.
• Identifying the impacts of the past doesn’t have to stop with looking at yourself. It can also be applied to the collective experiences of your team or organization if you’re in the business world… Experiential Intelligence exists as collective intelligence in every organization. The opportunity is to tap into the XQ that resides across people and teams to create an organizational culture that leverages resident strengths and enhances overall performance… If you’re looking to apply XQ to your team or organization, use the Impact Chart to identify impacts that have occurred for yourself, other team members, or your team as a whole in the context of your business. It can be helpful to do this with other people so you can be sure to identify the shared impacts that have had the greatest influence on your team’s performance and culture.
• The Mindset Map characterizes how your beliefs show up consciously and subconsciously. The map outlines whether the belief is negative (it holds you back in some way) or positive (it supports you in some way) and conscious (you’re aware of it) or subconscious (you’re unaware of it). Depending on where the belief falls on the map, it’s characterized as one of four types: Negative Self-Talk: Negative beliefs that become conscious self-talk that constrains your potential; Self-Limiting Beliefs: Negative beliefs you’re unaware you hold that constrain your potential; Positive Affirmations: Positive beliefs that become positive affirmations you tell yourself that support your potential; and Self Expanding Beliefs: Positive beliefs you are unaware hold your potential.
• “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make the system’s weaknesses irrelevant,” said Peter Drucker, the iconic management expert… When it comes to Experiential Intelligence (XQ), Drucker’s summary of the essence of leadership rings true: you need to discover and use your collective strengths as a leader in order to effectively elicit and align the aggregate strengths of your followers to drive breakthrough innovation or transform your organization… Connecting dots to find focus is also about clearly defining your purpose, mission, vision, and values; Rewriting the unwritten rules is also about thinking like an industry disruptor and business model innovator; Exploring uncertainty to discover new opportunities also involves navigating the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world we live in today while continuing to innovate the products, services, and customer experiences needed for the future; Creating experiences to spark positive change also includes the strategies and actions needed to shape organizational culture, one of leadership’s most important imperatives; and Amplifying strengths to amplify impact is exactly that-helping individuals, teams, and the organization see, understand, and grow from the inside out so that your organization can have an even greater positive impact in the world… These five leadership abilities connect to attitudes and beliefs that, when embraced, will embolden you to expand your possibilities and elevate your impact. And, as a result, you will serve as a role model for others.
• If you want to infuse greater XQ into your organizational culture, you can use four key strategies: 1. Create new experiences that reinforce new or existing mindsets, abilities, and know-how for individuals and teams; 2. Develop people’s abilties, focusing specifically on what is needed to achieve your vision, mission, and strategy; 3. Scale Experiential Intelligence to spread the most powerful existing mindsets, abilities, and know-how throughout the organization; 4. Foster positive relationship loops that amplify XQ and accelerate collaboration, innovation, and performance.