Mind Your PQ's

From the desk of Ron Sukenick

Just look back and count. Most of you reading this blog spent twelve to sixteen years of your life in a classroom, developing your intelligence, referred to as IQ. Now you’re out here in the business world, doing your best to line up up all those lessons into a career that makes financial sense. What’s more, unlike Rodney Dangerfield, you want to be able to say “ I DO get satisfaction” from that career. And that’s where PQ comes into play.

Just as IQ tests measure intelligence, your Personality Quotient, or PQ, measures your ability to understand yourself and others for effective communication and teamwork. Is PQ important? And how! Studies have shown that your knowledge and experience in your chosen field (essentially those things IQ measures) account for only 15% of success in the workplace. The other 85% relates to people skills, measured by PQ.

People skills, like intelligence, are developed through learning, but in the case of PQ, it means learning more effective ways to behave and to interact with others. The education offered through Relationships Strategies Institute begins by having you answer eight simple questions about yourself. Your answers will offer valuable clues about your personality style at work and in business by revealing your mindset, your communication style, and your motivation. As Dr. Robert Rohm, founder of the Ultimate Discovery System I use, likes to say, “If I understand you, and you understand me, doesn’t it make sense that we can work more effectively together?” The understanding starts with you and then radiates outward to others.

PQs are very much a part of the process of going Beyond Networking. In fact, the pont behind these blogs is that, as a business relationship coach, I was beginning to sense that networkers are beginning to seek something traditional networking just can’t supply. As I pointed out in Why A Blog About Beyond Networking, I began to realize we don’t want to just keep working at networking; we want networking to start working for us! To do that, we need to reach beyond networking to connection. In short, we need to mind our PQs!