How To Harness Your Experiential Intelligence

“Experiential Intelligence provides a new lens from which to view what makes you, you—and what makes your team and organization unique,” says Soren Kaplan, author of the book, Experiential Intelligence.

Kaplan explains that over 100 years ago, we established IQ (Intelligence Quotient) to predict success. Then we explored Emotional Intelligence (EQ), the theory of multiple intelligences, and mindsets that broaden the definition of smarts.

“Today, Experiential Intelligence (XQ) expands our understanding of what's needed to thrive in a disruptive world. While you can't change the past, your unique experiences and stories contain hidden strengths and untapped potential for the future,” explains Kaplan.

Experiential Intelligence is the combination of mindsets, abilities, and know-how gained from your unique life experiences that empowers you to achieve your goals. It allows you to get in touch with the accumulated wisdom and talents you have gained over time through your lived experience.

Digging deeper:

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.
Know-how: Your knowledge and skills.

“Many organizations haven’t fully tapped into the mindsets, abilities, and know-how that inherently exists across their people and teams. Leaders first need to recognize that the reality of life, including in business, is that everyone brings the whole of who they are with them wherever they go, including both their strengths as well as self-limiting beliefs. Until companies embrace this fact, they’ll never reach their full potential.”

“For example, we may need to help people overcome their limiting mindsets, or help them uncover their hidden assets derived from their full set of life experiences, not just their work experience."

"Developing XQ helps people become better leaders. Teams that harness their collective XQ achieve greater collaboration and innovation. Organizations that recognize XQ as a strategic imperative can more fully leverage their talent and transform their cultures by scaling the assets that exist across their people,” explains Kaplan.

With powerful personal narratives, Kaplan reveals how XQ can be leveraged to help anyone to:

Become a better leader.
Increase team collaboration, innovation, and results.
Hire and develop talent using more strategic criteria.
Transform organizational culture.
Enhance personal growth.

Book chapters 1—3 outline what Experiential Intelligence is, why it’s so important today, and how it relates to IQ and EQ.

Chapters 4—8 describe specific strategies and tools that you can use to further develop your XQ by growing it in yourself, amplifying it in your personal and professional relationships and assessing it over time.

Chapters 9—13 highlight how XQ applies in different contexts, including organizations, leadership, teams, and communities.

Be sure to note the QR codes at the beginning of each chapter. Those will take you to videos where Kaplan provides an overview of what you will read in the chapter, and he shares personal thoughts and ideas about the various chapter topics.

Additionally, toward the end of the book, Kaplan offers you a link to his XQ Toolkit – a practical set of digital tools that you can use to develop your Experiential Intelligence and apply it to your team and organization.

Soren Kaplan

Kaplan shares these insights with us:

Question: Please further explain Experiential Intelligence?

Kaplan: Experiential Intelligence, or XQ for short, is your combination of mindsets, abilities, and know-how gained from your unique life experience.

Just like memorizing facts doesn't give you a high IQ, your Experiential Intelligence isn't merely what you've learned over time. It's how you perceive challenges, view opportunities, and tackle your goals.

Your XQ includes the beliefs and attitudes you hold about yourself, other people, and the world in general, along with the unique abilities that you’ve developed that make you, you.

Question: What can help advance one's XQ awareness and abilities?

Kaplan: Experiential Intelligence exists on three levels. The most tangible is your know-how, which includes your practical knowledge and skills. The second level involves your abilities, which guides how you apply your knowledge and skills to use them in the most effective way possible. Abilities can include higher order things like pattern recognition or managing uncertainty. Your mindsets are your attitudes and beliefs about yourself, other people, and the world, which can be conscious or subconscious.

Gaining greater self-awareness of your mindsets, abilities, and know-how plays a big part in developing your XQ. When you understand what led you to adopt certain mindsets for example, you increase your ability to consciously change them, which can lead to growth in your abilities and know-how.

Question: What is the role of Experiential Intelligence in business, i.e., for leadership, teams, and organizational culture?

Kaplan: 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.

So, the first big opportunity is to recognize the value of experience beyond just formal education and training. Hiring managers, team leaders, and talent and leadership development needs to seek out the higher order mindsets and abilities needed for the future versus pigeonhole people into narrow boxes.

Soren Kaplan, PhD, is an award-winning author, an affiliate at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California (USC), a former corporate executive, founder of three Silicon Valley startups, and a columnist for Inc. magazine. He is an international keynote speaker and has led professional development programs for thousands of executives around the world, including Disney, NBCUniversal, Visa, PayPal, Colgate-Palmolive, Kimberly-Clark, Medtronic, Roche, Hershey’s, Red Bull, and many others.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book..

Comments

James G. Ellis Shares The Leadership Lessons Behind A Lasting Legacy

In his new book, James G. Ellis shares the lessons he learned throughout his career as an entrepreneur, CEO, professor, mentor, and one of the nation’s most respected business school leaders. He is the former Dean of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. For aspiring leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs, A Journey of Insights: Lessons In Leadership And Legacy , offers a roadmap to success grounded in real-world experience, with a focus on humility, listening, and building strong, collaborative environments. The book is both a personal memoir and a strategic guide for those aiming to leave a lasting legacy in business. At the core of his message is the central theme that listening to voices around you throughout life is the key to success. “In essence, ears can speak louder than voices,” shares Ellis. The book also explores pivotal moments that helped define Ellis’ understanding of leadership, including encounters with Pres...

How To Transform The Influences Of Your Childhood Into Your Unique And Most Effective Leadership Style

The most significant predictor (up to 80 percent) of how someone shows up in their interpersonal interactions as a leader, and as a human, is their childhood, claims Pam Manfredo Curtis, PhD , author of the new book, The Origins Of A Leader: Transforming Family Patterns Into Leadership Power . Grounded in decades of psychological analysis, executive coaching, and behavioral data, Curtis elaborates that how leaders perform today is dramatically influenced by their childhood, with patterns formed early in life continuing to shape behavior, decision-making, and relationships at the highest levels. “When you know your why , you can change your how ,” says Curtis. “Put another way, when you understand the influential factors of your life, you can choose how they affect you. Curtis encourages you to explore specific childhood environments and discover how they shaped your strengths, communication patterns, and hidden limitations. Regarding the implications o...

How To Rewire Your Mind To Build Your Adaptability Quotient

Alec Litowitz argues that the most valuable skill of the next decade isn't IQ or even EQ (Emotional Intelligence). It's AQ: your Adaptability Quotient, the ability to question assumptions, update beliefs, and respond effectively when reality changes. Litowitz is the author of the forthcoming book (releasing on September 15, 2026) The Adaptability Quotient: Rewiring Your Mind For Success In The Next Human Era . And he shares that “AQ is a learnable way of using your mind like a high-performance machine: to model risk, absorb feedback, make faster corrections, and create repeatable advantages in conditions where most people stall out—or drown.” In short, it’s all about how to move from “making the right decision” to “making decisions right.” “As artificial intelligence, media, and scientific advances reshape the cognitive landscape, adaptability becomes the essential discipline for reclaiming human agency,” adds Litowitz. “And a s AI resha...

How To Become Your Best-Self Leader Everyday

“By focusing in specific ways on five key leadership elements— Purpose, Process, People, Presence, and Peace —you can increase your time, capacity, energy, and ultimately your leadership impact,” explains Amy Jen Su , author of the book, The Leader You Want To Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self—Every Day . Su shares both Western management thinking and Eastern philosophy to provide a holistic yet hands-on approach to becoming a more effective leader with less stress and more equanimity. She draws on rich and instructive stories of clients, leaders, artists, and athletes. And, she focuses on three foundational tenets: s elf-care, self-awareness, and personal agency . Most important, Su explores in depth, chapter-by-chapter the Five Ps : Purpose – Staying grounded in your passions and contributions, doing your highest and best work that has meaning and is making a difference. Process – Relying on daily practices and routines that honor your natural energy rhyt...

The Five Critical Roles You Need To Build A Winning Team

The book, Team Players , by leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author, Mark Murphy , explains why a team needs more than strong leaders—it needs the right mix of five roles and talents to succeed. In addition, Murphy reveals that the secret to extraordinary teams isn’t making everyone the same—it’s embracing and leveraging fundamental differences through those five distinct team roles. No amount of teambuilding, trust, or cohesion can overcome having the wrong mix of people in the room. The five essential roles and talents are : The Director assumes a leadership role within the team, guiding its direction and making important, difficult, and even unpopular decisions. The Achiever immerses themselves in the details of accomplishing tasks and getting things done, with a keen eye for delivering error-free work. The Stabilizer keeps the team on track with meticulous planning, processes and procedures, clear timelines, and organization. ...

Six Leadership Actions To Leverage Employees' Differences To Strengthen Teams

The new book, All The Difference: Six Leadership Actions To Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value , teaches how leaders can turn their team's individual differences into deeper trust, greater creativity, and winning results. “The greatest risk of unmanaged difference isn’t conflict: it lies in the ideas, insights, and opportunities that may never surface,” explain the book’s authors, Susan MacKenty Brady , Stuart D. Kliman , and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Leslie C. Smith . They suggest that you look around your team to fully see people with different communication styles, perspectives, cultural norms, and capabilities. These differences are expressed in all kinds of ways, such as casual gestures in a meeting, a colleague's opinion on a current event, or an intense work style. Often, those differences can lead to friction, even conflict. You may try to manage around them. But, for you and your organization to fully leverage the strengths of your team’s diffe...

Seven Ways To Stay Motivated

To learn how to stay motivated, read High-Profit Prospecting , by Mark Hunter . It's a powerful read that includes counter intuitive advice and cutting-edge best practices for sales prospecting in today's business world. Today, I share one of my favorite sections of the book where Hunter describes his seven things motivated people do to stay motivated : Motivated people ignore voices in their lives . These might be people in the office and friends who have bad attitudes. They're out there, and if you're not careful, they'll control you, too. Motivated people associate with highly motivated people . Just as there are negative people in the world, there are also positive people. Your job is to make sure you spend as much time with the positive people as possible. Motivated people simply look for the positive in things . Positive people count it an honor to live each day, learn from others, and impact positively those they meet. Positive people take great satisfaction...

Learn The Power Of Probabilistic Thinking

Dive in for a fascinating read as you discover the life-changing power of probabilistic thinking, taught by Kyle Austin Young in his book, Success Is A Numbers Game . “Every goal that you’re pursuing has two hidden numbers attached to it—a probability of success and a probability of failure,” explains Young, “If you can make the first number bigger and the second number smaller, you can rewrite your predicted outcome.” “Whether you’re trying to start a business, run a marathon, get a promotion, earn a pilot’s license, grow a bumper crop of tomatoes, or sign an acting deal, these two percentages are always lurking in the shadows predicting what is going to happen.” But, adds Young, "Most of us never think about them. We assume our odds are unknowable and unchangeable. This dangerous lie leads millions of people to fail at goals where they were perfectly capable of succeeding. You can choose a smarter path,” encourages Young. In Success is a Numbers Game , ...

Five Essential Principles For Sustaining Growth Through Innovation

Even though many companies strive for innovation, most struggle to achieve meaningful change. The largest reason for this disconnect? Playing it safe. Leaders and organizations want to implement new ideas, but too often they are held back by the fear of failure, even though setbacks are intrinsic to the innovation process. In the new book, No Fear, No Failure , by Lorraine H. Marchand (with John Hanc), readers will learn how to overcome the status quo that stifles creative thinking and how to create a culture that encourages innovation. Marchand provides a framework for sustained growth built on the “ 5 Cs ”: Customer First Culture Collaboration Change Chance She draws on more than 120 interviews with leaders across industries, real-world case studies, and her firsthand experience and shares step-by-step, field-tested strategies, tactics, and tools that practitioners can use to embed creativity within organizational cultures. Marchand is a former Big Tech and Big Pharma ex...

How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader

What you don't see about yourself can hold you back as a leader. That's typical for many leaders. What we don't see is what we can't see: we have blindspots . Your blindspots prevent you from achieving your greatest success. “It turns out that we're often not great judges of ourselves, even when we think we are. Sometimes we're simply unaware of a behavior or trait that's causing problems,” explains Martin Dubin , author of the new book, Blindspotting: How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader . “Bottom line: until we uncover these blindspots, we can't move forward. The good news is that you can learn to do your own blindspotting .” “Most of us understand the idea of blindspots in a general sense—areas we can’t see, to take the term most literally, or places we have gaps that we may not even realize, to be a little more abstract,” says Dubin. “But in the context of this book, I’m defining blindspots quite specifically: They are the par...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog