As a business owner, CEO, or key executive, are the challenges you face opportunities for growth or for failure? Your answer to this question determines whether or not you have a healthy positive intelligence and strong mental fitness.
As a retired CEO and Vistage Master Chair and a certified positive intelligence coach, I see how it can affect a business leader. It is crucial for a business leader hoping to achieve successful results for their business to not only understand positive intelligence, but also have a firm understanding of their own mental fitness.
Successful leaders have a healthy positive intelligence and a strong mental fitness. It is therefore crucial for leaders to strengthen their mental fitness if they hope to be more successful in the future. You can learn to both strengthen your mental fitness and increase your positive intelligence if necessary, in order to achieve results.
First, it is important to understand what exactly positive intelligence and mental fitness are. Positive Intelligence, also known as Positive Intelligence Quotient or PQ, is the measure of your mental fitness. It is used as the best predictor of both how happy you are, and, in turn, how well you perform at work relative to your potential.
Mental fitness is a question of whether or not you are able to adapt to your surroundings and turn your challenges into opportunities for growth and learning. It is a measure of how receptive you are to difficult situations and how well you handle them. In short, it is how well you can interact with certain situations, regardless of comfort level, and whether you are able to redirect it into something positive.
The concepts of the Sage and the Saboteur are crucial in the discussion of strengthening your mental fitness, as they are key factors in determining your positive intelligence. Understanding the difference between the Sage and the Saboteur and being aware of their role within yourself will help you strengthen your mental fitness by identifying where exactly you need to improve.
A Sage is someone who can handle challenges positively. They do this by channeling positive emotions like empathy, gratitude, curiosity, self-confidence, and creativity. By channeling these positive emotions and viewing everything positively, Sages are able to be both calm and level-headed. In addition, their positive reactions and ability to view situations in a productive manner promotes their ability to create detailed, focused action. This headspace makes decision-making much easier.
On the other hand, the negative Saboteurs react to challenges in ways which are counterproductive. They allow negative emotions, such as stress, disappointment, regret, anger, shame, guilt, worry, or self-doubt to lead them. This can make decision-making very complicated, stressful, and difficult. Understanding the difference between these two important aspects of positive intelligence is crucial in the journey to strengthening your mental fitness.
If you desire for a prominent Sage and a nonexistent Saboteur, you must also be mindful of how these affect your day-to-day life. For example, if you’re in a situation in which you must make a decision, you have the ability to view it as either a chance for learning and growth or a chance for failure. If you view it as a chance for failure, without the possibility of learning from your mistakes or experiencing positivity, then you probably have a prominent Saboteur within yourself. Being mindful of this can help you reframe your thinking and focus more on the Sage.
Another way for leaders to strengthen their mental fitness is to utilize my eight-week Positive Intelligence Mental Fitness Program. Within this program, business leaders can learn to strengthen their mental fitness by increasing their positive intelligence. Specifically, this program centers on learning to manage conflicts, stress, and time — three factors which most typically cause problems within a leader’s positive intelligence and overall mental fitness. Furthermore, it helps leaders learn to perform well under pressure, which is invaluable in high-stress situations.
As a result of this, leaders can experience benefits such as a decrease in stress, an increase in self-awareness, and an overall more positive emotional approach in the face of business challenges. Furthermore, the benefits of strengthening your mental fitness through the PQ Training Program are long-lasting, as this program utilizes a common operating system and treats the cause of the issues, not just the symptoms. This ensures long-term solutions to any issues leaders with a weaker mental fitness or lower positive intelligence may be facing.
The PQ operating system centers upon three main components: intercepting saboteurs, issuing self-command through ten-second PQ reps, and employing Sage. This can be done by learning to empathize, explore, navigate, innovate, and activate. All of these components contribute to increasing your positive intelligence and strengthening your mental fitness.
Bottom Line:
Strong mental fitness allows for even more effective leadership. It determines the difference between mediocre and great leaders, and it affects all aspects of one’s life. The overall positivity gained from strengthening your mental fitness, in addition to the ability to view situations in a constructive manner, is a benefit that will spill over into other difficult situations you may face, either business-related or otherwise.
For these reasons, it is crucial for successful leaders to strengthen their mental fitness by being aware of the difference between Sage and Saboteur.
