Scholars
“Cindy Wigglesworth has devised an assessment that is an excellent overview of the process of general spiritual intelligence itself, including developmental variables—and thus one I can highly recommend!”
Ken Wilber
author of A Brief History of Everything, founder of Integral Institute
“Between moral reasoning and ego development, there is a Twilight Zone of passion, energy, openness, and mindfulness to all around us. It is precisely in this realm that Cindy Wigglesworth has ventured to pioneer new ground in our relationship to larger forces—our spiritual selves. She inspires using a cognitive behavioral approach in expanding our spiritual awareness. This book is a must-read for anyone on a quest to find new meaning in life and work, but a survival issue for those of us feeling lost or in a mid-life crisis!”
Richard Boyatzis
Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve University,
co-author of Primal Leadership and Resonant Leadership
“Spiritual intelligence as a concept is not entirely new, but it has not been clearly explicated or mined for its full potential until now. Cindy Wigglesworth does for spiritual intelligence what Daniel Goleman does for emotional intelligence in giving it a clear definition, a sharpened focus, and elucidating the difference it can make in organizations as well as in individuals. While so many writers on ‘spiritual’ topics put forth vague platitudes that offer nothing concrete to the real world of business and institutions, Wigglesworth uses her decades of corporate experience and her significant knowledge of adult development and organizational process to present in this book a virtual manifesto for the benefits of—and need for—spiritual intelligence. Wigglesworth is the one person who makes spiritual intelligence both spiritual and intelligent. This book will be the singular, defining work in this field for years to come.”
Jill Carroll, Ph.D.
Scholar, writer, and speaker in Religious Studies
“Cindy Wigglesworth’s SQ21 assessment has been rigorously tested to create maximum clarity for clients. It correlates highly with ego development theory. Cindy’s approach to coaching with the SQ21 is an example of best practice for how to use assessment results with clients to help them discover constricting, outdated beliefs and create openings for expanded perspectives and more soul-full possibilities to enact spirit in the world.”
Susanne Cook-Greuter, Ph.D.
Adult development researcher and consultant
“Cindy Wigglesworth’s work on Spiritual Intelligence is pioneering. Her work is research-based and practical, and meets the highest standards of academic quality and corporate professionalism. If you are looking for the defining work in the field, you will find everything you need in this book. It’s like a cool drink from a very deep well and will quench your thirst for knowing how to take the next step in professional and organizational excellence.”
Judith Neal, Ph.D.
Director, Tyson Center for Faith & Spirituality in the Workplace, Sam M. Walton College of Business
“This is a significant and timely book in an age that is using the word spirituality in a variety of contexts and with a variety of meanings. It is an excellent blend of theory and practice, drawing initially on Howard Gardner’s various intelligences and the work of Goleman on emotional intelligence. Throughout the book the author synthesizes the work of many writers in this area. There is a very good blend of the author’s personal experience (about which she is refreshingly honest) and advice given to readers. I particularly like the concluding section on developing your own spiritual intelligence, especially the Nine Steps to Higher Self and the Three Core Exercises. The final chapter entitled Deep Change, Infinite Impact is an inspirational piece of writing leading beyond the book to ‘begin the joyful process of living into your full humanity and potential.’ This book will be extremely useful to a huge variety of people—managers, ministers of religion, life coaches, spiritual directors, teachers, to name just a few.”
The Rev. Dr. June Boyce-Tillman
Professor of Applied Music, University of Winchester, UK
Business Leaders and Experts
“Cindy Wigglesworth’s content is consistently world-class quality, thought-provoking, and fresh. She has the unique ability to manage the polarization required of a top class business book—edgy but practical; stimulating but relevant; complex but simple. Cindy was a key player in the design, development, and delivery of a quality Executive Leadership Program at BHP Billiton Petroleum—our top 100 leaders gave her full marks on every dimension of effectiveness. They left the program ready to make a difference—and that’s what Cindy does—she makes a difference.”
David Nelson
Vice President of Human Resources, BHP Billiton Petroleum
“Finally, an intelligent book on Spiritual Intelligence! Cindy Wigglesworth doesn’t just preach its value, but shows us how it can be measured and developed as a skill-set. And what’s more, she does so in clear, pragmatic, and accessible terms, avoiding both New Age vagueness and religious dogma. SQ21 is a must-read for anyone trying to navigate the multidimensional challenges of life today.”
Patricia Aburdene
bestselling author of Megatrends 2010
“Having met Cindy, it comes as little surprise that I also want to spend more time with her book. A quick read was enticing—now, to savor a slow one. Few things are as exhilarating as to learn you can develop new powers.”
Steve Leveen
CEO & Co-Founder, Levenger
“With great clarity, Cindy lays out the pathway to wisdom. SQ21 is a must read for anyone who aspires to be a true leader.”
Richard Barrett
author of The New Leadership Paradigm
“A real heart-opener. The skills recommended in this book will advance behaviors that provide a sense of comfort and peace both inside and out. All of your relationships will be impacted and the joy of life enhanced.”
Douglas D. Hawthorne, FACHE
Chief Executive Officer, Texas Health Resources
“Cindy is a no-nonsense businessperson, an innovative researcher, and an excellent coach. She has captured beautifully what people think privately about religion and spirituality, and provided us all with valuable tools with which we can express ourselves and grow. Her common sense, experience, and research provide a framework she calls Spiritual Intelligence—and the result is powerful. This is the next step beyond emotional intelligence. I believe her SQ21 skills will define those who can truly claim to be ‘Higher Ground Leaders.’”
Lance Secretan
Founder & CEO, The Secretan Center Inc., Author of Higher Ground
“Cindy Wigglesworth has described a new frontier of human potential. Spiritual Intelligence, as she has defined it, is a vital resource for our businesses, our communities, and our society. This book defines that resource and gives us the opportunity to cultivate and expand the human spirit.”
Bryan Welch
Publisher, Mother Earth News, Utne Reader,
author of Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want
“Spiritual intelligence is your ability to bring embodied insight of your true nature to your life, relationships, and career. I work with CEOs all over the world and I see firsthand how a difference between realizing one’s dreams and feeling unfulfilled is the degree of spiritual intelligence leaders embody in their lives.”
Robb Smith
CEO, Integral Institute
“SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence is a must-read for health care leaders who have tried every financial, marketing, organizational development, and customer service strategy and continue to fail to create an environment where staff can flourish and patients are happy and healing. The book’s evidence and experiential base provides one of the missing links in strategy and explains how all leaders, from the front lines to the C-suite, must evolve in order to create cultures of excellence with outcomes to match. Cindy Wigglesworth describes how people who aspire to become great leaders must seek to connect with a higher purpose and tap into not only their PQ, IQ and EQ, but also their SQ as a powerful source of guidance, direction and meaning. The SQ21 Assessment, used as a development tool, can identify opportunities for growth in individuals, teams, and cultures, and provide a pathway for not only improved organizational performance, but meaning in everyday work.”
Pamela Klauer Triolo, PhD, RN, FAAN
Former Chief Nursing Executive and Senior Vice President,
The Methodist Health System, Houston, TX
Former System Chief Nursing Officer, UPMC, Pittsburgh, PA
“Become intelligent about spirit. SQ21 unlocks the process of spiritual intelligence and renders it actionable. Cindy’s discoveries demonstrate how we can all be higher expressions of ourselves and be even more fully human.”
Kevin Clark
author of Brandscendence, President & Founder, Content Evolution
“Cindy Wigglesworth worked with me while I was CEO of The Methodist Health Care System in Houston. Together with other internal leaders, we initiated and effected a successful culture change to live up to our goal of ‘a spiritual environment of caring.’ This culture change was rooted in our mission, vision and our ‘I CARE’ values (Integrity, Compassion, Accountability, Respect and Excellence). Cindy’s faith-neutral and yet faith-friendly approach to spiritual topics allowed us to embody respect for our employees who are of many faith traditions. Her experience with what it takes to create a systemic culture change allowed us to design and implement a process to make a sustained difference in our culture—one that got us on the Fortune 100 Best Employers list and keeps us there today. SQ is a valuable approach to putting spirituality back into your company in a practical way and Cindy is a change-agent who understands a CEO’s perspective.”
Ron Girotto
CEO (retired), The Methodist Health Care System, Houston, Texas
Spiritual Leaders
“Human beings are bio-psycho-socio-spiritual beings. Cindy Wigglesworth has put real substance to the psycho/spiritual dynamics of becoming human or becoming whole. In so doing, this study integrates all four cornerstones of our humanity in a most systematic way. This is a great contribution to the most important conversation of the 21st Century.”
J. Pittman McGehee, D.D.
Author of The Invisible Church: Finding Spirituality Where You Are
“From the first moment I discovered Cindy Wigglesworth’s work in 2003, I’ve been absolutely convinced that her Spiritual Intelligence model would completely ‘evolutionize’ a person’s spiritual development. SQ21 is an important book for those who are seeking spiritual mastery as our world becomes increasingly complex in the twenty-first century. I highly recommend it to spiritual seekers everywhere!”
Susan M. Beck
Former Chief Operating Officer, Association of Unity Churches International
“At a time when deep spirituality is desperately needed and yet widely misunderstood, Cindy Wigglesworth has provided a brilliant map that clearly shows us the way. Her wise, accessible, personal, and often funny book teaches us that spirituality is an innate human intelligence that can be developed through a commitment to a program of ‘spiritual weightlifting.’ When practiced with the humility of adventure, Cindy’s guidance will bring profound and lasting change in every aspect of your life, making you more compassionate, peaceful, effective, and happy so that you may be the needed change-agent for our evolving world.”
Rabbi Alan Lurie
Author of Five Minutes on Mondays: Finding Unexpected Peace,
Purpose, and Fulfillment at Work
“SQ21 bridges the inner work of spiritual life with the practical dimensions. The challenges of our time require deep commitments to ultimate values, as well as the practical skills to implement them. Based on years of research and experience, this book will be extremely valuable for leaders, educators, coaches, and consultants seeking an effective, pragmatic, and holistic way to embrace spirituality.”
Diane Musho Hamilton
Zen Priest and Teacher
“Cindy Wigglesworth leads you on a 21-step journey into new levels of spiritual understanding, and by the time it’s over, has orchestrated a gradual leap into the deep domain of conscious living.”
Howard Caesar
Senior Minister, Unity Church of Christianity
“More than just a book—a lovely and practical way to evolve spirituality. Filled with tested practices, in depth insights, and helpful stories, Cindy reveals her own journey and takes us on an accelerated voyage of our own.”
Paul Smith
Author of Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve
Copyright © 2012 by Cindy Wigglesworth
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
SQ21 is a trademark of Conscious Pursuits, Inc.
This edition published by SelectBooks, Inc.
For information address SelectBooks, Inc., New York, New York.
First Edition
ISBN 978-1-59079-235-3
eISBN 978-1-59079-962-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wigglesworth, Cindy.
SQ21: the twenty-one skills of spiritual intelligence / Cindy Wigglesworth. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary : “Business owner of successful consulting company presents a pragmatic approach to spiritual development by identifying twenty-one measurable spiritual intelligence skills described in faith-neutral terms. Author relates her coaching work with businesspeople, spiritual and religious leaders, coaches, and educators to validate the SQ21 spiritual intelligence assessment instrument she pioneered for people to understand and increase their spiritual intelligence”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-1-59079-235-3 (hardbound book : alk. paper)
1. Spiritual intelligence. I. Title.
BL629.5.S65W54 2012
204--dc23
2012005106
Book design by Kathleen Isaksen
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1 What Is Spiritual Intelligence?
1 Becoming Fully Human
2 Understanding Intelligences
3 Measuring the Immeasurable
PART 2 Four Quadrants & 21 Skills
4 Know Thyself (Skills 1 to 5)
5 Know the World (Skills 6 to 11)
6 Self Mastery (Skills 12 to 16)
7 Social Mastery & Spiritual Presence (Skills 17 to 21)
PART 3 Developing Your Spiritual Intelligence
8 Spiritual Weightlifting
9 Nine Steps to Shift to Higher Self
10 Everyday SQ
11 Three Exercises to Support SQ Development
12 Deep Change, Infinite Impact
Appendix 1: How the SQ21 Assessment was Created and Researched
Endnotes
Glossary of SQ-related Terms
Recommended Further Reading
Index
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”
—Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
As with any endeavor of this size, there are a lot of people to thank, including you, the reader, for whom this book exists. Thank you for picking up this book and being willing to consider its contents.
For my family, I have a few special acknowledgements. For being a wonderful spouse and encouraging me during this time, I thank my husband, Bill Wigglesworth. I couldn’t have done it without his faith and support. He put up with me talking about SQ and all related topics in ways only someone who loves you deeply can do. Bill keeps me grounded in what matters and is a lot of fun to hang around with. He is a wonderful “co-parent” to our kids and grandkids, who always are our highest priority.
Many thanks go to my daughter, Jessica, to my stepson, Logan, and my stepdaughter, Jamie. As a parent and stepparent one gets stretched in all the “right ways.” I have had chances to see my weaknesses—and acknowledge and work on them. Hopefully, more often than not, I have shifted out of my ego and operated from Higher Self. I always say the goal isn’t 100% of the time—that would be sainthood. But getting as close as I can would be good!
My good friend, Dr. Jill Carroll, deserves thanks on several fronts. As an expert in world religions and former Executive Director of the Boniuk Center for Religious Tolerance at Rice University, she has been a powerful help to me as I worked to create a faith-neutral yet faith-friendly approach to developing spiritual intelligence. As a fellow entrepreneur, public speaker, teacher, and writer, she understands my world better than almost anyone else I know. She has a wonderful cut-to-the-chase approach to things—asking powerful questions where they need to be asked.
My family of origin provided the ground for my life-launch and many of my drives to learn stem from there. Much love and thanks to my parents, Chuck and Marjorie Sitter, and to my sister, Dianna, and brother, Doug. Relationships of such length and depth provide so much for us to learn and appreciate. I am deeply grateful to each of you.
Creating the SQ21 would not have been possible without help from experts. Specifically, I want to thank the following people. At Customer Value Systems, Dr. Brant Wilson and his business partner Joan E. Jones, both of whom worked with me to flesh out the assessment. We worked through each of the 21 skills, with me describing what I thought it demanded. How could it be observed? How could it be described? Joan and Brant helped me create “psychometrically sound” survey questions. In terms of research work, they oversaw the focus groups, the alpha and beta testing, and the initial reliability studies. With great patience, they helped me think through the scoring algorithm, and found the programmers who built the software that now does the complex scoring and reporting for the SQ21. We continue to work together as we run analyses and improve the SQ21. Rick Sline created and maintains the current version of the software. He does so with humor, grace, and deep competence. Dr. Michael McElhenie used his experience with EQ studies to help design and supervise the construct (criterion) validation study. And my friend Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter kindly assisted in the cross-correlation of my SQ21 tool with her adult development/leadership development tool—the highly respected SCTi/MAP.
The community of coaches and consultants, therapists, religious and spiritual leaders, and others who have been drawn to get certified in this assessment are an inspiring group of people. Certification allows our SQ21 coaches to debrief the SQ21 with their clients. We have trained well over 150 people at this point—and the number grows monthly. It is a source of great joy for me to be in connection with such dedicated people. They expand the possibility of this work every day. They take it beyond where any one person could have imagined it might go. To each of you, a deep bow. Thank you for your commitment to being agents of love and evolution.
Of course, no office runs itself. Amy Barney Alston was with me, first as our nanny and then as office manager and friend, from the first day of incorporation of my business until she got married in 2010. In 2010 Gabi Dedmon McLeod assumed responsibility for trying to keep me, and the office, organized. Both of these women are deeply spiritually intelligent themselves—and model both worldly and divine grace. Ladies, I couldn’t have done this without you—thank you.
In the mechanics of writing this book, I owe the greatest thanks to Ellen Daly. Ellen interviewed me, talked with me, had my various classes and speeches transcribed. She helped me organize my thoughts for this book. Together we drafted outlines and key points. She often compiled a first draft of a chapter by pulling from the interviews and other resources, making it easier for me to take it and shape it. She also gently nagged me to keep things moving along. I am indebted to Ellen for “getting into my head” so effectively and keeping this project moving, including the less fun details like working with me on the index. Laura Didyk did a thorough and careful copyedit to bring the manuscript to its final state.
SelectBooks has been a fabulous publisher to work with. Thanks to Bill Gladstone, my agent, and to his friend Kenzi Sugihara of SelectBooks for your confidence in me and in this book.
After leaving my former denomination, my desire to learn a more practical form of spirituality was supported and nurtured inside Unity’s worldcentric, inclusive, expansive network of teachers, workshops, churches, and communities. Unity of North Houston (my former community) and Unity of Houston (my current community led by Rev. Howard Caesar) have my gratitude for providing a “where” to go to for fellowship, learning, and friendship with like-minded souls. And beyond Houston, I thank all my friends at Unity worldwide for your inspirational examples and teachings.
Finally, my deep gratitude goes out to the thought-leaders who have most strongly influenced me. I would like to thank Richard Boyatzis and Daniel Goleman for their work on Emotional Intelligence—your work was seminal for me. Other great people who have influenced my thinking as I created this SQ21 assessment and improved on it, and as I wrote this book, include: M. Scott Peck, Abraham Maslow, Ken Wilber, James Fowler, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Robert Kegan, and Howard Gardner. Rev. Pittman McGehee has served as my personal mentor, coach, and Jungian therapist for many years now—thank you so much for your depth of knowledge and the wisdom of its transmission.
My debt goes even further to the myriad people who work in the field of positive psychology, adult development, leadership development, personal and spiritual growth, brain science, new physics, and future studies. And to the British Romantic poets and the American Transcendentalists—you touched my soul deeply in my twenties and the influence lingers. Among faith traditions, I like to call myself “a Zen Christian,” which is to say, Christian with Buddhist and Taoist influences. I would go further and say that all the great mystics and sages, from Rumi to Jesus, from Krishnamurti to the Dalai Lama, have contributed to the body of knowledge and inspiration on which I draw and am nourished. No one of us can take the “next step” without building upon the countless brilliant and courageous people who preceded us. To all my teachers—of all generations—I thank you.
“Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Sounds good. But am I really supposed to love him? You don’t mean her, do you?
This is how my spiritual journey began. I was seeking practical steps to achieve what seemed like a very idealistic goal. Raised Roman Catholic, I deeply admired people who seemed to embody love—Jesus, Mother Teresa, and other saints. Later, I added holy people from many faiths to this list, people who seemed able to love others well—Gandhi, Buddha, and many more. But it seemed impossible for me. I asked myself: “How can an ordinary person like me learn how to stop being impatient, judgmental, and occasionally cranky? How can I love other unreasonable and cranky people?”
As a teen, I was very discouraged by this line of thought. It seemed that what I learned in church was setting me up for failure. I felt doomed to be eternally inadequate. I prayed for guidance from a God I only sort of believed in—as in “God, if you are there….” Then, one day I heard a “voice” in my head, asking in a sympathetic tone, “What exactly do you want?” And a wiser part of me answered without me “thinking” about it: “I want to be wise. I want to understand.” I felt some peace settle over me. That felt good: wisdom.
There’s a saying: be careful what you ask for. For me, wisdom would be a hard-won treasure. It came to me in small pieces. Each piece has been precious and wonderful—and has typically cost me something. Sometimes it came with some external pressure and difficulty. Mostly it came with internal pain—the pain of releasing attachment to my own ideas of the “one-right-way” to do or be. I had to let go of pieces of my immature ego in exchange for each piece of wisdom. And I am certainly not done learning.
I am not one of those people who had a near-death experience or a moment of revelation and came out of it feeling an unbroken sense of connection to the Divine. My connections have been sporadic, and my moments of insight have been won mostly through hard work on my part, matched by gifts of grace.
My husband, Bill, likes to say that the best basketball coaches were not typically the best players. Gifted players often seem to “just know” how to handle the ball, move through the opposing team, or land a lay-up. The best coaches typically struggled as players. They had to drill and practice to get their free throws right. They had to study the formations and watch hours of recorded game plays to get the feel for where to be on the floor. They made up, with effort, for what other more natural players seemed to “just know.” And they make good coaches because they can show others the slow and steady way to practice and drill the skills. Bill says this to encourage me as I work on myself and as I seek to help others on the path. I believe that I am able to coach others because I had to work hard to learn what I have learned.
Mine has been the path of the slow and the steady. And it was because of my own quest to live from love and act from wisdom that I devised a way of describing the skills I have been trying all my life to build. I built the mental map that I needed and that I hope you will find helpful as well.
Specifically, this 21 Skills model is the result of asking this question: I want to be a good person—where do I start? I started with the spiritual figures I deeply admired: How could I be as loving as Jesus? Be peaceful and nonviolent like Gandhi? Keep my center and stay wise and strong in the face of terrible things like the Dalai Lama? Have vision and faith like Nelson Mandela?
I knew I had a lot of work to do on myself. But how could I know what to study or work on next? Fellow seekers all raved about different books, processes, retreats, teachers, and workshops. How could I know what I personally needed next?
For years, I used my intuition and advice from friends to help me answer those questions. I consumed materials at a pace that matched the intensity of my college studies. Yet I felt that I “wasted” a lot of time on what seemed to be dead ends. Eventually, I saw a pattern emerging that, over time, evolved into the 21 Skills.
While I was reading, attending workshops, and practicing various techniques, I noticed that an improvement was occurring in my relationships at work and at home. As I was reducing my ego-activation, I was becoming a better human being, a nicer person. This “stuff” I was working so hard on clearly had value that transcended my own personal happiness. I was becoming a better mother, wife, friend, teammate, and a more effective leader.
The idea for describing Spiritual Intelligence as the practical path to releasing ego and learning to love others grew slowly—until it solidified one day into the concept of describing it as a series of skills. I discovered Daniel Goleman’s and Richard Boyatzis’ work on Emotional Intelligence and immediately loved it. I realized that just as relationship skills can be broken down into the eighteen skills of Emotional Intelligence (which Goleman and Boyatzis call “competencies”), Spiritual Intelligence consists of parallel skills that could enable wisdom and loving behaviors.
What if I could name those Spiritual Intelligence skills and describe them on a spectrum from “novice” to “expert”? Could a framework of skills and levels of development help me and others know what to work on next?
In 2000 I left a great job at Exxon1 to answer these questions. Having been in human resources my whole career, I knew that spirituality was an incredibly diversity-sensitive topic. Whatever I created would need to be faith-neutral and yet faith-friendly. For example, I would want language that agnostics and atheists could connect with as well—clear definitions and a glossary of synonyms would be crucial.
I was in the midst of creating the first version of the assessment when the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred. The aftermath included a great deal of interreligious tension. It made the need to find a common language with which to talk about spiritual topics even more urgent in my mind. It was clear to me that if we confused our desire to be spiritual with more egoic needs to be “right” and be on the “only correct path,” then we would keep on killing each other. We needed a way to honor other spiritual paths (including secular ones) through the understanding of our commonalities. At the same time I wanted to honor the fact that for some people, there is a sincere belief that there is “one right path for me”—whether that path is Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or something else.
Hopelessly idealistic? Perhaps. But I like the advice I heard once as a young person: shoot for the stars and maybe you’ll catch the moon. So the SQ21 assessment, and this book, are my best efforts at shooting for the stars. I hope the result will be catching the moon, as I offer what I hope is an important piece of the next evolutionary step for humanity: developing our Spiritual Intelligence. Spiritual Intelligence, as distinct from both spirituality and religion, is a set of skills we develop over time, with practice.
In this book, you will see the results of decades of inquiry and twelve years of very focused effort. As you read, please keep in mind two important points:
First, my goal is to outline the skills for Spiritual Intelligence—but not prescribe the path you “must” use to develop them. Once you examine the skills and consider which skill you want to focus on, you can return to your path of choice (your religion, or spiritual or secular practice) and find tools within that path specific to the skill.
Second, with the 21 Skills in mind, you can zero in on what will help you right now. I hope this will increase your satisfaction and the speed with which you can grow and develop.
My specific hope for you is that the 21 Skills of SQ will create a really helpful roadmap and diagnostic—a way for you to save time and effort. You can read these chapters and see what skills resonate for you. Then you can focus your efforts on finding tools, workshops, and practices that will help you build the skills you want within your path of choice. If you are so inclined, you might decide to take the SQ21 assessment (available at DeepChange.com) and engage a trained coach to help you discover new insights.
My largest, bravest hope for this work is that Spiritual Intelligence will help us as a species “grow up” and better navigate our complex, interdependent world. I hope that a positive tipping point is reached when enough of us find our way to loving our neighbors and ourselves, to focusing on what is highest and best, and thereby lead ourselves into a better future for humanity. And if the SQ21 can be one small piece of that, I will be delighted.
Blessings to you and to all of us. May we all build the spiritual muscle we need to become the best people we can.
And thereby, may we build a beautiful future for humanity.
Cindy Wigglesworth
Houston, Texas, 2012
“Man cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human; he can approach Him through becoming human. To become human is what he, this individual man, has been created for.”
—Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man (1956)
Becoming fully human is a great adventure—one that requires us to grow and stretch ourselves. Do you, too, feel the call to grow? Some of us go through childhood with this yearning. Others discover that restless self later in life. If you have picked up this book, I suspect you are on the move. You are someone who wants to become more fully human—to be the best YOU that you can be. Once this hunger awakens, no distractions, purchases, or promotions at work will satisfy it. You just know there is “something more.”
Transcending our “smaller nature” and growing into our full potential as human beings is the most important and fulfilling thing we can do with our lives. The set of skills that I collectively call “Spiritual Intelligence” are designed to help you to become more fully who you are, to continue to grow and develop, and to live with greater consciousness, direction, wisdom, and compassion. These skills and the larger goal of becoming fully human are in alignment with all the world’s great wisdom traditions. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described this as “a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive … [which] amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human.”
We are drawn toward our own higher potential; we are seeking something. Yet we usually cannot describe the discontent we feel or how we would go about reaching the place we are trying to “get to.” Even the experts—the mystics, teachers, saints, and sages from the great wisdom traditions—don’t seem to agree when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of spiritual transformation. As Maslow points out, there are numerous names for this “ultimate goal”—self-actualization, self-transcendence, spiritual realization or awakening, individuation, and many more. And there are many paths to get there. Each culture and faith tradition has its own path and some faiths seem convinced that the way they describe is the only true one. This tendency to be exclusive and to make other paths wrong has troubled me for most of my life. If there truly is a “single ultimate goal” for human development, should it not be possible to describe a faith-neutral and objective way to reach that goal? Through using tools pioneered by psychology and other sciences we can create and refine a statistically reliable system by which progress in the spiritual dimension of human development can be measured. Within such a structure each spiritual path can continue to teach its adherents how to grow, and yet we can show that many other paths can work also.
What I offer in this book is a way to describe a previously missing piece of the puzzle regarding how we become fully human—how we live up to our highest potential. It is based on and expands upon pre-existing work in the field of multiple intelligences. By expanding the field to include Spiritual Intelligence we can move beyond the “who is right and who is wrong” conversation. We can focus on the goal, and can each choose our own path to get there. By using the 21 Skills of Spiritual Intelligence you can assess where you are, plan out some concrete steps for growth, and quickly begin to see impact in areas of life that matter to you.
Let’s begin with a question: Whom do you admire as a spiritual leader? Think about this for a moment. The word “admire” is key. Think about those people who come to mind, without hesitation, as being examples of living a distinctly noble life. And then ask yourself a second question: Why do I admire these people as spiritual leaders? What are the traits that make them stand out as exemplars of higher human potential? You may want to take a moment to write down your list of noble people and their traits.
I have asked these questions to thousands of people from many different walks of life and a variety of spiritual or religious persuasions—from devoted believers to avowed atheists. What I find both reassuring and fascinating is when asked this simple question we agree much more than one might expect.
The names that come up are fairly consistent and tend to fall into predictable categories: major religious figures such as Abraham, Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Jesus, Lord Krishna, Mohammed, Moses, Mother Teresa, the Pope, and various saints; great political leaders, peace activists, or freedom fighters, such as Jimmy Carter, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Thich Nhat Hanh (some of whom are also spiritual/religious leaders); prominent cultural figures and television personalities such as Deepak Chopra or Oprah Winfrey; fictional characters, like Yoda from Star Wars, or To Kill A Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch; and various relatives, local or current religious or spiritual teachers, guidance counselors or school teachers, friends or sometimes even a boss, who inspire us in our day-to-day lives.
More importantly, when people are asked to describe the particular traits that cause them to admire these people, the words that come back are strikingly similar. Beyond religious and cultural differences, we do in fact have quite clear and remarkably congruent ideas about what higher human attainment looks like. Here are some of the descriptors that I hear most often regarding spiritual leaders. He or she:
• Is authentic and has integrity
• Is calm, peaceful, and centered
• Has a clear mission or vocation
• Is compassionate, caring, kind, and loving
• Is courageous, dependable, faithful and faith-filled
• Is forgiving and generous
• Is a great leader, teacher, and/or mentor
• Is humble, inspiring, and wise
• Is nonviolent
• Is open-minded and open-hearted
• Is persistent, values-driven, and committed to serving others.
While the words chosen may vary slightly for a given person or group, they tend to be synonyms of the words in this list. What the consistency of the responses tells me is that we already have a general perception of what makes someone worthy of our admiration and possibly our emulation. We recognize a fuller, higher expression of humanity when we see one. When we put aside our ideas about what spirituality means, or the preconceptions about religion that may be lodged in our minds from childhood, we find that we have a natural “spiritual compass.” We know what nobility looks like. And the restlessness we feel is the feeling of being drawn towards to the full expression of our own human potential.
The question that then remains, is: How do we get there? How do we move from where we are today to being more like Gandhi, Jesus, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, or the wise teacher who inspired us as a child? While we have an innate sense of where we need to go, most of us have not been taught the specific skills and abilities we are trying to attain when we seek spiritual growth. Nor have we had any means of measuring where we are on the journey toward developing these skills. These are the areas to which this book hopes to contribute.
I am not offering yet another alternative path or claiming that my path is better than all the others. Rather, I am taking an altogether different approach—one that can be applied to whatever particular path you are on, and make that path more effective, more deliberate, and more clearly transformative. This approach is the cultivation of what I call “Spiritual Intelligence.”
Spiritual Intelligence, or “SQ” as it is often abbreviated, is my field of specialization. In the next chapter we will look at how it relates to the other kinds of intelligence that we may be more familiar with and spend some time unpacking the notion of multiple intelligences in general. But by way of an introduction to this field, I would like to share with you how I came to it. When my journey began I knew nothing about multiple intelligence theory or even the now widely accepted notion of Emotional Intelligence. I was simply a human resources professional working in a large oil company in Texas, and was sensitive to my own growth and the effects this had on my capacity as a leader.
In my mid-thirties, I noticed that I was becoming far more impactful as a leader than I had been before. I was getting multimillion dollar projects approved quickly (quite a feat in the 1990s in human resources). Managers were quick to help me staff my projects, even as their own projects were under-resourced. And my teams were flourishing, creative, and productive. I traced the development of these powerful new leadership skills back to the spiritual work that I was doing at the time. I had been focusing on reducing my attachment to my own egoic needs and putting my attention instead on the greater good of the team, the customers, the company, and beyond. As I shifted my focus in this way, I could see solutions I’d been previously blind to and work with people in creative ways that would never have occurred to me before. It was obvious to me that my own spiritual growth was directly impacting my effectiveness as a leader. However, I knew that talking about spirituality would not be very welcome in the corporate environment. As a human resources manager, I understood all too well the potential sensitivity of bringing anything that sounded remotely like religion into the workplace—especially in Texas, where many people are of a conservative Christian orientation and intense theological debates could be easily sparked. This was when I first began to consider how the new capacities and potentials I was discovering could be translated into universal terms that were free from religious baggage.
Later, I came to hypothesize that there should be specific “skills” or competencies that could be identified as contributing to SQ, and even ways to measure these skills scientifically. Finding that no one had as yet created this language, I left Exxon after twenty years, walking away from a successful career to launch into the unknown. I started my own company and set out to define SQ and to test my hypothesis.
My core questions were: can we create a rigorously tested, faith-neutral, professional quality instrument for measuring this powerful skill-set? And will this skill-set indeed show relationship to human development and leadership capacities?
The biggest obstacle I faced in my days at Exxon, and still face with many clients today, is the concern about respecting religious diversity. Let me assure you, then, if you share these concerns, that Spiritual Intelligence is distinct from spirituality or religion. In order to begin this book with clarity around these key distinctions, here are my definitions of spirituality, religion, and finally, Spiritual Intelligence.
Spirituality, as I define it, is the innate human need to be connected to something larger than ourselves, something we consider to be divine or of exceptional nobility. This means we seek to connect to something larger than our immature ego, our little needs. The innate desire for that connection transcends any particular faith or tradition. It does not require a belief in a divinity by any description, nor does it preclude a belief in God or Spirit or the divine. I believe this innate need to be connected to “something larger” exists in all of us, although some may hear that voice more loudly than others. From time to time, our survival needs may trump our awareness of this call. This is why Abraham Maslow identified “self-transcendence” as one of the universal human needs but placed it at the top of his pyramid, indicating that it might only fully emerge when the lower “subsistence” needs are met.
Religion, as I define it, is a specific set of beliefs and practices, usually based on a sacred text, and represented by a community of people. Religions can support people in their spiritual growth, in the fulfillment of that innate need to connect with something greater than themselves, but it is not the only path to spiritual development.