IQ, EQ and PQ - Building High-Functioning Teams with Process Intelligence (PQ)

These days, leading a team comes with its own set of hurdles. Whether you’re in HR, Operations, or Engineering, you’re likely facing challenges like employee (or personal!) burnout, keeping your team engaged, and hanging onto top talent. Earlier this week, I attended the SHRM Conference in Chicago and had an opportunity to listen to a session called "Process Intelligence (PQ): The Key to Building High Functioning Leaders". We're familiar with the terms, IQ (book-smart/intelligence quotient) and EQ (emotional intelligence/quotient), but the speaker shared a missing piece, called PQ, that can unlock the potential within your leadership teams. Let’s break down the key insights and see how we can use PQ to make a real difference in our leadership approach.

Understanding Process Intelligence (PQ)

Let's look at two types of leaders in an organization. Sarah is reliable and trustworthy, someone we can always turn to for support and guidance. This leader alleviates stress and fosters confidence. In contrast, Kim lacks communication skills and reliability, causing us to feel we must compensate for her shortcomings by taking on additional work ourselves. This imbalance leads to increased stress and burnout among leaders.

One of the key drivers to feeling burnt out and overwhelmed in your leadership journey is the absence of PQ. Process Intelligence (PQ) refers to the ability to analyze, understand, and optimize business processes to enhance performance and achieve strategic goals. By integrating PQ into leadership development, organizations can address the evolving needs of the workforce, ensuring leaders are equipped to play the role of "Sarah" in their organizations.

The Traditional Model

The traditional hiring model focuses on IQ and EQ:

• IQ: Cognitive skills and industry experience.
• EQ: Emotional awareness and interpersonal skills.

The speaker, Shane Yount, points out that the traditional onboarding model is often too focused on cognitive and emotional skills, neglecting the importance of process intelligence (PQ). This leads to gaps in operational efficiency and problem-solving capabilities. By only emphasizing IQ and EQ, organizations miss the opportunity to develop leaders who can effectively manage and improve processes. Yount advocates for a more balanced approach that includes PQ to create leaders who can drive both emotional engagement and operational excellence. The focus should be on optimizing processes to drive consistent and sustainable performance, which includes assessing workflow efficiencies, team dynamics, and resource allocation.

The 3 P's

Three foundational pieces that drive leadership fatigue:

1. Proximity: If the closeness or proximity of the leader to the team dictates whether the team is winning or losing, you do not have a winning organization. You do not have PQ. There is no process.
2. Persuasion: Do you enable the personalities on your team to discern the work given to them? If at the end of our logic for engagement, you discern that it's just easier to do the work yourself than give it to a reliable leader on the team - you have IQ, EQ but are missing PQ. There is no process and you will eventually feel very fatigued. Eliminating that tendency will foster a culture of collective accountability.
3. Positional Authority: You can compel people on your team to perform because you have positional authority. You are the leader and everyone knows it. The problem is your positioning can create either an overly authoritarian or overly lenient environment. A leader who is too authoritative may stifle innovation, while one who is too approachable might struggle with enforcing necessary changes.

How can we increase PQ?

1. Assessment and Awareness: Evaluate current processes to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Ask questions like, "What are our most significant process bottlenecks?" and "How do these affect team performance?" "What have you done to move the business forward? You will need systems to gauge what everyone is doing.
2. Training and Development: Participate in PQ-focused training programs to acquire skills for process optimization. Upon leaving each meeting we should know, the number of meetings we had this week, the number of hours that these meetings are taking from our day, and the percentage of time these meetings are moving the business forward. Ask, "What skills are necessary to improve our processes?" and "How can we implement continuous improvement practices?".
3. Implementing Feedback Loops and Continuous Improvement: Create systems for regular feedback and process review, and foster a culture of innovation. Ask, "How can we gather actionable feedback from team members?", "What tools are we using to measure engagement?" and "What new methods can we try to enhance efficiency?"

Integrating PQ into our leadership approach can make all the difference between teams that hit goals and those that do not. It’s not just about being smart (IQ) or emotionally aware (EQ), it’s about understanding and optimizing our processes. And choosing leaders who can do all 3. Start evaluating your processes, embrace continuous improvement, and watch your leadership and team thrive.

Step into our latest tool tailored for leaders of HR + Manufacturing teams. In just 2 minutes, gain awareness of the bottlenecks hidden in your organization and uncover potential management gaps. You will also receive a customized report to share with your team. See the link below.

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So How Can We Help You...

When you’re ready to grow and expand your Engineering and/or Operations Teams, here are 3 ways that we can help:

1. We partner with you and your existing talent acquisition teams to help attract and retain frontline leaders and the teams of Engineering and Technical talent that drive productivity.
2. Reduce the cost of acquiring and training new hires by supporting and enhancing the efforts of your onboarding team for the first 90 days.
3. Provide a no-cost assessment of your current hiring strategies with a 15-minute consultation.