Making Sound Decisions via Multidimensional Intelligence

Intelligence has been defined in several ways. First intelligence is a cognitive process involving rational and abstract thinking. Second, it is the goal- directed and purposeful, which means that all intelligent activities are planned to reach a self-determined goal. Finally, it involves social competence to help individuals adjust to their environmental surroundings. How to make sound decisions via multidimensional intelligence?

High mental ability is important to make effective decisions: Intelligence is the word we use to describe mental ability. Intelligence is the capacity to understand and apply wisdom to the knowledge you are exposed to. There are as many different ways to characterize intelligence as there are different types and forms of information implying on our senses. Our intelligence with regard to any given type of information is a function of our capacity to recognize and interpret patterns, and our consequent ability to use the perceived information for making sound judgments or effective decisions. There are as we all know, varying levels of intelligence; emotional intelligence is a key component of an intellectual mind.
Contextual intelligence is crucial in making sound decisions: An intellectual mind is contextual. Whether someone is "intelligent" or not depends entirely on what you are asking them to accomplish with their brain, often it means making large or small decisions on the daily basis. Contextual intelligence is crucial in making sound decisions, especially at the strategic level. It is like that "ripples-on-the-water" metaphor, it is our connectedness to the world around us that makes whatever intelligence we have truly useful to ourselves and to others; connected, by a sort of resonance between our cognitive dimensions and the actual world we co-inhabit with those around us. In the global working environment, context intelligence is about understanding the whole meaning of languages and cultures. Working in multicultural and global environments and organizations, they need to develop their own language, to make the proper framing in order to access the process of understanding each other with profundity for making sound judgments or effective decisions in a consistent way.
Paradoxical intelligence is emergent as a “balanced” mind to avoid binary thinking or extreme thinking: Paradoxical Intelligence is a type of critical intelligence to deal with today's “VUCA” dynamic. It is the process to define as a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, ambiguous, that may actually be true in fact, and you can think through multi-dimensional angles to gain cognizance for making sound judgment and avoid decision pitfalls such as binary thinking. From decision psychology perspective, a binary thinker picks one of the two opposite sides of viewpoint only, and take the two-dimensional lenses to perceive the multi-faceted world, they perceive things either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, there are no shades in between; such extreme thinking can limit your view to observe situations more objectively; distort the picture of reality, restrict the scope of your thought processes, and cloud your mind to make sound judgment either in decision-making or problem-solving. Therefore, a balanced mind with paradoxical intelligence is important to understand things from different angles and make effective decisions in a systematic way.

Either individual or business, contemporary intelligence is contextual and multidimensional. It goes beyond IQ and EQ, there are strategic intelligence, creative intelligence, decision intelligence, judgemental intelligence, paradoxical intelligence, social intelligence, digital leaders and professionals must keep learning agile to sharpen multi-dimensional intelligence for making sound judgment and effective decisions cohesively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu