Your IQ score (intelligence score) predicts two things very well. The first prediction is heavily empirically supported. The second prediction comes solely from my personal experience working with a lot of people across a wide range of IQs.

Your IQ score is a very accurate predictor of your ability to take an IQ test. To the extent that you find a career where you are asked to take IQ-like tests daily, your IQ score would predict your ability to perform in this kind of job.

Your IQ score (in my personal experience) is also a somewhat reliable measure of how quickly you can learn and understand new information. Someone with a high IQ might be able to grasp a new concept the first time it is explained. Someone with a lower IQ will need to read about a new concept, have it explained to them verbally, see it diagrammed visually, and then see an example of the concept in real life to “grasp it.”

Of these two capabilities, the first has no practical use in the real world. I can’t think of a single profession where you get paid to take IQ-like tests on a regular basis.

The second skill is useful from a learning-efficiency standpoint. In a given year, someone with a high IQ could, in theory, learn more or build upon already learned skills to develop higher-level skills.

In a primary school context, if you learned algebra quickly, you could move on to calculus while your peers are still learning algebra.

So, IQ does provide some advantages, but these advantages are not absolute and can be compensated for.

[If your classmate learned calculus in two months, and it takes you a year or two… in two years, you’ll both be competent in calculus. The IQ makes a difference over those 24 months, but for the following 50 years, it makes very little difference.]

However, IQ is not a great predictor of career success. There are several factors that lead to career success that are not captured by an IQ score. I will list a few here:

  1. Attendance — IQ does not predict whether you will show up to class, do homework, go to meetings, or attend industry continuing-education events that aren’t required.
  2. Work Ethic — IQ does not predict how hard you work. Even brilliant people don’t learn new skills magically. They still need to work, and that is a choice.
  3. Ambition — IQ does not predict what kind of goals someone sets. If you’re highly capable but aim low, you will tend to achieve low. If you’re highly capable and aim high, you may or may not achieve high… but you’d definitely achieve more than if you aimed low.
  4. Creativity — IQ scores capture people’s ability to process information, reason, and draw conclusions. However, it doesn’t capture one’s ability to be creative. IQ doesn’t measure your ability to create art, music, or to make things beautiful.
    (Most consumer products that sell well are not always the ones with the greatest engineered performance. They look and feel elegant. The best enterprise software has an incredible user experience, which has nothing to do with transaction processing speed.)
  5. Vision — IQ tests are based on presenting the test taker with some information that they are supposed to process in a particular way. This could be text, graphics, or a physical object. What IQ doesn’t capture is one’s ability to see that which does not yet exist. This is called “vision.” Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, absolute had vision. He “saw” that which was not yet in existence but, in his mind, should be (a.k.a. the iPhone, iPad, Siri).
  6. Grit/Perseverance — As my former McKinsey colleague Angela Duckworth discovered, IQ doesn’t predict your willingness to persist in your work when things are difficult.
    In fact, research from Carol Dweck suggests that telling your kids they are smart backfires. When they learn something new but are not “getting it” quickly, the kids who have been told they are smart tend to panic and give up… otherwise, they risk providing evidence that their “smart” designation is incorrect. It’s better to praise kids for being hard workers.
    I don’t praise my kids for getting 100% on an exam. I praise them for doing their homework and studying… the grades will take care of themselves.
    If you put in the “inputs” to success, the “outputs” take care of themselves. IQ has no bearing on one’s willingness to put in the inputs.
  7. Interpersonal Skills — IQ captures nothing about one’s ability to interact with, collaborate with, and lead people.
    As I explained to one of my kids, some people have individual skills that are perhaps slightly above average. However, some of these folks have an incredible ability to make those around them more effective. In short, they make everybody else’s performance better through good communication, collaboration, building a team culture, setting clear direction, and enhancing team cohesion.
    These people are called “leaders.”
    If your individual skills are 90% superior to those of others (including those of your boss), but your boss makes the 1,000 people she manages 25% more effective, who creates more value? IQ may measure aspects of the former. It measures none of the latter.
  8. Relationships — IQ does not predict how many people you’ve built relationships with over the years. It doesn’t measure how many people trust you. It doesn’t measure how many people will prefer to hire you, promote you, or do business with you because of a decade-long track record of a good relationship.
    If your IQ is higher than your neighbor’s, but your neighbor has a contact list of hundreds of industry connections who will all respond to emails, take phone calls, or say yes to meeting requests, who is going to achieve more?
Beyond IQ

If you look at the three-decade trends of business research, the data strongly trends toward the importance of non-IQ skills and their relevance to career success. Daniel Goleman’s work in emotional intelligence, or EQ, was completely contrarian when first published in the Harvard Business Review in the 90s. Angela Duckworth’s work on grit continued that decades later.

Google did an analysis of its human resources database to see who got promoted and who did not. Of the roughly eight most important factors that predict promotions at Google, only two skill areas were technical in nature. The remainder were all interpersonal-type skills.

In the early 1990s, McKinsey screened resumes primarily based on GPAs and test scores (a proxy for the IQ score) — the higher, the better. The firm analyzed which of their hires got promoted two years later and found it was not those with the highest grades and scores on their resumes.

Instead, those who had a good enough GPA (3.5+ out of 4.0) and strong interpersonal skills with clients got promoted. High-IQ consultants who clients hated (due to a lack of EQ) resulted in, at best, strained relationships between McKinsey and its clients and, at worse, McKinsey failing to get follow-on client work.

My point in all of this is that the vast majority of career success is determined by things other than IQ. Among those factors, most are within your control. They simply take prioritization, focus, and effort.

What do you think about this topic? Comment below to let me know.

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