The Smart Trap: Why Your High IQ Is Holding You Back
How I used the 9 types of intelligence to make a million dollars
The Old Game: Thinking the person who is best with math and words is the only person who can lead.
The New Mandate: True executive genius comes from tapping into the nine different ways you and your team are smart, making your company unstoppable.
When I was growing up, the ultimate test was the IQ score. That number defined intelligence, success, and even worth. I bought into that idea completely. Like many of you, I pushed hard, relied on my logic, and focused on being “right” and “smart” in the traditional sense. That strategy helped me build the early stages of my career and my first ventures.
But here’s a tough truth I learned the hard way, often through failure: the people with the highest IQs aren’t always great leaders. They certainly aren’t always great partners, parents, or friends. When I looked at the smartest people in the room, the true rainmakers, I realized their success wasn’t just about their Number Smart (Logical) or Word Smart (Linguistic). It was about their ability to handle pressure, build unbreakable trust, and lead with a quiet, steady strength.
We all have different strengths, and we all have blind spots. The best leaders, the ones who build legacies and not just bank accounts, know how to navigate those challenges. They understand that ultimate command requires leading with empathy, kindness, and compassion. That deep understanding is why we have to stop looking at our minds as a single tool and start seeing them as an orchestra of nine forms of genius.
The Leader Who Built an Empire on Humanity
Think about a leader like Richard Branson. He wasn’t known for being the sharpest financial analyst or the most technical engineer. In fact, he often admits his Number Smart (Logical) scores aren’t his strongest suit. Yet, he built the Virgin Group, a massive, sprawling empire spanning airlines, records, and space travel.
How? By leading with the People Smart and Self Smart intelligences that most CEOs neglect.
The Virgin Blueprint: Intelligence as a Flow State
Branson understood the fundamental truth that success isn’t about your intelligence; it’s about the flow created when you orchestrate the collective genius of your team.
People Smart (Interpersonal) in Action: Branson’s success is built on his ability to deeply connect with his employees, famously empowering them to solve problems and delegate crucial decisions. He mastered the Interpersonal skill of reading the emotional temperature of his organization, ensuring people felt valued and free to innovate.
Self Smart (Intrapersonal) in Action: He consistently prioritized his health, adventure, and family, a clear example of mastering Intrapersonal control. By showing up balanced and aligned, he set the tone of resilience for his entire company. When a business failed or a crisis hit, he led from a position of calm, curiosity, and kindness, not fear or anger. This stable emotional core allowed him to quickly pivot and keep the whole system in motion.
This style of leadership creates an unprecedented flow of success.
🧠 Fact Check: Studies show that when it comes to being a great boss, being good at knowing people and handling feelings (what we call Emotional Intelligence) is a much, much stronger sign of success than having a super-high IQ score.
When you lead by orchestrating all nine smarts, when you hire for the genius you lack and lead with the compassion you need, you remove the personal bottleneck. You create a system where team members use their Picture Smart to design the future, their Body Smart to power through tough launches, and their Music Smart to sense market shifts, all because they trust the People Smart leader at the top. The success isn’t just bigger; it’s more resilient and infinitely more enjoyable.
The Nine Cores: Leadership Beyond the Spreadsheet
We need to stop judging a leader’s value by one narrow test score. The simple truth is, you’re brilliant in nine different ways, and you’re leaving a ton of power and money on the table by ignoring most of them.
You’ve got the logic part down. Now, let’s unlock the rest of your genius:
The Technical Smarts: Your Word Smart (Linguistic) and Number Smart (Logical) are the foundational pillars, your command of finance, strategy, and communication.
The Foundational Smarts: Your Picture Smart (Spatial) allows you to visualize where the market is going, and your Body Smart (Kinesthetic) ensures you have the presence and stamina to drive the vision.
The True Executive Levers: Your Relational Intelligence
This is where the shift to compassionate leadership happens. The following four intelligences define your ability to connect, observe, and manage the complexity of human systems:
Music Smart (Musical): This isn’t about playing the piano; it’s about being sensitive to the rhythm and tone of your organization. It lets you feel when your team’s culture is off-key, that subtle discord that kindness and empathy can fix before it becomes a disaster.
Nature Smart (Naturalistic): This helps you see the bigger ecosystem, spotting market trends and building systems that are robust and naturally sustainable.
People Smart (Interpersonal): This is the heart of compassionate leadership. It’s your capacity to truly see your team, to read their needs and motives, which allows you to delegate with understanding and lead with empathy. This is key for building rock-solid partnerships.
Self Smart (Intrapersonal): This is the bedrock of your personal recovery and self-management. Knowing your own triggers, values, and energy levels allows you to show up consistently. Without this, you cannot authentically lead with compassion.
The Proof: From Chaos to Command
This shift from logic-first to integrated-intelligence is not soft theory; it’s hard strategy.
One of my clients, a founder who scaled fast but felt totally out of control, called me last week. He was drowning in details. We mapped out his profile, and realized his Logical and Linguistic smarts were maxed out, but his Interpersonal and Intrapersonal scores were pulling him down.
We immediately refocused his time. Instead of trying to personally review every project’s budget (a Logical task), he started using that time to meet one-on-one with his department heads to deeply understand their stress points (Interpersonal). He replaced 2 hours of email review with 2 hours of deep reading and meditation (Intrapersonal). The change was instant: He stopped reacting to every fire, his team felt truly seen, and he finally felt like the CEO again, leading with quiet authority. That’s what happens when you activate all nine smarts.
The Final Core: Your Legacy
Big Questions Smart (Existential): This is where kindness and compassion become strategic. Asking why you are building this, and what your legacy will be, forces you to prioritize long-term meaning over short-term metrics. This ensures your growth benefits everyone involved.
Action Plan: Running Your Whole Mind
You don’t need to go back to school. You just need to start using your full mind today with these simple shifts:
The Compassion Check-in: Before any big decision, take 10 seconds. Use your Self Smart to get calm, and then use your People Smart to ask: How will this decision feel to the person who has to execute it? Leading with that level of awareness builds loyalty.
Delegate by Genius Match: Match the task to the right smart. Stop giving your best speaker (Word Smart) the job of building the complex financial model, give that to your Number Smart analyst. This increases speed and makes your team feel valued for their unique genius.
The “Why” Test for Big Moves: Before you launch anything major, ask the Big Questions Smart question: What does this do for our long-term purpose? If the answer is just “make more money this quarter,” you’re just hustling, not building a legacy. Adjust the plan until it passes the meaning test.
The true elite leader is the one who knows themselves and uses their full, powerful mind to lead with strength, clarity, and heart.
The TL;DR 9 Types of Intelligence List:
Logical-Mathematical (Number Smart)
Linguistic (Word Smart)
Spatial (Picture Smart)
Bodily-Kinesthetic (Body Smart)
Musical (Music Smart)
Naturalistic (Nature Smart)
Interpersonal (People Smart)
Intrapersonal (Self Smart)
Existential (Big Questions Smart)
If you’re struggling to get your different types of intelligence in alignment with your goals and dreams, there are two ways I can help:
Take the science based stress quiz to see if you’re in alignment (HERE)
Let’s connect on Linkedin along with 200,000 other Elite Leaders (HERE)
I know what it’s like to suffer and struggle in silence. I’ve built an amazing life after many years of addiction and struggle. And, I’ve helped thousands to the same thing. Let’s connect and find out how.
Such a powerful reminder that genius is multidimensional, not just logical. 🧡
Dennis, you've broadened my understanding of the demands of leadership. When a leader knows which intelligence to apply and which teammate to empower, leadership becomes a collective strength instead of a solo act.