SHRM26 Debrief · Leadership & Development · #1802

The Secret Superpower of High Functioning Leaders: How Process Intelligence Creates Aligned, Accountable Teams

with Shane Yount

▶ Watch on the SHRM portal ~64 min, distilled

process intelligence (PQ)emotional intelligence (EQ)leadership development

"We hire for IQ, we train for EQ, and we think we're done."

What it was about

Leadership built on IQ (smarts) and EQ (emotional intelligence) alone creates "3P" leadership by personality (proximity, persuasion, positional authority) that doesn't scale or sustain. Organizations need a third dimension, PQ (process intelligence), to build systems and processes durable enough that performance doesn't atrophy when a leader leaves.

By the numbers

six hours of meetings a week or less

target maximum meeting load for a high-functioning leader to run their business

four days observed, same 4 of 15 people driving the meeting each day

Bristol Myers tier-meeting observation illustrating 'tourists vs. players' culture

eight tiers (tier one to tier eight)

Colgate's organizational tier structure from frontline to C-suite used as an example of a connected metrics system

Key notes

Assess whether your leadership is powered by personality (proximity, persuasion, positional authority) rather than by systems, and treat that as a warning sign, not a strength.
Ask 'are we winning or losing?' throughout your organization and check whether people answer with empirical metrics or anecdotal feelings and vibes.
Turn metrics from passive 'thermometers' (reports nobody acts on) into active 'thermostats': data that drives a conversation and an action.

The contrarian takeContinuous improvement systems, methodologies, and tools are not actually what drive organizational performance in most companies. Personality does, and IQ/EQ-based leadership models (hire smart people, train them in emotional intelligence) are fundamentally flawed and won't scale or sustain performance, even though they're the dominant leadership model taught today.

Take this back Monday

Do this for your team

Audit next week's recurring meetings and cancel or shorten any that don't move the business forward toward 6 hours/week.

Say this in your next leadership meeting

We hire for IQ, train for EQ, but never build PQ: the process intelligence that keeps performance from collapsing when a leader leaves.

Watch out for

Promoting people into leadership purely because they had the highest IQ or were the best individual performer, then having them keep working at the level they left instead of the level they're now in.
Building teams around a 'selective few' who never complain and always execute, which creates a false positive of engagement while everyone else disengages (culture of tourists/spectators, not players).
Communicating expectations like 'advertising' (newsletters, digital signs, one-off emails) instead of direct, repeated communication: the workplace equivalent of leaving a curfew on a refrigerator magnet.

Fun fact · Shane Yount

Since 1991, Shane Yount has personally led business-transformation work inside Michelin, Genentech, Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, and the Department of Defense.

If this landed, see these

↳ Go deeperLeadership Effectiveness That Delivers Results: Eight Organizational DimensionsGives a diagnostic framework for the systemic conditions PQ is trying to fix.⇄ The counterpointIf Leadership is a Game, These Are the RulesMakes the case that personal character, not process systems, is what actually sustains leadership.✦ The unexpected oneReturn on Intelligence: Move AI ROI Beyond Cost to Competitive AdvantageTurning passive metrics into active ones shows up again as the core fix for stalled AI adoption.