The Importance of Existential Intelligence In Organizations

Big picture thinking in an exponential age

Of all the skills, values, and mindsets that we need in order to thrive in the future, perhaps the most underrated and unrecognized one is existential intelligence.

Existential intelligence is the intelligence of big picture thinking. People with existential intelligence tend to be critical thinkers who are unafraid to challenge the norm. These are individuals who have the ability to use metacognition (thinking about thinking, or being aware of ones awareness) to ask the big questions and seek answers to them.

Howard Gardner & Multiple Intelligences

Existential intelligence was first introduced by education expert Howard Gardner, who coined the theory of Multiple Intelligences.

According to Gardner, individuals have varying degrees of intelligence that documents the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways. Gardner proposed that people may possess 7 different types of intelligence: Logical/Mathematical, Musical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Naturalist, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal. At the time, Gardner also toyed with the idea of including…