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Your Intelligences

DataSQRL is us. Not just us individuals but us as a collective, emergent force of change. We can go much, much further together because we form an integrated system with purpose.

Your genius at DataSQRL >

To make this happen, we all bring our three intelligences to the table and grow them over time: our emotional, social, and cognitive intelligences. In combination and in concert with others, these intelligences are the lifeblood of our company.

Emotional Intelligence​

We are driven by our emotions. Emotions influence our most important decisions, how we show up to work, and how much energy we have. Emotions aren’t irrational, they supplement the rational, cognitive part of our brain with the sum total of our experiences.

We recognize the importance and benefits of emotions and show up as our whole emotional selves. The key to successfully integrating emotions into a productive work environment is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has three components: self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation.

Self-awareness means that we are aware of our emotions and how they influence us. We foster those emotions that drive us and tend to those emotions that hold us back.

Self-regulation means that we own our emotions. We recognize that we alone are responsible for our emotions and that outsourcing them to others is not an appropriate coping strategy. Sure, we all lose our temper from time to time. If we do, we apologize and move on. We are all human after all. But repeated emotional outbursts put undue burden on the people around us.

Motivation means that we have the ability and skills to show up and do things. We understand that it is our responsibility to manage our energies and replenish our tank in a way that works best for us. We maintain a healthy work-life balance to not burn out. We show up most days with a sense of purpose, a willingness to act, and a drive to accomplish, because we recognize that how we live our days is how we live our lives. At DataSQRL nobody is going to micromanage you or monitor your incremental progress. That is your responsibility.

If you want to learn more about emotional intelligence, we recommend this Coursera course.

We all have different emotional makeups and developed unique emotional intelligences over the course of our lives. This diversity makes us stronger.

In order to fully tap into this strength and create a harmonious work environment, we kindly ask that everyone fill out a Personal Profile and share it with the company. Understanding who we are and how we want to be treated helps us come together and join forces.

Please make it a priority to create your personal profile and refine it with your coach. It makes a world of difference.

Social Intelligence​

Our social intelligence allows us to collaborate and work together. Achieving a state of flow in a tight-knit team is an exhilarating experience we strive to create every day. It allows us to produce outstanding work while feeling fulfilled. Like an orchestra, you need great individual talent to make this happen but, more importantly, those individuals need to play in harmony and synchronicity with one another.

Social intelligence is the ability to achieve such harmony and synchronicity with other individuals. Social intelligence has three components: empathy & kindness, smart trust, and resolving conflict.

Empathy means the ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and attempt to see the world from their perspective. It means that we try to see the best in each other and make an effort to elevate one another. Empathy means that we approach others with kindness. We acknowledge that we all fail at times and are in need of somebody who can look past our failure to see our positive intent and offer a hand to pull us back up. We try to extend empathy in situations that are particularly challenging. For instance, when we are on the receiving end of an emotional outburst, we try not to withdraw into our shells but instead make ourselves vulnerable in order to help the other person relieve their pain. In short, empathy means that we take good care of each other to create a safe environment where we feel comfortable to be vulnerable. That way, we can engage in more fulfilling work relationships and spend less time and energy protecting our egos and holding up our guards.

Smart trust means that we pay trust forward. Rather than requiring individuals to earn your trust, we assume that everybody at DataSQRL is worth our trust. But we don’t trust blindly. In order to protect ourselves, we give everybody a trust credit with the assumption that they will pay us back in kind. If our trust gets repeatedly broken or violated, we hold the other person accountable and escalate as necessary. That’s what makes this trust “smart”. It’s paid in advance with accountability.

Conflict is inevitable. In particular in a highly energetic group of people who are on a mission. Somebody is going to rub you the wrong way. Situations will arise that feel disturbing or unsafe. Conflict ensues. We don’t think of conflict as something that is fundamentally bad. Like muscle soreness is part of a good workout, conflict is part of good teamwork. Conflict becomes bad when it isn’t managed and festers into a broken relationship. We don’t let that happen by resolving conflict in a timely manner. Resolving conflict means that we take notice of when we feel in conflict and take the time to clearly understand what the conflict is about. Then we assume the perspective of the person we are in conflict with and assume positive intent. We then approach the other person from a place of kindness and share our feelings using “I” statements in order to avoid accusations. We practice active listening and non-violent communication. Should we not be able to resolve the conflict through communication in this manner, we escalate our concerns and ask for help in mediating the conflict.

Cognitive Intelligence​

We use our cognitive intelligence to solve problems, plan, and make decisions. You are likely familiar with cognitive intelligence because that has been the emphasis of our schooling. Most standardized tests aim to measure cognitive intelligence. Engineers in particular go through many years of practicing and improving their cognitive intelligence.

Your role at DataSQRL is often directly related to the cognitive skills that you have acquired during your education. As such, we won’t talk much about cognitive intelligence since you already recognize that bringing your unique functional skills to DataSQRL is important.

We just want to emphasize that cognitive intelligence, like all intelligences, is not fixed. It grows with practice and nurturing. At DataSQRL we aim to create an environment of learning and growth so you can nurture your cognitive intelligence.

We also recognize that one of the best ways to elevate our cognitive intelligences is through collaboration with each other. Brainstorming and bouncing ideas off of one another is a wonderful way to harvest our collective cognitive intelligence. Therefore we strive to create an environment of collaboration, cross-pollination, and free flow of ideas and information.