LQ—What’s This?

I have been a firm believer that Emotional Intelligence is a better predictor of business or even live success than IQ, but now there is something new on the horizon. It is LQ or the Love Quotient. Have you heard of it?

I hadn’t until I read an interesting post on Inc.com that focused on the impact LQ can have on our business world as AI is increasingly available and utilized.

According to Jack Ma, the cofounder of fintech giant Ant Group, if you want to be respected in the business world you need to be high in LQ. Of course, that is not to say you don’t have to be high in Emotional Intelligence or have a reasonably high IQ, but he says LQ can be a differentiator when it comes to our ever-increasing world of AI.

The Love Quotient is something machines can never have. No matter how smart they become, they are missing something important, and they will never be able to solve the most significant and urgent problems. These problems require compassionate, understanding, and loving humans. According to Ma, human emotions are the secret weapon that can outsmart AI.

Speaking at a Bloomberg Global Business Forum a few years ago, Ma said:

“A machine does not have a heart, a machine does not have a soul, and a machine does not have a belief. Humans have souls, have the beliefs, have the values; we are creative, we are showing that we can control the machines.”

Ma believes that even leaders who have high levels of emotional intelligence and possess high IQ’s will not be as successful as one who has a high level of LQ. He says that without LQ, leaders will not be respected.

This idea may seem strange to some leaders who will dismiss this notion as a soft skill.  However, consider how much emphasis we have been placing on empathy and kindness lately. Leaders who show vulnerability are having greater impacts on their organizations.

Managers are increasingly realizing that treating their employees with consideration and greater respect can have a positive impact on their bottom line or other measures of productivity, and I am fairly certain that these would be qualities included in LQ.

I don’t know about you, but this is the most hopeful thing I’ve heard in all the discussions about AI and its potential impact on the way we work and live. Let’s add kindness and empathy to the way we manage our teams and make the world a better place—even as AI complicates our lives in ways that we can’t even imagine.