I’m partially colorblind…a fact that I was unaware of until I was 13 years old. I’m not particularly coordinated when it comes to making arms and legs (like in playing the drums or organ) move in independent directions, another fact that came to the fore when I was a young adult. (Fortunately I can walk and chew gum at the same time and drive and talk on a mobile phone without difficulty.) I guess my nose is on the larger side…but I can’t really tell because I’m limited by what I see in the mirror…and sometimes the mirror distorts reality.

I was 40 before I realized that I perceived the world from my own paradigm and naturally believed that others must be seeing it that way, too. Like being on an ocean liner and looking out of one’s porthole as if that view was universal to all on the ship. Logically I knew better…but it takes time to step out of one’s “cabin” and see the world from another vantage point.

When I was an AM radio station manager, I met a man who had no thumbs. In a moment of idle conversation I asked him what it was like to not have thumbs. He politely responded that he wouldn’t know, as he had been born without them. (Duh.) A few years later I was enjoying the movie Gattaca and noted that the featured pianist had 6 fingers on each hand. I eventually laced these two events together into my “Digits” analogy and have used it when presenting training seminars to illustrate the fact that we know what we know. The purpose in so doing isn’t about fingers or toes but relative abilities.

Most of us know our age, height, weight, girth and perhaps even our IQ. These measurements in and of themselves don’t make us young or old, short or tall, fat or skinny, smart or stupid. Only when compared to a group of others do measurements take on some meaning. Attributes without measurement or comparison are perceived by most people as “normal.” How could I have possibly known that I was colorblind? How does one know they have an excellent ear for pitch? It’s natural to assume that one’s personal attributes are normal, unless there is some obvious input to the contrary.

So off to school we go and before long we are taking standardized tests and some of our previously unmeasured intellectual attributes are being assessed. And that’s part of the problem…because IQ wasn’t supposed to be a measure of ALL intellectual abilities, just those that might predict scholastic success. Got a high IQ? Boy, you MUST be smart!

What a tragedy!

The truth is that intelligence is multi-faceted and that there are many (just how many is up for debate) intellectual abilities that we possess in a range of relative strength or weakness, most of which are NOT measured by an IQ test. We are all “smart” or “stupid” when measuring individual intellectual abilities. Ironically, scientists are among those who perform very well on IQ tests and we shouldn’t be surprised at the evolution of IQ to the point of it becoming the defining measure of intelligence. What of creativity? What of kinetic behavior? Social skills? Street smarts? There are hundreds of different points of comparison when considering our traits.

Big deal.

Well, the big deal is that until those traits are measured we run the risk of being a 99th percentile person and just assuming we are a 50th percentile person. Would it make a difference in one’s life to find out that that thing they can do is a rare skill? Or maybe that they are in the 5th percentile and there is something they can do to improve that skill?

I think it does matter.

Dr. J.P. Guilford created his Structure of Intellect Model in the 60s and it has largely been ignored due to the complexity of the measurement process. In an era when computers filled entire rooms it didn’t make sense to try and implement his multi-intelligence tests with a large number of people. Today is a different story.

But that’s not what’s driving my push for Intunique! Rather, it’s the progress that scientists are making in understanding the brain and how it functions that is leading on a converging path with multiple-intelligence theory. And that’s cool.

So, kind reader, what are your intellectual strengths and weaknesses? What makes up your Intunique?

Stay tuned.