Transforming Leadership with Experience Intelligence

Beyond IQ. Beyond EQ. Toward XQ - Designing Experience

For decades, we’ve measured leadership using two dominant lenses:

• IQ — cognitive & intellectual horsepower

• EQ — emotional awareness & intelligence

No doubt both matter a lot!

But as Soren Marcus Kaplan (award-winning author, keynote speaker & trainer on artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, innovation, leadership) argues in ‘Experiential Intelligence’! — XQ is a third dimension of intelligence developed through lived experience. Not what you studied. Not what you scored. But what your life has quietly built inside you.

Soren Kaplan introduces XQ, which is the combination of mindsets, abilities, and know-how gained from unique life experiences that empowers success. Establishing the fact that most events/incidents are not random chapters in our lives. They are raw materials for scripting success ahead, and in a world of ambiguity & volatility, that’s the real competitive edge to design exclusive experiences.

Love as a Leadership Metric - Love here is not sentimentality but a deep and unwavering commitment to another human’s flourishing.

A senior leader walking through an employee gate. A cook didn’t salute him. Didn’t stiffen. He hugged him. That’s not authority. That’s experience design.

In the HBR article (Disney’s New CEO and the Rise of “Experience Intelligence”) on Disney’s new CEO- Josh D ’Amaro, author Marcus Buckingham describes exactly such a moment — observing the CEO being greeted not only through reverence, but with utmost affection.

As stated by Buckingham in the article - 'He wasn’t a public figure, but he was someone people wanted to work for, follow, and build with. The “Josh effect” people called it'.

When employees feel seen, trusted, capable, and proud — they commit. When customers feel honoured and understood, they advocate.

Physiology → Experience → Feeling → Behaviour → Outcomes.

We focus too much on the last two. But your real edge is hidden in the first three. Remember the ice-berg model!

Managing Behaviour to Design Experience: The Millennium Falcon redesign conversation at Disney reveals a powerful truth. The ride had a two-hour wait. Demand wasn’t the problem. Depth of experience was. “Guests like it. They don’t love it.” The insight was simple yet profound: only one rider had real agency. The others were passengers. The redesign gave every rider a meaningful role. And that changes everything.

Agency builds ownership. Ownership fuels emotional investment. Emotional investment turns liking into loving. That is Experience Intelligence at work — not adding features, but elevating the human experience.

Experiential Intelligence is not about being impressive; it is about being intentional. People do admire intelligence.But they commit to what they love.The question is — Are you managing tasks in your organization? Or are you designing experiences?

#Leadership #ExperientialIntelligence #HumanCentricLeadership #CXO #OrganizationalCulture #FutureOfWork #ExperienceDesign #ThoughtLeadership

A leader uses Experience Intelligence tools to analyse customer feedback and improve engagement