On this episode, my guest is Soren Kaplan, author of the new book Experiential Intelligence, Harness the Power of Experience for Personal and Business Breakthroughs. Soren shares how his unusual early life experiences shaped his resilience and framework through which he saw the world and how this essential 3rd level of intelligence (after IQ and EQ) makes for successful, agile and resilient leaders.
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. I'm producer & host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is produced in conjunction with the Retail Council of Canada.
On this episode, my guest is Soren Kaplan, author of the new book Experiential Intelligence, Harness the Power of Experience for Personal and Business Breakthroughs. Soren shares how his unusual early life experiences shaped his resilience and framework through which he saw the world and how this essential 3rd level of intelligence (after IQ and EQ) makes for successful, agile and resilient leaders.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.
Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2023 for the third year in a row.
Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Canada's top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail. He produces and co-hosts Remarkable Retail with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world.
Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers.
Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America.r
About Soren
Soren Kaplan is an award-winning author, corporate executive, co-founder of Praxie.com, columnist for Inc. Magazine and Psychology Today, and an affiliate at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California. He is an international keynote speaker and has led professional development programs for thousands of leaders around the world, including Disney, NBCUniversal, Visa, PayPal, Colgate-Palmolive, Kimberly-Clark, Medtronic, Roche, Hershey’s, Red Bull, and many others.
Business Insider and the Thinkers50 have recognized Dr. Kaplan as one of the world’s top management thought leaders and consultants. His latest book, Experiential Intelligence, reveals how life experience contributes a form of intelligence on par with IQ (intellect) and EQ (emotional intelligence), which can be leveraged for breakthrough leadership and innovation.
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada. On this episode, my guest is Soren Kaplan, the author of the new book, Experiential Intelligence, Harness the Power of Experience for Personal and Business Breakthroughs. Soren shares how his unusual early life experiences shaped his resilience and framework through which he saw the world and how this essential third level of intelligence after IQ and EQ makes for successful, agile and resilient leaders. Soren Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Soren Kaplan 00:38
Doing well. Thanks for having me, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc 00:40
Well, thanks so much for joining me on the pod where am I finding you today?
Soren Kaplan 00:44
I'm up in Bellingham, Washington, which is right above Seattle and below Vancouver, Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:50
Well, listen, thanks again for joining me, I look forward to hearing all about the book and, and what, I got lots of questions that I'm really keen to get into with, but let's start a little bit of at the beginning, let's start with a bit about yourself, your background and what you do for a living.
Soren Kaplan 01:05
I've done strategy and innovation consulting work for many years, about 25 years, formerly ran the strategy group at Hewlett Packard, HP, in Silicon Valley and probably worked with 30 of the Fortune 1000, from Visa, Red Bull, L'Oreal, Kimberly Clark, Colgate, and even the National Association of Convenience Stores and it's all about innovation, and leading for innovation and then a couple years ago, I also started a software company focused on taking a lot of those best practices that I had been kind of doing individually and trying to scale those up and make them available to teams and organizations.
Michael LeBlanc 01:43
Now normally, at this point in the podcast, I'd ask the guests, you know, in your youth, were you always oriented to do these things? You've got a very interesting story about your youth. I want to get to real quick, because typically, I'd say hey, did you stumble into this or were you always interested in business but your, your path way is very interesting. So, let's just jump right in and talk about the book. ‘Experiential Intelligence, Harness the Power of Experience for Personal and Business Breakthroughs’. So first of all, not your first book, you're an award-winning author. You're probably familiar with the process of creating books and publishing and editing and getting them into market, but it doesn't get any easier writing the books and what's your tradecraft for how you write the next book?
Soren Kaplan 02:24
That's a great question. The process for me is easier when I bring my whole self to it and I'm really tapping in on what I know, which is why this third book of mine was probably easier to write than the others and the other, on the other hand, a little harder, because it required me to dig deep at the same time. So probably a little bit of a different process but for me, it was a little bit easier, actually.
Michael LeBlanc 02:54
Now, did you set an 'every day I need to write so many words', just, just the practical tradecraft or did it all come out and then get edited or was it really, now how did it come out?
Soren Kaplan 03:04
I, I don't operate that way. Like I need 1000, 2000 words a day, I let my energy and kind of motivation, let that guide me. So in certain days, I might read ten, fifteen thousand words, other days zero and so you know, my book really, is trying to encapsulate what I've learned over 25 years working with leaders and a lot of organizations and my personal experience in some of the challenges that I've had and leading, you know, my consulting firm and doing startups, but also, you know, how do I tap into strengths that I've gotten how other I've seen other leaders do the same and so it was, you know, certain days, I'd feel motivated in certain days, I wouldn't, and I didn't push it, I kind of let you know, kind of what I've learned about how innovation works guide me.
Michael LeBlanc 03:59
Oh, that's interesting. Who did you write the book for, who should read it?
Soren Kaplan 04:03
I wrote it for any leader who wants to take themselves to the next level but recognizing that taking themselves to the next level also means taking their teams to the next level as well. So, it's really you know, leaders who are working with teams that want you know, much higher performance from the standpoint of innovation and collaboration, but recognizing you’ve got to sort of go deep and be a little vulnerable and create, you know, psychological safety for your team to do so.
Michael LeBlanc 04:36
Alright, well, let's start with the basics. What is experiential intelligence? Let's start there. Lots of questions. Probably too many for us, our time together, but maybe there'll be a follow up but let's start the basics. What's experiential intelligence?
Soren Kaplan 04:48
So, we, we've known that intellect, IQ is important and about 35 years ago or so we learned about emotional intelligence, EQ,
Michael LeBlanc 04:59
EQ, yeah.
Soren Kaplan 05:00
And today's world, lots, a lots changed in 30, 35 years, you know, we've got, you know, artificial intelligence, we've got lots of disruption from technology happening out there, we've got whole new business models, the notion that IQ and EQ are sufficient to really understand what leads to personal and professional success just isn't enough and it's sort of a no brainer, but of course, are the experiences we have in life as well as in business, are the third leg of the stool, I just call it an experiential intelligence to complement emotional and intelligence and intellect and your experiences actually, are a form of develop, develop a form of intelligence that you can leverage and use and some people call it street smarts, other people just called it the 10,000 hour rule. But you know, experiential intelligence is a real form of intelligence. It was created by the past president of the American Psychological Association introduced the term, and then I've kind of blown it out, and it could have created a framework around it with tools and things like that.
Michael LeBlanc 06:04
And you go on in the book to call it XQ, right, just so that we have this compartmentalizing of IQ and EQ, now it's, it's XQ, right? So, we can refer to it, that later, um, you wrote the book during an interesting time in our lives. Any, as you reflect on that time, during the COVID era, and the craziness that went on, did it, did it impact your writing, and did you reflect upon your lessons learned for that time?
Soren Kaplan 06:28
It absolutely did. I think like, like a lot of, like a lot of people during COVID, I reflected on my purpose and what was going on in the world and how I fit into it and, and it really did conjure up some, some past experiences of mine and kind of looking at where I, how I came to be in this crazy world we're in and so you know, to kind of quickly summarize it. When I was three, my mother developed a mental illness. By the time I was, my father was rarely around, he's working multiple jobs, he was kind of focused on some spiritual pursuits of his and by the time I was 15 years old, we had moved 16 times.
Soren Kaplan 07:09
And so, I grew up with incredible uncertainty and by all kinds of psychological measures, some trauma and I had to overcome a lot of that, and it was hurting some of my relationships and business and my personal life. So I did a lot of work on that, but what I also realized is that the same things that traumatized me actually instilled and helped me develop some great strengths, like living with ambiguity, making decisions at the last minute with limited data, understanding people's motivations, and reading body language and really uncertain situations which I've been able to do and you know, in some of their organizational leadership and culture work I've done so the same things that shape us through our experiences that can limit us also can deliver really unique strengths and experiential intelligence is about understanding both sides of those things and then overcoming the things holding you back and leaning into the things that you've, you gained through your experiences. They don't have to be bad experiences, they can be joyous, and they can be fun, whatever they were and so it's that's what experiential intelligence is all about.
Michael LeBlanc 08:20
I mean, you're treading on, and you mentioned him in the book, some familiar territory, Malcolm Gladwell's outliers that said, you know, a little bit of trouble, or adversity in our lives is a good thing. At some point, there's just too much adversity to overcome, but do you, do you think that just reflecting back again, on the COVID era, that that was a little bit of adversity for everybody, and, you know, if there's anything that comes out of that craziness, we're a little more agile or a little more resilient, do you, you have any perception around that?
Soren Kaplan 08:46
I think you've just started to summarize it, you know, we all had a collective experience during COVID we all respond to our experiences differently, you know, generally, and we have our own responses, but, you know, we had a collective experience, and we all had to live with uncertainty, we all had to live with ambiguity and so I do believe as we are continuing to move through what those couple of years created in our environment for us individually and as a society, and as societies. We will recognize that it instilled certain, you know, mindsets around resilience, and the need to support other people and the recognition that we are a global community now, that is all, that's interdependent, and, you know, we can we, I think we have an opportunity to take that new mindset, collective mindset and do good things with it. You know, and I know we have a lot of polarization and conflict these days but-
Michael LeBlanc 09:55
I was gonna say it's sometimes it's hard to see that as an outcome from the COVID era that we're all in it together, I mean, you know, ripped from the headlines pick any given day, and whether it's Europe or Southeast Asia, it doesn't feel like we're all in it together doesn't feel like we learned a lesson there, but maybe it's I don't know, maybe it's deeper than then we know, what do you think?
Soren Kaplan 10:14
Well, you know, I, I'm articulating something that I know others also view that there's an end, there's fundamental interdependence and there is, you know, a, we all prove that we had some resilience. Now, what we decide to do with that is another question. I do believe that there's kind of this collective, you know, understanding of those principles, to a certain extent, and, you know, how we then respond to, you know, what's driving us from a fear based standpoint, or from a competitive standpoint, you know, we can, we can let certain things drive our behavior, or we can recognize maybe some of our learnings and try to reframe, and help, you know, help others see more positive possibilities.
Michael LeBlanc 11:05
Let's build on your experiences and this framework for innovation, because that's really what we're here to talk about. and it's what you're such an expert on. So, I can't, you know, can't not have you on the mic and talk about this. Is there a risk of being a prisoner of your experience, does it work the other way that you, you know, Steve Dennis, and you and I were talking off mic, we both know Steve Dennis and he often says, you know, why does it take a crisis for people to innovate, can you can you be trapped in your prior experiences, and your book is really about breaking through that as I read it, but talk about that, though, you know, you, you wind up with a framework so rigid, that it's just difficult to break through with, with genuine innovation, talk about your experiences, in that.
Soren Kaplan 11:45
I'm gonna, I'm gonna dumb this down really quick and then I'll share a personal example. So think about how you learn how to ride a bike, you didn't, you didn't use your, necessarily your intellect to figure that out, you tried it out, and you fall, you fall over, you might have had training wheels, eventually you learn to you know, to steer, steer with the, with the handlebars and braking, you know, those are your base skills and then if you practice a little bit more, maybe you could anticipate bumps or potholes or figure out how to ride defensively around traffic, those are higher order abilities.
Soren Kaplan 12:16
And then you have mindsets. So, you know, if you have a good experience riding a bike, you might realize that you can use it for transportation, or socializing with friends, and maybe adventure. So those are your mindsets around riding a bike. Now, if you are falling over a lot, or maybe you fell over you got embarrassed in front of your friends, you might develop a mindset that you don't want to be embarrassed again and that a bike is a tool to be embarrassed and so you may not resonate with riding bikes, or if you got hurt, you might realize you might have mindset, this bike is dangerous, I don't want to, I don't want to put my myself in harm's way.
Soren Kaplan 12:54
And so those same kinds of the mindsets, abilities and know how, what your makeup experiential intelligence are at play all the all the time and so, you know, that's just a very simple example that most of us can relate to, you know, my, my other personal example I talked about, it's very simple. When I went to buy a car with my father, when I was a teenager, very uncomfortable situation. The salesperson, it was kind of like a bait and switch kind of tactic it was they were kind of notoriously known for, for unethical sales practices but in those 15 minutes, I saw my father get really uncomfortable, I saw, you know, kind of these interactions, I was pretty silent during the time I was just observing it, but I took away salespeople, this mindset that, and this belief, salespeople can't be trusted.
Soren Kaplan 13:42
And so that has got in my way over time around how I interact with people who are just trying to help me out or, you know, if I'm trying to just be in situations where I'm negotiating a partnership, I have this this lack of trust that I'm now aware of that was I think impacting kind of how I showed up and my behavior. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, like I also recognize, it's important to understand people's motivations. And I took that mindset away from that interaction too, which has led me to, you know, a lot of innovation work where you're doing empathy, research with customers, and trying to really understand, deeply, where people are coming from. I've done a lot of mediation work as well in teams with leaders and so, one experience delivered something that got in my way, and also something that has led me to develop other abilities and skills that I've really used. So being in touch with that whole of what we're getting from an experience both the limiters as well as the expanders, if you will, is an important attribute if you're able to do that.
Michael LeBlanc 14:47
It's a concept you talk about, hidden assets. I think you're talking about something you described as hidden assets within your experiences, kind of like taking potentially negative experiences and reframing or learning and it reminded me of Dan Pink, and he talks about the power of regret, you know, never, he doesn't like people saying, you know, I have no regrets, you know, well not welcome your regrets, but you know, recognize them and then then learn from them is that basically what you're articulating as well, that same kind of for every experience, I mean, I think you just basically articulated with the car sales example, right, so you got both positive and negative from it?
Soren Kaplan 15:21
It is, and I think that the challenge sometimes is that we, we don't look into our past to understand what we gained from it and it's a little bit more than just what did we learn from it, like, we may or may not be conscious of what, what was instilled in us from, you know, a mindset standpoint, when mindsets, your attitudes and beliefs about yourself, other people in the world. So, you know, being able to get a little bit, go a little bit deeper, understand how an experience really impacted you.
Soren Kaplan 15:52
Whether it was, you know, kind of a little experience or whether it was a bigger traumatic experience, or whether it was just an amazing, joyous experience, like what am I taking away from that that's shaping me and leading me to do things maybe on autopilot or consciously into the future. So, it's, it's more than learning, it's, it's really, it shapes who we become as people and being more mindful and insightful about those experiences and how they impact us, give us more control and help us find those assets to leverage not just in ourselves, but even in other people.
Michael LeBlanc 16:28
Let's pivot a bit, kind of all the way back to the beginning, you talked about a book written for leaders, let's talk about advice to leaders. It, there's a very boisterous conversation going on right now, in business, at least around in person versus remote work and so you might have leaders who are leading teams of people in person or remote or local or global, how can our personal influence amplify the strengths in our teams, you talked about building the basically, your experiential intelligence at the team level, which I found really fascinating talk about that a bit.
Soren Kaplan 16:59
Yeah, there's a number of different techniques you can use, I wrote an HBR article on, on how to, what I call, hire outside the box. Which basically means, you know, if you're trying to hire, you know, onto your team, you know, certain, you know, skills and abilities, you may not necessarily want to be stuck to the typical job descriptions that HRs giving you, you may want to look for people who have much, much broader diverse experiences. I mean, you know, I look at, like, international travel. I hired someone recently, who had traveled a lot, she was 22 years old, she had just gotten back from traveling for six months alone in India. Now, that tells me that she's pretty resourceful, she's adaptable, you know, there's a lot of skills there that are not really on her resume, that allowed her to fit into my team very, very easily.
Michael LeBlanc 17:55
I hear, I hear the same thing spoken about elite college university or even high school athletes, right, they come with, they come with a certain, you know, DNA that that is, is demonstrable, but not always on the resume, right?
Soren Kaplan 18:08
It's a great, great example, yeah. You can also in, you know, in your team, you can draw out even in your existing team draw out what those hidden assets are. So, for example, it's not rocket science to do this. I, I lead a session with Fortune 1000 company, they are in the online retail space, and they had a team that hadn't gotten together since COVID. A lot of new, new players as well and they finally did get together face to face. So, I helped lead their meeting. It was a one-day session, but we had everybody just come into the room ready to talk about what are three, you know, really poignant experiences they've had in their lives.
Soren Kaplan 18:50
It could be business or personal, that really shaped them to be who they are today and what are the strengths that those lead to. Super simple and we just, you know, we paired people up had people have conversations, and then we had those pairs get into groups of six people, so three pairs, and then they all kind of shared an extrapolation of those stories and what they were able to do is recognize the assets that existed in that team at a much more strategic higher level and after we did that, we said, okay, look at all these amazing assets sitting in the room, how do we leverage these to achieve our, you know, annual goals and strategies. So, there's, there's a way to kind of pull-out from your team strengths that exist that people may not always be aware of, or even talking about and appreciating with each other too. I mean, that process itself really creates a connection between people and trust.
Michael LeBlanc 19:44
Yeah, I like, I like how you, you kind of take on that old chestnut, 'No, I in teams', you know, where, where there's all basically what you're saying is, you know, you build a team that looks like yourself, and you're gonna get predictable outcomes, not necessarily innovation. Is that a fair statement?
Soren Kaplan 20:00
You know, so, so on the one hand, you could say there's a little bit truth in 'There's on I, in teams', but on the other hand, what I say is, every individual member is an 'I', they're an individual, and that the, the power of a team is to leverage the strengths of every one of those individuals and so, you know, that's where I think the, the example I just gave with that retailer, online retailer, and then also, you know, being able to be a leader who uncovers that for your team, and for those individuals so that everyone can step up and contribute what, you know ,what they have to offer.
Michael LeBlanc 20:34
I mean, talking about these, let's say, let's hone in on team I-, or team EQ, how do you measure such a thing? How do you know if you've developed that if you're a leader, and you say, 'This is my objective, I've read this amazing book and I really want to get there.' How do you know when you're there?
Soren Kaplan 20:47
Great question. There's a couple ways. One is qualitatively where you see people tapping into and talking about what they're looking for from others and contributing from themselves, that reference or connect to non-work-related experiences, everybody has their outside of work world, and a lot of times we actually have assets that we're, we're contributing and so that's just a very qualitative measure.
Soren Kaplan 21:18
I saw a lot of that, in that team building activity I talked about, but there's other things that you can focus on around, how much is this team-, you know, questions I've got in assessment, that's something that teams sometimes use, but you know, things like, how much are we intentionally looking at what happened in the last year through our, of our experiences, that's shaping what we're doing today, and how we're going to move forward into the future. Shaping us, either holding us back or empowering us. So, you know, kind of that after action review or retrospectives, whatever you might want to call it, but being able to do that is one important thing to do and you can you can measure that sorta, you know,
Michael LeBlanc 22:03
Yeah.
Soren Kaplan 22:03
You can survey and do assessment.
Michael LeBlanc 22:07
All right. Well, let's, last question for you, advice for retailers and I'm going to frame it in two starts and one stop. Two things based on your book and your writing and your experience that they should start doing if they're not and one thing, they should probably stop, maybe it doesn't work anymore. Maybe, you see it way too often. Based on your experiences and learning, what are your two starts and one stop?
Soren Kaplan 22:26
Yeah, thank you. I think the, the ‘starts’ are look for those, what I call hidden strengths, and draw them out, number one, in yourself. So, if you're leading, you know, if you're, you know, you're in retail, and you're leading a team, and you're trying to drive forward your strategy, think about how you connect the dots for yourself to the different things you've done in your, your life, work, as well as non-work, and the strengths that they've given to you.
Soren Kaplan 23:00
And sometimes, you know, you need to have a reality check with somebody else you trust, like a coach or you know, a mentor or whatever, but the idea is, look at and understand your own strengths. So you can leverage those and then number two would be do the same thing but for your team and, and look at, I'm a innovation guy, so you know, on your team, look for people who have worked with, you know, some of the product companies, perhaps that you're selling, or, you know, have some insight around the vertical markets you're serving, and leverage what's in your team, that, from an innovation angle, so that you can, you know, figure out what that next thing is you need to do, whether it's a product, process, service, customer experience, whatever that is. So, find the innovation seeds within your team that already exist and leverage those.
Michael LeBlanc 23:51
Now, what should you stop doing?
Soren Kaplan 23:52
I think that, that it is a little counterintuitive, don't only look forward and it's important to look forward, we have to understand where we're going, we have to understand trends, we have to understand customer changing customer needs. And if you only look forward, you're gonna miss what worked six months ago that you can leverage that scalable, or what you might have on your team that you can then apply to a completely new context without reinventing the wheel. It's that scalable, experiential strength that exists. So look forward but don't only look forward you need to complement that with looking at experiences and what they've given to you and your team to leverage as you move forward.
Michael LeBlanc 24:46
Well, great advice from an innovation expert. My guest is Soren Kaplan. The book is Experiential Intelligence. Where can folks, Soren, if they need to, want to get a hold of you or learn a bit more, are you a LinkedIn person, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Soren Kaplan 25:01
My personal website sorenkaplan.com, sorenkaplan.com. You can get the first chapter of my book right there download it and I'm also on LinkedIn.
Michael LeBlanc 25:05
Fantastic and I'll put a link in the show notes so folks can, as I did, pick up a copy of your book or where you love to buy books. Well listen, thanks so much for spending time with me. It's, it was a great read. I really enjoyed the book and, and really enjoyed our conversation. I think it really helped, I don't know, it really helped form some thoughts I've been thinking around the innovation process particularly as a response to team in your last stop is super interesting. So, Soren, thanks so much for joining me on The Voice of Retail. Is a real treat getting to know you.
Soren Kaplan 25:42
A real pleasure, Michael. Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 25:44
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure and follow on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically each week and be sure to check out my other retail industry media properties Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global E-commerce Leaders podcast. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my YouTube barbecue show Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week.
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, consumer growth consultant, president of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, Maven Media and keynote speaker. If you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Safe travels everyone!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
experiences, innovation, book, people, team, experiential, leading, mindset, intelligence, strengths, leaders, understand, soren, shaping, assets, leverage, podcast, personal, recognize, retail