Why your XQ is YOUR hidden difference

Good leaders lead from the front. Great ones lead from within.

That’s where your XQ lives. And it’s time you let it out.

When people talk about innovation in corporate spaces, they usually reach for the big stuff: market disruption, AI, product development cycles. 

But the most powerful kind of innovation?
It’s personal.
And it starts with what you bring to the table as a leader, especially when no one’s watching.

I’ve coached global leaders and senior teams for over 30 years and the most consistently overlooked growth edge isn’t a skill gap or strategic blind spot. It’s this:

💬 Most people are underutilising the one resource they’ve had all along.

Their experience.

Their lived experience.

What some now call Experiential Intelligence (XQ); the ability to draw insight, agility, perspective and instinct from everything you’ve actually lived through, not just what you’ve been taught.

It’s the wisdom that doesn’t come from white papers. It comes from failure, and indeed success although we tend to focus more on failure to avoid it and ignore why we were successful. From having the difficult conversation. From noticing your own patterns. From being willing to shift them.

And what happens when a leadership team learns how to access that intelligence, not just individually, but collectively?
That’s when innovation becomes more than a buzzword. It becomes a culture.

Why this matters to performance

In high-performing teams, intellectual intelligence is a given. So is technical expertise.
But XQ is what allows people to see around corners. It’s a magnifier and catalyst for exponential growth and innovation. 

It’s what fosters adaptability when the plan breaks down.
It’s what enables a leader to read the room, not just the deck.
It’s what lets you challenge the status quo without collapsing the relationship.

And in today’s leadership environment, that’s not just a nice-to-have.
It’s the edge.

What I coach leaders to do differently:

Transformational innovation isn’t about blue-sky thinking for its own sake.
It’s about practical shifts that have exponential payoff. Like:

•  Tapping into lived experience as a strategic asset, not a personal backstory.
  • Recognising internal blockers (perfectionism, imposter syndrome, fear of failure) as innovation killers.
  • Building psychological safety so diverse perspectives can actually surface.
  • Shifting from performance mode to presence, where real insight emerges.
  • Reframing mistakes as data, not shame.

In other words, I help leaders integrate the parts of themselves that most executive environments still ask them to leave at the door.

Because wholeness fuels creativity. And creativity drives innovation.

What organisations get from working this way:

•  A culture that innovates from the inside out
  • Leaders who bring depth, clarity and courage to complex challenges
  • Teams that trust each other enough to take risks
  • Sharper strategic instincts, because blind spots get smaller
  • Greater resilience, because people aren’t hiding the parts of themselves they most need access to.

When innovation is just a strategy, it stays optional.
When it becomes a mindset, it becomes contagious.

And the outcomes?

Faster, better decision-making.
More authentic leadership.
More courageous teams.
And performance metrics that shift as a result, not just because people are doing more, but because they’re thinking differently.

So if you're already talking about innovation in your business…

💬 The question is:
Are you creating the internal conditions for it to actually happen?

Because the future of innovation isn’t built on ideas alone.
It’s built on leaders willing to show up with their full intelligence.

Not just their IQ.
Not just their EQ.
But their XQ.
That’s where the real value is.