Global Journal of Management and Business Research, A: Administration and Management, Volume 23 Issue 9

9 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXIII Issue IX Version I Year 2023 ( ) A © 2023 Global Journals Spiritual Intelligence and its Practical Importance – Insights from Oman Cam Caldwell Author: e-mail: cam.caldwell@gmail.com I. I ntroduction n a world described as pessimistic and characterized by the deterioration of moral values, the opportunity to raise the bar of personal integrity and to positively contribute to the lives of others is possible when individuals choose to “find their voice” and help those around them to find theirs as well (Bennis, 2009). The challenge to discover one’s unique significance by finding one’s voice was often the theme of management guru, Stephen R. Covey who passed away in 2012 but his message and its profound importance continue to resound as an invitation to young men and women to become the best version of themselves and to help others to grow and to flourish (Covey, 2005). The purpose of this paper is to build on the great significance of Covey’s insights and their application to spiritual intelligence, the capacity to activate the higher dimensions of intelligence in enriching one’s own life and in guiding the three other intelligences: physical intelligence, mental intelligence, and emotional intelligence. We begin this paper by defining the four intelligences that Covey cited as the foundation of each person’s life and identifying their importance in a world that Covey suggested has become knowledge-, information-, and wisdom- dependent. After that brief introduction, we offer a Muslim perspective about each of those intelligences and suggest eight propositions about the significance of spiritual intelligence as applied to college- age young men and women in the sultanate of Oman – but applicable to other young men and women throughout the world as well. We then identify five contributions of the paper to the literature about leadership and its applications for young men and women of the 21 st century. We conclude the paper with a challenge to readers to examine the practical value of spiritual intelligence and its relationship to flourishing in a world where moral values and spiritual intelligence are often overlooked. II. T he F our I ntelligences The quest to understand the human mind and its application of knowledge has been a topic of interest to philosophers and scholars since the time of the Ancient Greeks (Thagard, 2023). Although there are differences of opinion about the nature of intelligence, Garcia (2012) suggests that human intelligence is the practical ability to acquire knowledge and to utilize that information to solve problems and maintain relation- ships. Although as many as twelve different types of intelligence have been described by psychologists (Gardner, 2011), the focus of this paper is on the four intelligences identified by Stephen R. Covey - including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual intelligence. Those four intelligences have been the subject of numerous articles and, while a case can be made for including other intelligences, Covey’s framework is the basis for this paper. Each of those four intelligences is described below. a) Physical Intelligence According to Stephen R. Covey (2005), human Physical Intelligence (PQ) includes a broad range of capabilities – ranging from 1) the capacity to read, hear, walk, talk, and other skills requiring coordination; 2) the refinement of any of a broad number of physical skills or abilities that require effort, practice, and learning; and 3) the multitude of physical actions involved maintain health, resisting disease, increasing one’s physical strength, or improving one’s physical health. In writing about PQ, Judith Fischer (2023) described it as follows: “Physical Intelligence is the set of physical capacities that allows us to learn and to express our thoughts and feelings. These capacities are located in our physical bodies. They provide us with information through sensory channels, and this information then becomes the foundation for our cognitive and emotional development.” We marvel at the refined PQ skills developed by concert musicians, world-class athletes, operatic singers, and surgeons who perform complex operations, but PQ is a basic and fundamental part of every individual’s life Tony Buzan (2003) has noted that PQ also includes all aspects of physical fitness, balance, agility and coordination, anticipation, reaction time, strength, flexibility and aerobic capacity. In writing about the natural functioning of PQ in every person’s life, Clement Ugoani (2017) explained that PQ integrates all of the complex organ processes in the human body - literally coordinating billions of intricately related biological and physiological systems I