This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - AQ: The Intelligence You Actually Need (And Why IQ & EQ Aren’t Enough) with Liz Tran | 386

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

For decades, we were sold a lie: get good grades, be smart, keep climbing—and success will magically follow. But in a world of nonstop disruption, AI, political chaos, and careers that don’t come with ladders anymore, IQ and EQ alone aren’t cutting it. In this episode of This Is Woman’s Work, Nicole Kalil sits down with Liz Tran, executive coach, former venture capitalist, and author of AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That’s Always Changing, to unpack the intelligence that actually determines who thrives when everything keeps shifting: AQ (Agility Quotient). AQ isn’t about being perfect, flexible to the point of burnout, or endlessly accommodating. It’s about how well you adapt to change, uncertainty, and the unknown—without losing yourself in the process. Liz breaks down the four AQ archetypes (Firefighter, Novelist, Astronaut, Neurosurgeon), how proactive vs. reactive change impacts your life and career, and why adaptability is no longer optional—it’s survival. This conversation will change how you think about intelligence, leadership, confidence, and what it really takes to succeed when the rules keep changing mid-game. Bottom line: Intelligence isn’t just what you know—it’s how you respond when what you know stops working. Thank you to our sponsors! Sex is a skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Visit https://beducate.me/bg2602-womanswork and use code womanswork for 50% off the annual pass. Connect with Liz Website: https://liz-tran.com/   Book: https://liz-tran.com/#aq  IG: https://www.instagram.com/liztranwrites/ Quiz: https://liz-tran.com/#quiz LI: linkedin.com/in/liztran1  Related Podcast Episodes: Unlocking Your Hidden Genius: How to Harness Your Innate Talents with Betsy Wills & Alex Ellison | Ep. 289 129 / 4 Truths of Radiant Change with Kristen Lisanti Diversity Isn’t a Strategy - It’s a Leadership Result with Aiko Bethea | 378 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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To Canadian residents except those in Quebec in the territories. Segregated funds are administered by cooperators' life insurance company. Life insurance is underwritten by cooperators' life insurance company. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing women's work in the world today. We're torching that old playbook and writing our own rules. And that's the hardest part, isn't it? Because most of us were raised on a very specific success formula. Get good grades. Get into the right school. Prove your intelligence early and often. And of course, then success will follow.

Basically, we were told that being smart was the ultimate advantage and that our IQ was the golden ticket. And look, we absolutely need smart people. There are situations where we all want the smartest, most educated person in the room making the call. There's no argument there. In fact, based on what's happening in the world today, it could be argued that we need a few more smart people because the bar for informed decision making feels pretty low right about now, right? And then somewhere along the way, it became clear that IQ wasn't the end-all be-all we thought it was. You don't have to scroll very far on social media to see that intelligence is not the prerequisite for influence, wealth, or impact we thought it was. So EQ entered the equation and emotional intelligence became the new gold standard.

Understand your feelings. Manage your reactions. Lead with empathy. Again, super valuable, absolutely necessary. frankly, I wish more leaders practiced it and more students were taught it. And still, it feels incomplete because the world we're navigating now isn't rewarding who's smartest or even who's most self-aware. It's rewarding the person who can adapt, who can sit in uncertainty without spiraling, who can un-learn faster than they learned, who can stay curious instead of rigid when

the rules change without any notice, which brings us to AQ, the agility quotient. And in full transparency, which may call up my own intelligence into question, before this conversation, I had no idea what AQ actually was. I'd never heard of it. I just knew that whatever this is, and I gesture broadly to politics, AI, the medias, and whatever fresh hell is waiting for us next, whatever this is that we're living through, it's not being solved, by grades, credentials, or emotional intelligence alone. So we brought in the AQ expert. Liz Tran is an executive coach for CEOs and founders.

Before coaching, she spent a decade in tech at a top venture capital firm, and today she works with leaders in some of the fastest growing companies in the world. She is the author of The Karma of Success, and her newest book, AQ, Anew, A new kind of intelligence for a world that's always changing, is out now. Liz, welcome to the show, and I think or maybe just hope that the smartest place to start is to ask you to explain AQ. What is it that we're talking about here? Thanks for having me, Nicole. Your AQ stands for agility quotient and it is your capacity to handle change, uncertainty, and the unknown. And that takes two forms. The first type is what we call

proactive change. And I'm sure a lot of the people who are listening to your podcast, are familiar with that type of change. They are ambitious people who are always pushing themselves to the next boundary. It's a change that we bring on to ourselves. So maybe it's new habits, new skills we want to learn, a move that we want to make, whether physical or emotional. And then the second type is reactive change, which is the change that we see less fondly. And that's a change that happens to us. Your flight gets canceled. Your heat goes out. Your child is sick all night before a big presentation. It's that type of change that we didn't ask for and we certainly didn't plan for. And the beauty of AQ is that everyone has it.

We actually all came into this world with AQ for anyone who knows young people, young children, they're incredibly high AQ. And we can continue that, but we just haven't made it a priority. And so what's important about the terminology is that we're elevating this to not just be a skill, of, you know, how well do you handle change? But it's actually a standalone intelligence that is primary for the world that we live in today. Okay. So as a standalone intelligence, I guess my question is, does it work with EQ and IQ? Is it separate from why are EQ and IQ no longer enough? Like, how does this work with the other types of intelligence that we might be more aware of? Yeah, it's a great question.

So IQ and EQ are both extremely important. So I'm not here to diminish their contribution to the work that we do and to our society. But we have to look at the context in which we're living. So IQ came about over 100 years ago when France, particularly as a country, was moving to mandatory education. And so they said, okay, we have all these kids coming in. We need to figure out a way to rank, sort, and place them into the right classrooms. So how do we assess their cognitive intelligence before, you know, we even start teaching them? And then once that was developed, then the U.S. took a version of that and they turned it into the

Stanford-Bene IQ test. And around the same time, industrialization was also hitting everyone. So people were going from a life where they might live in the same town that their parents lived in, their grandparents lived in for their entire lives. And this was shifting towards an industrial society where you'd go try to make your fortune somewhere else. You'd move and join a factory somewhere, or you might join the government or the military. And these organizations also needed a way to rank, sort, and place people into the right categories. And soon universities were using it to school systems. And so IQ was very much a product of the time of basically saying, how can we give you the right tasks in responsibilities that work for the way that you think. And then fast forward 100 years later, IQ, still important, of course, but what we

are seeing was globalization. So IQ tracks to industrialization, EQ tracks to globalization. Suddenly, you saw the rise of what's called the knowledge worker. You're a knowledge worker, I'm a knowledge worker. A lot of us are. But that didn't really exist before. And suddenly, a person's job was just not about doing the work itself, but actually being a steward for the work, making sure it gets done by others, making sure people understand how to do it and how to cooperate together. So suddenly, you might be living in New York, but need to work with someone who's in Tokyo. Or you have a number of direct reports who are actually the ones responsible. So suddenly, your ability to collaborate, communicate, and to really understand the person who's very different from you became essential in a way

that it wasn't if you were going to work in a factory, right? And you had your task and your responsibilities or even joining the military where it was very clear what needed to be expected of you. And so those are always going to be important. But we're talking about is that they are now insufficient to describe the moment that we're in, which is that the rate of change is no longer linear,

but it's exponential. And the way that I want to invite everyone to think about that is if you were alive, in the 80s, right, wasn't so different from the year, from the 2000s, right? Like in a way that there was a lot changing with the internet. But, you know, the way that you communicated with people was pretty much the same. We met up in the same ways. We socialized in the same ways.

And now compare that 2005 to 2025. It's vastly different. You know, we're all staring at these little devices in our hands all the time. We make our to-do lists differently. We plan our work differently. The way that you physically look in terms of what you're doing, if you were a little puppet in a diorama, is strikingly different from the way it was 20 years ago, whereas everything else that happened in that century looked pretty much the same. Of course, there were events in culture and music and style, but really like the day-to-day experience of living was so similar. And so we, I think even now, I have had a fairly stable career. for the past 20 years, I don't even know what that's going to look like in five years. I don't think any of us can truly say. And so what we need to prepare ourselves for is a world in which there isn't a clearly defined career ladder or even pathway in front of us. And what AQ gives you is the ability to know that you're going to be okay no matter what happens. And I think IQ is like preparing you

for a road that you understand. EQ, I think is also very flexible. but what AQ specifically speaks to is if you don't know what's around the corner, that's okay because you've got your AQ. And I think the way that they all work together is that they are all in support of each other. So one plus one plus one is greater than the sum of three. Because if, you know, IQ is still a huge differentiator and so is EQ, but we just can't get stuck there. And we also can't see ourselves as stuck. We can't say, oh, I'm good at this one particular thing because that thing might not exist tomorrow. And it also prevents you from seeing where you might grow.

And I think that's a really important trade is that, you know, oftentimes we can get trapped in what we believe we're the best at or what we're the smartest at. But AQ says, don't let that define you. You're so much more than that. Okay. I have so many questions. I'm going to start with if AQ is about proactive and reactive change.

Is there a way, like with. IQ to measure it or with EQ that there are certain things that we focus on to get better at it. How do we strengthen our IQ, I think? And how do we even know where we are or where we're headed with it? It's a great question. And I think the nice thing about IQ is that there are lots of different ways to be a high IQ person. IQ is extremely limited in the most conservative sense of it.

take an IQ test and you get a score. So you're somewhere on some percentile curve that tells you how many people are quote unquote smarter than you and how many people are not as smart as you are. AQ is really different because it's moldable. It's very much how you understand yourself and make the most of what you have. And so the first thing I'll say is it's important to know your archetype. So there are four AQ archetypes. And I wonder if as I'm describing them, You can probably guess which one you are, but there's also a short quiz that you can take on my website. But the first type is what's called the firefighter. The firefighter is great at reactive change. So imagine, you know, an actual firefighter. They rush into a fire. They don't know what's coming,

but they are calm, cool, and collected, even in the face of chaos. Those are the firefighters around us. So I don't know if you know how any people in your life that you call an emergency and you say, I don't know what to do. I locked myself out of my car and I'm stranded on the highway. Or I had this huge fight with someone. Can you help me think through this? And they are probably even calmer when things are in emergency situations than they are day to day. So that's a firefighter great at reactive change, not so great at proactive change.

Because they're really good at handling whatever happens to them, they are less inclined to do any sort of foresight and planning. The opposite is the novelist. The novelist loves proactive change. Imagine, you know, what a novelist does for work. They sit there and they make a plot. They plan out every character's motivations, what's going to happen, three, four years down the road for their characters.

They are experts at bringing about change themselves, but when unasked for change, reactive change lands on their plate, they get really discombobulated. I personally am a novelist and my husband is a firefighter, so it's actually a nice combination because I do all of the financial planning. I do anything that is down a longer time horizon, but he's the person, you know, two nights ago our boiler broke in our house. And so he's the person who at midnight is going down there figuring out how to fix it

so that we have heat, even though it's freezing outside. The third type is great at both proactive and reactive change. They're called an astronaut. So imagine an astronaut. They exist on the frontiers and the horizons of whatever, future is. And they're really fast because they're great at proactive and reactive change. And the downside is that they might be so fast that the people around them have a really difficult time understanding what they mean. You know, like they have a vision for the future and

everyone's like, huh, I'm three or four steps behind you. Can you slow down a little bit? And then the last type is the neurosurgeon, which is deeply motivated by excellence, just like a neurosurgeon who's performing their job and operating room. They've studied for this for 20 years. They have a whole crew of scrub nurses at their disposal. They've practiced the surgery. And they are not so great at proactive or reactive change. They're slower, but they can still be extraordinarily high aQ because if you know any neurosurgeons, you know that once they've decided that they want something, even if it takes them a really long time to make that decision, they will not stop until they've achieved it. So you can see that each type may have its strengths

and its weaknesses, but they can all be extremely high AQ people. It's just about knowing who you are in making the most of that. As an executive coach, I really believe that. I spend far less time with my clients talking about their weaknesses than I do, thinking about how to augment their strengths and get them in their zone of genius. And the same holds true with AQ. I'm a novelist. I'm never going to be a great firefighter.

I can try to flex into that arena, but maybe the best way for me to increase my AQ is to really lean on my strengths know who else around me can be an aQ advisor and I can call on them when I need to see their perspective and opinion. So a lot of this is just about awareness. And then the second thing I'll say is that a quick check to see whether or not you are operating a high IQ is just to ask yourself what level do I think I am. There are three levels of aQ. And keep in mind, you might be at a high aque stage in the morning, and two hours later, you might be feeling low a cue, so it fluctuates. You know, we're organic beings. And so that's going to change in a way that's different from your IQ, which is nice because it also means that it's moldable.

But the first stage is, you know, am I avoiding things? If you're avoiding change, avoiding reality, you're probably in a low IQ stage. And if you are embracing what's happening to you, then you're probably in a high IQ stage. That's just a good. barometer. I saw something the other day that said that it's just a little funny meme, but it basically said that once you start taking everything that's a little bit annoying and finding it a little bit amusing, that's when you enter God mode. And I was thinking, that's actually what AQ is. I love that. That's so good. And I'm like thinking about situations in my life where I can reflect and go, I think I did that fairly well. And then there are definitely

situations where I was like, oh, I just planted myself firmly in the low AQ space and hung out there. And you mentioned earlier changed flights or delayed flights that usually brings out the worst in me, so I can relate completely. Sorry to break in, but this part matters. Rate the show, share it, and support the sponsor so I can keep making episodes worth interrupting you for. Every January, women feel pressure to fix themselves, be smaller, be better, be disciplined. Why isn't more pleasure ever the goal? What if 2026 wasn't about shrinking your body, but expanding your pleasure? Because here's the truth. Good sex doesn't just happen. Sex is a skill, and like any skill, it can be learned, practiced, and improved without shame

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of us because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. So I want to reiterate something that you said because I think a lot of times when people hear about quizzes or archetypes or things like that, they make up that one is better than the other or one is aspirational. You're saying that all four archetypes can have high aQ. We all fluctuate, and this is more about understanding what is our natural archetype and then how do we play to our strengths in that. Exactly. Exactly. And how do we recognize those strengths in the people around us and know how to appropriately lean on the people who are around us? So, you know, for instance, if you're on a team in the workplace and you have what I call a glass ball project, which is like you really can't drop it,

there are very few glass balls in this world. Most balls are plastic. It's unfortunate if you drop it, but nothing's going to break. I give all the glass ball projects to the neurosurgeons because they're going to make sure that every single T is crossed and eye is dotted and the diligence level is out of this world. If there's something that involves, you know, annual or quarterly planning, I'd probably give it to a novelist. If there's an emergency situation that feels a little chaotic and everyone else is overwhelmed, I'd give it to a firefighter. And so you can start to see how when we start to notice and appreciate the strengths and the people around us, then we can, you know, remove our ego. We don't need to be good at everything. That would be impossible. And I think that's actually like

the limiting factor of IQ is that we are kind of sold a little bit of a raw dream there where you're told if you have a high IQ and you work hard, everything's going to work out for you. that's unfortunately not true anymore. And I really saw that before I became an executive coach, I worked at a venture capital firm where I was the only female executive. And, you know, just a little bit by way of my background, I grew up in Section 8 housing and, you know, had a lot of, you know, income instability, a lot of just family instability. And when I was in third grade, I sort of realized, hey, maybe if people think I'm smart, then they'll like me more. And they won't see all this messiness and this chaos around me. You know, I don't have to be like the poor girl with the smelly socks.

I can be the straight-A student. And so I always leaned on my intelligence. And suddenly I got to this top-tier venture capital firm that I'd invested in companies like Spotify and Instagram. And I was really over my skis because I had never worked in finance before. I'd worked in tech, but more on the operational side, didn't really know finance, certainly didn't know how to do a deal, deal economics, how to, you know, they would pass around these deal memos and I'd read them. And then my eyes would glaze over because I didn't know any of the terms. I didn't know.

Everyone was like talking about, you know, bips and amortization. And I just was, I wasn't high IQ anymore. And I realized that it actually wasn't enough. I wasn't going to win on that dimension. And I thought, okay, what am I really good at? I'm really good at reinventing myself. I'm really good at changing and pivoting and learning. So anytime my boss said, who wants to do this project, I'd say, I'll do it.

And he'd say, do you know how to do this thing? And I was like, yeah, I've done it before. And I'd spend all night teaching myself how to do it. And I didn't come in as an executive. I was promoted to be a GP within this firm. And that was really unusual. And I will tell you it's not because of my IQ. I was definitely not the smartest person in the room anymore.

but it was really because of my AQ, I was more than anyone else willing to pivot, change, and also know that I didn't know everything and then try to learn it. So I'm going to guess that your story relates to a lot of us in some way. I mean, I am the daughter of two immigrants, and I very much thought that being smart, getting good grades, that was like the ticket. And I can think of several times where I realized I was not the smartest person in the room. I was never going to be the smartest person in the room. And there's no person who's the smartest person in the room at everything.

And it really messed with my confidence and my self-esteem until I figured out my way of navigating through it. And so this idea of AQ is really compelling. and I'm so as you went through the archetypes, I think I know which one I am, but do you mind me asking which one you think you might be? I think astronaut. Oh, I love an, I think you're an astronaut too. I don't know you personally, but I follow you on social media. And yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all that you would be an astronaut. Well, when you said about the like the amount of times I say in my head, like, I need you to just keep up with people. Come on, catch up. Classic. Yeah.

So when you said that, I was like, huh, but then there were a handful of other things. And anyways, okay, so I have one last question. I'm trying to figure out how to word it. I think we generally hate change. At least that's what we're told. A lot of us have a hard time with change. And yet we live in a time where change is inevitable. And I don't mean long-term change.

I mean like day-to-day change. if we think about AI and policy. I mean, God, it changes everywhere. So I guess my question is in our day-to-day lives, how do we put our AQ into practice? How do we purposefully grow and develop? You mentioned earlier, like it fluctuates even within a day. So if we are at a low point of our AQ, any tips?

in the moment, in the day, how to elevate or move through it, given that this is just an inevitable thing. I have two tips. The first is going to be a little more philosophical and the second is going to be pretty tactical. The philosophical one is to remember that we do hate change, but we are not meant to hate change. We come from a history of being hunter gatherers and being nomadic humans, right? There was no sense of stability where, you know, your role. roaming those planes, you're constantly in search of different food sources. And we actually, humans, our brains were built to be really, really good at not just handling change, but having change be an integral part of the fabric that we live in. That has just felt different because we

now live in these, you know, temperature controlled boxes and all of our food comes and these beautiful little packages for us. But deep down, we have it. We still have it. And I think every everyone here can look at their own history and point to a moment where they rose to the occasion at a time that they thought might completely undo them and realize, no, I had aQ. I saw that. And so the first thing I'll say is track back to those moments, savor them, relish them, and start to rebrand yourself as a high AQ person. Remember all these instances where you make a choice that is different than the status quo. And even though you might not happen 100% of the time,

it may not even happen 50% of the time, you still know how to do it. You have that muscle. And the second thing I'll say is that, you know, whenever you are feeling uncomfortable, discomfort, annoyed, any sort of negative feeling, the rebrand is not to say that I'm not feeling this way, but to say, oh, great, this is a sign that I'm working on my EQ.

You know, if everything, if we watched movies, where the protagonist just had everything fall into place, that would be the most boring movie. There would be no change. There would be nothing that happens. And if you think about the hero's journey, have you ever seen those maps? The hero goes through all these different trials and tribulations

and then finally comes back home again, a changed person. And that's really what we're doing here. And I think the question, this is maybe a little bit more broad than it is tactical, but what do you think the point of life is? is the point of life for everything to be easy and to go exactly as you want it to be? Probably not because I'd be married to that guy dated in ninth grade. You know, like, yeah.

But then he broke up with me. So, you know, didn't go that way. Or is the point of life to learn how to surf all the waves that come and enjoy yourself. So that's what I think AQ is like, you know, we cannot, this is just like a kind of like a, I'll just throw a few silly. little metaphors your way, but, you know, we can't control the winds, but we can learn how to adjust our sales. And I truly, truly believe that, you know, the harder the pathway is, the more beautiful, the view. And so that's the AQ mindset and practice is you, it's not going to happen

overnight, but if you can start to notice all these moments where you feel despondent, annoyed, mad, angry, disappointed, and you say, that's okay. I'm growing my AQ, then that's the real mastery is just in the noticing. I will add one other tactical tip to the list. Go get the book. AQ. It's available on Amazon or wherever it is that you get your books. Let's keep our local bookstores in business. And you can also find and follow Liz on Instagram at Liz Tran writes. We're going to put those links and all the other links, including the quiz she mentioned earlier in show notes. Liz, thank you so much for sharing about AQ and for being our guest today. Thank you. Such an honor to be on your podcast, Nicole. It was absolutely my pleasure. I'm super excited

to hone in on my own AQ, so thank you. All right, friend, as we wrap up, here's what I hope actually sticks. Adaptability isn't about being endlessly flexible, agreeable, or available. It's not about bending yourself into whatever shape the moment demands until you're exhausted and unrecognizable. Especially for women, adaptability has been mistaken for accommodation. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about being grounded in who you are while staying flexible in how you grow. Because change isn't slowing down. Uncertainty isn't a phase and waiting for things to settle before you act or decide to trust yourself is a losing strategy. The leaders, teams, and humans who will thrive aren't the ones with all the answers. There are the ones who can

tolerate not having them. AQ asks us to be curious enough to keep learning, honest enough, to let go of what no longer fits and confident enough to move forward without any guarantees. Because intelligence isn't just about what you know. It's how you respond when what you think you know stops working. So maybe the most powerful thing any one of us can say right now isn't I have it all figured out. But rather, I don't know. But I trust myself to figure it out. Because that is woman's work. Are you earning and investing in the stock, market, in real estate? How about in relationships? Are you earning and investing in your life? I'm Doc G, semi-retired hospice physician and host of the Earn and Invest podcast where we have the

201 or next-level conversations about money and life. Not only how you make money and grow it, but also how you use your wealth to create a better and more fulfilling existence. Join us every Monday and Thursday wherever you listen to Fine Podcasts.