David Gruder Transcript

March 1, 2008

Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Its Leap Day, and my next guess is Dr. David Gruder. He’s the author of “The New IQ” and TheNewIQ.com. Welcome to the show.

David Gruder: It’s a pleasure to be here with you, Kent.

Kent Gustavson: Can you give me a little sound clip about your book and your movement?

David Gruder: Integrity is the topic of the book. The subtitle is “How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, your Relationships and your World.” The book is essentially about helping people come to grips with how integrity is a very, very crucial self-serving thing to develop some real intelligence about. Its really not possible to experienece the fulfillment of each peak unless we really have excellent integrity.

Kent Gustavson: So, the IQ is an antiquated forum? Is that part of it?

David Gruder: Well, yes. In some ways its antiquated, traditional IQ is intellectual intelligence. There’s certainly value in intellectual intelligence to an extent. We’ve seen that get kind of updated through the emotional intelligence movement, which has been very, very helpful as well. The new IQ is integrity intelligence, which, I think, is really the solution to the vast majority of the problems we have individually, in our relationships, and as a society today.

Kent Gustavson: Is it something that people have to struggle with, integrity? Or is it something you’re born with?

David Gruder: That’s a really good question that you’re asking. I don’t know that its something that we’re necessarily born with, I think what we’re born with is the roots of integrity. Which are three core drives that all people have, as far as I’ve been able to discern as a psychologist. One is a drive for authenticity, to be who we truly are. The second is a drive for connection with others, and the third is a drive to have positive impact in the world.We can see all three of these core drives in infants and very, very young children. These core drives seem to be innate, if you will, as your asking about. A practical way of understanding integrity, that moves us beyond the philosophical, vague, abstract concepts is to tie integrity to being aligned with all three of our core drives. For authenticity, connection, and impact.

Kent Gustavson: I know that you do something called “energy psychology”. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

David Gruder: Yes; actually, I was the founding president of a nonprofit organization called “The Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology”. What that field is, is a newly emerging field within psychology that has adapted standard of care approached in other health care disciplines like chiropractic and acupuncture and a number of others; the nursing field as well.To help with a whole range of psychological concerns from removing old blockages and baggage to embedding and embodying desired states and desired beliefs. Through explicitly and deliberately re-balancing a person’s energy field, aspects of their electromagnetic system.

Kent Gustavson: For the doubters, what is it about an energy field that’s scientific?

David Gruder: Well, we can certainly determine that easily enough because the National Institutes of Health has recognized acupuncture as a legitimate and effective healing method. What acupuncture does is that it re-balances an aspect of the human vibrational matrix or energy system called the meridians; the pathways that chi, or energy, flows through the body.A large segment of the energy psychology family of methods do the same thing without needles through acupressure, or the equivalent of acupressure; which is just as effective as needles, it turns out. So we’ve got a strong scientific basis from the acupuncture research literature.

Kent Gustavson: How do we go about finding you and then reading the book and changing the way that we exist, in terms of integrity?

David Gruder: My website is TheNewIQ.com. T-H-E-N-E-W-I-Q all together, .com. On that website you’ll find information about The New IQ book, its accompanying workbook, and the energy psychology methods as well.

Kent Gustavson: This time of year people are sinking into a little bit of a depression. The nation itself is sinking into a little bit of a recession. How does this IQ, the integrity intelligence, how does that effect us in this time?

David Gruder: I think it effects us dramatically. This particular recession that we’re in is as far as I can tell in large part one of the first recessions we’ve gone through that has been directly caused by lack of integrity. Its been caused by lack on integrity in budget planning in the federal government, going into huge amounts of debt. Its been caused by lack on integrity in the mortgage industry, by selling mortgages that are out of integrity, then funding or underwriting those mortgages in ways that are out of integrity.So we’ve got massive societal lack of integrity that has directly, in my opinion, caused today’s recession, and unless we develop some further integrity intelligence as individiuals, in our relationships, and as a society. We are going to continue to have the business problems, the economic problems, the social problems, the ideological strife, the personal misery, and the relationship failures that we see in our society.

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Do you think we’re headed in the right direction?

David: I think we have the passion to. This is the irony. There are more resources available to everyone today for upgrading their own authenticity, their connection with others, and their capacity to have positive impact in the world. There’s no longer an excuse for not developing ourselves as individuals, our relationship abilities, and our capacity to have positive impact. So we are now at a choice point that has to do with our willingness to utilize those resources. It’s not that the resources are not available anymore, they are.

Dr. Kent: So do you work with individuals as well as groups and as well as being an author?

David: Right. I had a flourishing private practice, a waiting list private practice until 2000 and I closed my private practice at that point sadly because my workshop and speaking schedule was starting to take me out of town so much of the time. It was difficult for me to continue to work ongoingly with clients. So I work today with very few individuals, usually in leadership positions in order to help leaders really have more positive impact on all of the people that they are impacting in the first place. Mostly what I do these days is consulting, speaking, workshops, and writing.

Dr. Kent: You talked about a whole bunch of things in your book and people in business, in government, in religion have said that it’s an easy to read manual. Is it practical to have something that’s in common language?

David: Yes, I think that what’s practical–you know, my publisher was really reluctant to publish this book because he said, “Integrity–we all know that we have big integrity problems in our world today but integrity isn’t a particularly sexy topic. The reason that she said, “Yes, I’m publishing this book” is because I said to him, “Look, there are two ways to make integrity sexy. One is to convert it some of the vague abstract philosophical concept into a concrete set of actions that anyone from everyday people to world leaders can sink their teeth into. The second is to show how it’s extremely self-serving to develop impeccable integrity.” Once he read my book, he said, “Oh, my gosh, you succeeded at that. You’ve made integrity sexy. I’m publishing it.”

Dr. Kent: [laughs] The front cover, of course, has a big heart as well as a human face on one side–a sexy one, in fact–and then the other side, there’s a picture of the world. Can you explain the cover?

David: Yes, certainly. Three section of the subtitle. The human face is ourselves, our own authenticity. The heart is our connection with others and the world is our impact in the world. So three section of the subtitle, the “New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships, and Our World.”

Dr. Kent: Give me an example, what’s a way for all of us listening to simply make a change in our integrity?

David: An example on a personal level is that we can upgrade our personal integrity by looking at our self-care. A lot of us are self-neglectful because we’re so busy with our careers or perhaps we’re trying to do good in the world that we come last. People go into exhaustion and sleep deprivation and other kinds of not taking care of themselves nutritionally or exercise-wise. They deplete their own life energy to the point where they stop being as effective in their careers and their service work as they would like to be. So that would be upgrading personal integrity.Relationship integrity would be focusing on being much more honest about the commitments that we make so that what we actually do matches what we say we’re going to do. On the collective integrity level, societal integrity level, we can each do a whole range of things as what I call “everyday stewards” in order to express societal integrity. Things as simple as when we go into a parking lot, parking inside the line of the parking space rather than over the line into the next parking space which then makes it hard or impossible for somebody to park next to us.

Dr. Kent: So does this has something to do with karma?

David: Does it have something to do with karma? [laughs] Because I ride brought [sp] up cars? [laughs]

Dr. Kent: There you go, yes.

David: Yes.

Dr. Kent: In society, we always say, “If you’re the guy that parks over the line in the parking spot then someday it’s going to come back to you.”

David: Yes. It’s true that what goes around comes around. We’ve certainly seen that although some people get very impatient with that because sometimes it takes longer for things to come around to a person who we think did something wrong to us. We sometimes don’t get to see the karma we keep [sp] on them. But, whenever we do something that’s out integrity, on some level inside ourselves, we incur a level of guilt unless we’re completely sociopathic and that’s the very best minority of our sociopathic. The rest of us incur some degree of guilt for being out of integrity with ourselves or in our relationships or with society and that guilt does backfire on us. Sooner or later, it gets us.

Dr. Kent: So over this conversation, obviously, I think you hinted that earlier our government right now has really, in some ways, failed a lot of the people in this country and that’s why in both parties, people really want change. When you apply these concepts to say, our President or Vice President or the policies of our government, does it work on that macro scale?

David Gruder: Absolutely it works on that macro scale. I’ve done training of ambassadors to the World Trade Organization in integrity development and collaborative negotiation skills and things like that. It definitely works on that level. It turns out that there are 10 key aspects of politician integrity that voters and the media really need to know more about; and on my website, TheNewIQ.com, I have a free tool for people called the “Politician Integrity Rating Tool” that people can actually use to go through 10 dimensions of politician integrity to rate each of the four current major Presidential candidates.

Kent Gustavson: Now that sounds like a great reason to visit your website. TheNewIQ.com, how do we find that page?

David Gruder: All you do is you’ll see a link on the home page for the, it says “Politician Integrity Rating Tool”, or you can go directly to that page by going to TheNewIQ.com/PIRT, P-I-R-T, which is the abbreviation for Politician Integrity Rating Tool.

Kent Gustavson: That sounds fascinating. As far as the political, the Democratic primary is going, its been a fascinating circus, in a way. It goes from being nice to being vitriolic and back and forth. People that I thought had integrity in a way sort of… well, lets talk a little bit about that.

David Gruder: The vitriol, the kind of attacks on people’s character, the kind of spin-doctoring that go on in campaigns are all reflections on the lack of integrity. The only reason that that kind of rampant lack of integrity continues on all ends of the political spectrum is because the public tolerates that. The public I think in some ways tolerates spin doctoring because the public doesn’t really understand enough about what integrity is or how this lack of integrity is harming them and our society.That’s part of why I wrote the book, is to help people really come to grips with that and start to do whatever fits for them to do to help them turn that around in their personal lives and in their communities. So, this whole spin-doctoring problem, we see it beyond politics. We see rumors being circulated about all kinds of things on the Internet that are actually quite false, but are taken as though they’re fact. The saying I have for this, Kent, is “What you think is fact is probably spin.”

Kent Gustavson: What is spin, exactly? How does that go?

David Gruder: Spin is the process of taking a grain of truth and distorting it, twisting it or turning it to ones own uses no matter how distorted that grain of truth becomes in the process of hijacking it for one’s own agenda.

Kent Gustavson: Wow. Well, on your website it says “Integrity isn’t a burden, it’s a path to joy. Integrity isn’t a sacrifice, it’s a path to fulfillment.” So in a way, integrity is almost seen as a burden to people. Its something that they have to do, its “Oh, that’ll be too hard.” You’re saying, instead, its really a path to being happy, to being fulfilled?

David Gruder: Right. Everyone who reads The New IQ says to me “Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how personally important, how selfishly important it is to me to live in integrity. I never connected the dots. I always thought that was assured and something I was supposed to do as a citizen for other people, I never realized how being out of integrity harms me dramatically.”

Kent Gustavson: On your website, people can come and check their own integrity?

David Gruder: Pardon me? On my website, what were you saying?

Kent Gustavson: People can come and check their own integrity, as well as the politicians?

David Gruder: Yes. Good question, yes. I have some free quizzes on my website in addition to the Politician Integrity Rating Tool, just click on the word “Quizzes” and you’ll be able to do a quick integrity check-up. One of the quizzes is a quick integrity check-up quiz.

Kent Gustavson: So give me a couple integrity quiz questions. Lets see if I can pass your test.

David Gruder: [laughs] Well I don’t actually have the quiz in front of me, but one question is “Do you tend to put other people’s well-being ahead of your own?”

Kent Gustavson: Its a good question. I think I do.

David Gruder: And so, that would be an example of one of the questions. What that would tell you or tell me; in fact the quiz is automatically scored so people immediately get feedback about their relationship with integrity. Because integrity is tied in with our three core drives, if you were to answer that question and other similar questions in that way, it would probably turn out that you are either a do-gooder or a connector rather than a self-improver.Self-improvers are the people who focus primarily on their authenticity core drive, connectors focus on their connection core drive primarily, and do-gooders focus primarily on their impact core drive. So, you may be in greater integrity with your do-gooder or your impact core drive than you are with your authenticity core drive.

Kent Gustavson: This has been a fascinating conversation. You’ve got me hooked. The website isTheNewIQ.com, been speaking to Dr. David Gruder. The book is called “The New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves you, your Relationships, and our World”. Thank you so much for being on the show.

David Gruder: Thanks so much for having me.

Kent Gustavson: My next guest is the incredible finger-picker and guitarist on “Prairie Home Companion”, wonderful, wonderful musician, Pat Donahue. Come on back.

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