David Gruder, PhD, DCEP, is perhaps the world’s only clinical-organizational psychologist specializing in integrity development. Known as “The Integritizer,” he is the leader in transpartisan nondenominational strategies for solving the massive integrity deficits that have caused today’s vast social, economic, and political challenges. Dr. Gruder founded the “Integritize America Campaign,” an integrity stimulus plan for renewing personal, relationship, and societal integrity so we can finally co-create sustainable solutions to today’s most challenging issues. His latest book, THE NEW IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships, and our World, is the world’s first step-by-step guide to attaining personal, relationship, and career fulfillment during difficult times without sacrificing ethics and integrity.
Dr. Gruder will be on virtual book tour in May 2009 to promote his latest book, The New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships, and our World. We interviewed him to find out more about his exciting new book.
Q: Thank you for this interview, Dr. Gruder. Can we begin by having you tell us what was the idea behind your new book, The New IQ?
A: The idea behind The New IQ was to provide everyday people to world leaders with practical answers to these key questions about life: 1) Why have we allowed severe integrity deficits to damage virtually all parts of our society? 2) How did so many of us adopt the insane belief that life fulfillment, wealth accumulation, and a comfortable lifestyle require sacrificing integrity, people, and social responsibility? 3) How do those few among us who don’t make these sacrifices in order to live happy fulfilled lives do it? 4) How easy is it for the rest of us to learn to do on purpose what these folks do intuitively? 5) What profound improvements will we see in the world as more and more of us make this shift? I believe the reason The New IQ’s answers to these questions has won five book awards is because it reconnects he dots between integrity, life fulfillment, love, abundance, business success, and social responsibility.
Q: Did you outline before you wrote your book or just went with the flow?
A: I started with an outline and notes for each section, out of the silly belief that I was writing the book. The book had other plans. As the writing unfolded the process quickly shifted from me doing the writing to the book telling me what it wanted to say.
Q: What kind of research did you do before putting this book together?
A: I did the bulk of my research years before I wrote The New IQ. For many years I studied the question of what “natural developers” intuitively did to recover from traumatic experiences and build life fulfillment. I first wrote about natural developers in a now-out-of-print book by my first wife and me, entitled Sensible Self-Help. When I was writing The New IQ I took another look at that research through the prism of integrity. I was dazzled to discover that the seven core life skills natural developers rely on for creating life fulfillment appear to be equally necessary for personal, relationship, citizenship, and leadership development.
Q: Can you tell us if you interviewed people for this book and can you give us an example of whom?
A: I didn’t need to do formal interviews because my clients provided me with more examples than I could possibly squeeze into The New IQ on top of my own nakedly revealing stories. I did do one formal interview, though, and it turns out to have been an amazing one. It was with my mom, who was eighty-two years old at the time; she asked to share her story for the book. She asked me to interview her because she wanted to warn others about the prices connected with sacrificing self-integrity for the sake of security and following the rules. Still thankfully with us at the time of this interview, Mom has been deeply touched by all the people who have made a point of telling me how deeply touched they were by her story. Mom now feels a level of life fulfillment that she never before experienced because she is having a wider positive impact on others than she has ever given herself permission to have.
