is more about putting knowledge to use in an innovative, analytical, and practical ways. [1] Definition 2 The difference between intelligence and intellect is that intelligence is the ability to learn and apply knowledge and skills and intellect is the ability to objectively reason and understand something. For example, a person may be considered a genius for his intelligence, but may not have the ability to reason in simple situations. The same goes for the reverse situation. Intellect uses intelligence to discriminate between the good and bad. It has a control over the mind. [2] All a little confusing? It is indeed, because in the one breath they say that you don’t need to be intelligent to be intellectual and vice versa, but in the next breath they say that intellect uses intelligence. Let’s look at examples in retail. Trade unions have just been legalised in the country in which you live. You are spending about a quarter of your time negotiating with militant unionists. Most of those you come across are intelligent, but few are intellectual. They know what they want, but most do not have the intellect to apply reason. Which would you rather engage with? In my experience the more intellectual the person the easier it is to find common ground. What we need in retail depends on the level. At the top one would hope that we have people who are highly intelligent and also intellectual. This does not suggest that people lower down the hierarchy may not be equally intelligent and intellectual. But we can’t all be geniuses. Let’s take a typical store manager. This is a responsible job and a good manager invariably means a successful store. Does the manager need to be highly intelligent? My view is no, but they must be intelligent enough to feed their intellect. Does the manager need to be intellectual? My view is yes. They need to be able to understand and reason. Otherwise they cannot manage upwards, downward or sideways. If you explain to a store manager that wages as a per cent of sales must not exceed 20 per cent over a 12 month period, the manager needs to have the intellect to understand that if sales go up, wages can go up, and vice versa.  The manager must be able to reason that he/she can use excess hours from one month to prop up another month. The manager must be able to understand that if the sales forecasts are too high and if they are reduced, so will the hours need to reduce. This sounds simple. It is just a question of reason and understanding. Therefore your staff must be intelligent enough to supply their intellect, but more importantly, yes, they have to have the intellect to reason and understand. Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing www.impactretailing.com.au and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au or 0414 631 702 [1] For more information, please read: “The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius” by Nancy Andreasen [2] writinghood.com