Intuitive leaders: Why you should trust your gut on strategic decisions

Instincts and ‘hunches’ may have a comforting influence on day-to-day decisions, but when it comes to major strategic choices and matters of great complexity, intuition doesn’t often get a seat in the C-suite.

Leaders are more likely to rely on hard evidence and data, logic and rational analysis to support their biggest and most important decisions. However, recent insights and discoveries in the field of neuroscience have given new importance and credibility to the role of intuition in leadership, especially when it comes to decision making.

Intuitive intelligence has been
treated as one of the most important leadership areas in developing the strategic skills of senior management in some of the world’s largest
corporations (including Telefonica, BASF and Metro AG).

So, why is intuitive intelligence a critical factor in leadership development and how can you develop it?

Beyond IQ and EQ

Can you think of an occasion when you had a gut feeling that a significant business decision wasn’t right but didn’t heed it and later regretted it? Do you often doubt your intuition in favour of hard evidence to support your business decisions? If so, you may be underutilising one of your most powerful leadership tools.

We use our instinct and intuition in many facets of our lives. Many people may feel that intuition has little or no place in business, that decisions should be based on empirical evidence rather than trusting your gut feeling. But, there is increasing evidence that intuition is more than just a feeling. Many scientists now believe that it is, in fact, the result of our brains piecing together information and experiences to come to different, less obvious solutions and conclusions. Decision-making and intuition are inextricably linked.

Leadership experts and those working in organisational development give a lot of credence to IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence), but intuitive intelligence can be the greatest weapon in business decision making.

Some people think that if they’re not creative they don’t have much propensity for intuitive thinking. They assume that intuition, like creative thinking, is a right-brain function. However, whereas many skills and capabilities are relegated to the left or right of the brain, intuition is a whole-brain function.

Some of the world’s largest corporations, best managers and strategists use their intuition first before looking to back it up with facts; it is almost as if the intuitive approach was the starting point and the measurement came afterwards. Intuition needs to be trained. It’s a learned skill and, the more you use it, the more reliable it becomes.

 

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When to apply intuitive intelligence

1. In a crisis.When rapid response is required and there is no time to go through a complete rational process of analysis.

2. In times of high-speed change.When the factors upon which decisions are made change rapidly, without warning.

3. In a messy situation.When a problem or challenge is poorly constructed.

4. In an ambiguous situation.When the factors to be considered are hard to articulate without sounding contradictory.

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Learning intuition

The Oxford Dictionaries define intuition as “the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning”. We sometimes think of it as something magical, quixotic and somewhat unreliable because, often, what passes for intuition often can’t be trusted.

Freud introduced us to the idea that what we think we know about ourselves may have nothing to do with what is actually going on in our psyches. More than a century of research clearly demonstrates that some of our behaviour is directed by unconscious wishes or beliefs that are the exact opposite of what we think we want or believe to be true.

Recent neuroscience research has added to this the sense that we can’t always trust our thoughts or feelings to tell us what is going on inside of us. But, with intuitive intelligence, we can know.

Imagine you’re at a noisy party, trying to make yourself heard in the din of the crowd. Suddenly, someone speaks your name – and you snap to the voice instantly, loud and clear. Psychologists call this the ‘cocktail party’ effect. It shows that what we hear as loudest is what we deem most important.

What goes for cocktail parties also goes for the voices in our heads. Somewhere in there, among the worries, doubts, questions, advice and roar of the crowd, lives your intuition, your inner voice. You can hear it to the extent that you have honed your intuitive intelligence well enough to give it your undivided attention – and know yourself well enough to distinguish valid intuition from wishful thinking, ego or unwarranted attachment to an idea.

Intuitive intelligence can be trained. We can learn to use intuition in trustworthy ways to address issues large and small – to create opportunities, develop a plan, solve pressing problems, open up new possibilities, resolve dilemmas and so on.

Your intuition can reveal some aspects of your situation which your ability to reason cannot. In fact, your internal radar works perfectly; it is the operator who is in question. There are things that your gut knows long before your intellect catches on. Every day, all day, an intelligent agent is sending you messages. The best leaders have learned not only to trust their instincts, but also to obey them. Obeying your instincts requires that you listen to your own internal voice and acknowledge your internal reference point, rather than rushing to embrace the myriad references and voices of others. Your instincts are readily available 24/7.

Your mind is continually in overdrive. You spend a lot of time in an internal dialogue – in other words, you’re busy having a conversation with yourself. Often, the self-talk is negative rather than positive and constructive. You can change that.

The science

The basis for intuition intelligence is a powerful new science of the mind known as intelligent memory – a convergence of insights from behavioural psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and molecular biology.

As neuroscientist Barry Gordon has noted: “Since birth our brains compartmentalize experiences and information akin to an elaborate closet organization system. The brain warehouses existing knowledge into separate files and, when new data is received, it searches the stored files looking for similar information. Upon finding a match, the new information is combined with the existing knowledge to create a fresh thought. This process, called intelligent memory, is the basis for producing creative, breakthrough ideas.”¹

Looking at this further, the process of breaking down and storing information is analysis. The searching and combining is intuition. Both are necessary for all kinds of thought. Even a mathematical calculation requires the intuition part, to recall the symbols and formula previously learned in order to apply them to the problem. When the pieces come off the shelf smoothly in familiar patterns, you don’t even realise that it has happened. When a lot of different pieces combine into a new pattern, you feel it as a flash of insight, as an ‘aha!’ moment.

You can expand your intuitive intelligence and develop greater trust in your flashes of insight through a five-step process (see box: Build your intuitive intelligence in five steps). This five-step process to develop intuitive intelligence takes place at a subconscious level, even if you use your conscious mind to formulate or rationalise the final results. Information is processed in parallel, not sequentially. Instead of going through the logical sequence one by one, you will see the situation more as a whole, with different fragments emerging simultaneously in parallel.

Your brain can be trained to work as an advanced pattern recognition device. Your subconscious mind will then find links between your new situation and various patterns of your past experiences. In a team setting, this becomes even more powerful as you replicate what happens in the brain in a group setting. This is how high-performing teams develop creative solutions and collaborative action, based on collective insights and wisdom.

 

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Build your intuitive intelligence in five steps

1. Be present. Become mentally quiet and develop an ‘eye of the storm’ mental posture. As you may have seen a martial arts master do, centre yourself mentally and disconnect from the emotions of the situation. Detach from all noise and voices, just be still and observe. Be inside. Listen. Look. Suspend judgement. Don’t analyse or try to understand. Just observe quietly. In a crisis, this can be done in just a matter of seconds. It’s the starting point to engaging the whole brain.

2. See the whole picture. Interrogate the context. Become a detached observer of the situation and embrace the big picture. Get off the dance floor, stand on the balcony and look at the situation from a different, elevated perspective. See what has gone on before. Recall lessons from history or things you’ve read and may have forgotten – it’s all stored in your intelligent memory. Engage the other players involved. Talk with them, not at them. Be curious. Take in all different perspectives and data points. This engages your intelligent memory as well as theirs. Such conversations stimulate creative collaboration – one person’s observation sparks off another and a chain reaction of insights emerge. The whole brain is then engaged.

3. Clarify your intention. Be clear about your purpose. Bring this into the front of your mind. Your intention becomes the filter through which you observe a situation. This provides focus and helps you to zoom in on the few things that are most important. The clearer and more resolute your intention, the faster and more reliable will be the flash of insight that follows. Developing clarity of purpose requires deep reflection on your own truth about yourself, where you’re headed and why.

4. Engage your values. Either consciously or unconsciously, all of your choices and decisions are driven by what you value most. The clearer you are about the values and principles that guide you, the faster and more reliable will be your decision making and choice selection. Where you will end up in any situation in life will ultimately be determined by the choices you make, so close examination of values is about the most important work a leader can do to prepare for making good choices. When observing and examining any situation, your purpose and values engage together to provoke a flash of insight that feels right. This is when your intuition can be trusted.

5. Fierce resolve. Total and absolute commitment follows when there is a feeling of certainty about the things you feel are right. The power of discrimination and judgement lies at the heart of leadership wisdom and character. Your ability to trust and execute your choices, based on that flash of insight, requires consistent alignment of intention, words and actions. A decision is worthless unless it is bought into action and followed through without second-guessing or procrastination. In great leaders, this is seen in their fierce resolve to stay the course and do what needs to be done.

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Processing big data

Intuition intelligence helps you to navigate faster through vast amounts of unstructured data and can work around gaps and conflicts in information. Yet, even the most highly developed intuition can be misled if too many of the facts are wrong or missing, so don’t neglect the rational mind or need for diligence in fact gathering and analysis. Just get the balance right. An intuitive mind can become your greatest weapon in business if you learn how to use it confidently and accurately.

As Albert Einstein once said: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Brian Bacon is chairman and founder of Oxford Leadership Academy
(www.oxfordleadership.com)

Endnote

1. See Intelligent Memory: Improve the Memory That Makes You Smarter, Barry Gordon, Viking, 2003