Should You Follow Your Gut?
Recently, I was reminded of a life lesson. Don’t you love it when the universe presents you with opportunities to keep learning?
The life lesson? To never ignore my gut, my intuition, my 6th sense.
In this particular personal situation, my head was 50/50, my heart was all in and desperately wanted to believe it (I’m a romantic at my core and have to watch my heart, she can lead me astray!) but my gut was warning me to watch out.
When I found out more information, more facts, guess which one was right? My gut. Of course!
I don’t know about you, but my intuition hardly ever lets me down when I take the time and space to listen to it. This seems even more so as I’m getting older. It’s also true in both my personal and professional life. Although as a corporate leader, relying on my intuition to make a decision can seem like a career limiting move.
In business, you feel as though you have to tread cautiously; watch being labelled as woo-woo. No one wants to be the one in the boardroom who says, ‘this just doesn’t FEEL right to me’. This type of comment is often meet with eye rolling, followed up by the question of ‘do you have any facts to back up this FEELING?’
You see, intuitive leadership in the corporate setting definitely has a credibility problem. As a leader you believe that you need to explain your decisions using facts, data and analysis.
Traditionally, you’re expected to take a rational approach to decision making to reduce the likelihood of errors and increase the chance of success. Now, hopefully most of the time, the facts and your intuition are aligned, and you can make your decision swiftly and confidently.
But what do you do when the facts say one thing and your intuition says another? Do you just ignore it?
My advice? Absolutely not.
Here’s what to do:
Remember that your intuition, has developed over a period of time and it’s shaped by your history, your past experiences, knowledge and relationships. It’s all about the patterns you have developed in your brain. Your intuition is about the connections you’ve made and your past learnings. It’s working away behind the scenes for you and it needs to be listened to.
Trust your gut and use it to ask more questions and dig a little deeper about the situation. Find out more about the facts and build your information bank.
Create space if you can and let your brain work its magic. Let your thoughts brew and combine your stored experiences and intuition and the new data and information and see what conclusions you come up with.
If it’s possible, commit to only a short-term decision; pilot a program, make the change in only one or two offices. Give yourself the opportunity to re-evaluate.
Leading people is never black and white. It’s definitely shades of grey and these shades allow for different perspectives on the data and information being presented. There is rarely only one solution to a problem or one approach to take to successfully navigate a situation. Trust yourself and your past experiences.
The most effective leaders combine their inner wisdom with data and information to make the best decisions for their people, clients and ultimately their organisations.
And as for me, well…..lesson learnt (again!)
Champagne and Sunshine,
Midja