Intuition is a very interesting phenomenon. It’s hard to define but has a lot of seductive appeal — not least in the world of business.
For example, why should you read through all those reports when you can claim to know the right decision simply based on your own intuition? And rather than investing time in building a relationship with a stranger from another culture — who challenges your way of seeing the world and your ability to handle their very different behaviours — why not save yourself the effort and dismiss their potential based on the magical gut instinct you have about them?
This may sound like the dark side of intuition, but there is a positive side, too. We’re humans, not robots. We feel things. We can sometimes sense in advance of proof what is right and what is wrong. We’ve all had that experience many times.
So, when can intuition provide a useful window on the world, and when might it simply represent the tunnel of our own cognitive bias?
The problems with data
The value of data or information when taking decisions should not be disputed. Indeed, information has always been essential to humans for their survival. Our ancestors had to choose which berries to eat and which not, which cave was safe and which was likely to harbour bears.
Today, we face rather different decisions. Which stocks to invest in and which not. Which person to recruit to the team and which not. And data always matters in such decisions. Yet, we can also have too much data and suffer analysis paralysis. Nor can we always be certain about the reliability of our data. IT experts will tell you that data systems are only ever as reliable as the person who inputs the information.
Then there is the problem of bias. I might say or think that my data is more relevant than yours — a typical failure in sales talks when people overemphasize features rather than benefits. And perhaps data isn’t always as empirical as it seems. Maybe it hides a dangerous morality. The analytics of profitable growth and the mantra of global capitalism over the past 50 years have contributed significantly to negative climate impact because ecology was not part of the data set.
Has the religion of analytics and data disconnected us from each other and our own humanity, and led us away from a sustainable approach to planetary living? Does our focus on the known and knowable impoverish us spiritually as we ignore the unknown, the emergent, the imaginative and the creative aspects of ourselves and our complex reality? “Quite possibly” is the answer to both these questions.
The human mind has both a conscious and an unconscious component. Much of what emerges into conscious thought is actually the result of significant data processing. This is something that we are simply unaware of, but that results in a “sense” or “feeling” about a decision or a person that subsequently turns out to be valid. Curiously, intuition and rationality may actually be connected — we are simply talking about unconscious data analytics rather than conscious data analytics.
The problems with intuition
But the answer can’t simply be to trust our “gut instinct”. Many of us have experienced some form of cognitive bias training. This has alerted us to the fact that many of our intuitive and emotional experiences of ourselves and others are, to put it bluntly, mistaken — and may just be the result of our prejudices and intolerance.
The psychology of priming tells us that, if you put me in a positive mood before a meeting, I am more likely to view your proposals favourably. If you put me in a negative mood, the opposite is true. Data, it seems, has to pass through very powerful filters. We are also prone to judging people poorly at times. The “halo effect” is a well-known bias, whereby we attribute a positive rating to someone’s overall character based on a single known positive trait. Yet, the fact that someone is good at finance doesn’t mean that they are a generous person. The fact that someone is brilliant at football doesn’t mean that they won’t behave irresponsibly behind the wheel of a car and always avoid drinking before driving.
Much of the leadership training I have delivered over the past 20 years has at its core the building of awareness about how often humans experience the actions of others negatively based on extremely little evidence. Watch how you read the emails in your inbox over the coming weeks, and you will see how little effort we invest in imagining the positive motivations of others, rather judging them for not being or communicating as we would wish. If only others were like us, we think. We say that we shouldn’t “judge a book by its cover”, but we often do. That is the dark side of intuition.
Benefits and risks
Intuition is a mixed phenomenon. There are clear benefits from using our intuition in decision-making, but there are also risks involved. So, how can we maximize the benefits and minimize the risks? For intuition to become valuable, it requires attention. And the fundamental step here is to concentrate less on doing and achieving, and to focus instead on being and experiencing. This means sensing how you feel, noticing the physical effects of your emotions and checking the feelings that others may be experiencing so that you can empathize with them. This will allow you not only to collect more emotionally based data but also to assess its relevance: “This is how I feel. Do I wish to follow this feeling or not?”
Listening is also critical to leveraging intuition — truly hearing what is said and how it is said, and what is left unsaid. Asking more exploratory questions enables you to test the accuracy of your intuition about what others are trying to communicate. Not asking leaves you simply making assumptions.
Managing the risks of intuition also requires a number of strategies. Firstly, surfacing and sharing your thoughts honestly. For example, this can mean explaining to others your ideas as “half thoughts” or impulses rather than fully formed opinions.
Secondly, when it comes to negatively oriented intuitions — suspicions about another’s motives or skills — challenge your feelings so that they don’t become destructive and toxic. Look instead for positive intentions, try to reinterpret the motives of others and ask questions to give others the chance to explain themselves.
Thirdly, recognize when you don’t have enough information and it would be dangerous to rely on your intuition when making a decision. Postponing decisions can often be a sensible strategy.
It is also fundamentally important to notice when your intuition gets things wrong. Hindsight bias is a wonderful cognitive trick that human beings use to convince themselves when faced with reality that their intuition has been proved wrong. We often tend to say that we knew it all along and that we should have followed — yes, you guessed it — our intuition.
Your leadership challenge
We live in complex times. Leaders have to manage complex systems and lead complex people, including themselves. They rely on their conscious brain most of the time to collect data and to take informed decisions. Yet, not all data can be trusted, not all data is relevant and perhaps the most important data is unknown.
Intuition is a secondary source of data. It’s a feeling and sensation that is hard to define yet may well be the product of an unconscious processing of useful information, which is why it sometimes proves to be right. But the duplicitous character of intuition means that it may also be an illusion, a simple ego trick designed to help you to perpetuate the illusion that you are right and others are wrong.
It is essential — but difficult — to be able to tell the difference. And, ironically, this in itself relies on a form of intuition.