Intuition, also known as gut thinking or our ‘sixth sense,’ is a response shaped by past experiences and knowledge that drives decision-making. Intuition is your brain on autopilot; it is unconscious thinking, processed outside your awareness. Staggeringly, it is estimated that 95% of daily decisions happen subconsciously, so approximately only five percent of decisions are conscious. Experience and knowledge are processed and stored in our brain’s neural networks and other cells in our body, and we develop pathways that our intuition relies on. We are highly influenced by emotions, patterns, and data, which become connected, but our conscious logic can’t always decipher or decode these feelings or reactions, so we rely on more automatic reactions to stimuli.
Many decisions must be made quickly, especially in today’s fast-paced and continually evolving workplace. Staying grounded and using available data, trusting our intuition, and tapping into our intuition can help us make crucial and timely decisions. Please note that your intuition is more reliable if used in context with your expertise and experience.
Unconscious bias
The conscious mind can only process 40 bits of information per second, but the subconscious brain can process 11 million bits per second, highlighting the efficiency of our subconscious mind. We have to make shortcuts in our brains because we are constantly exposed to a deluge of stimuli, and if we had to attend to everything consciously, we would be inactive and overwhelmed. Heuristics allow us to categorise stimuli for fast processing, but unconscious decision-making has a downside. Unconscious bias occurs when we are missing vital data and lack awareness, and take a narrower view, which can lead to inaccurate, irrational or poor judgments.
Advantages of trusting your intuition
Leading With Authenticity: Leaders who have worked on their values, goals, purpose, and long-term vision can make more automatic decisions that feel authentic and trustworthy. Authenticity builds trust and loyalty within a team and creates a more aligned company culture with a deeper understanding behind decision-making and transparency.
Less likely to conform to group pressure: Intuitive leaders are less likely to be swayed by group thinking if their intuition steers them in another direction. They are more likely to take bold, innovative steps that others may shy away from due to a lack of data or initial support.
Using Your Experience: Great leaders draw insights from a wide range of life experiences, which can come through intuition by connecting the dots and creating cross-disciplinary links that analytical thinking and single-level data alone might miss.
Best of Both Worlds: Learning how to balance and benefit from the strengths of intuitive and analytic thinking and data, can push your career and leadership skills to the next level. Trusting your intuition doesn’t mean ignoring the data; it means trusting yourself, especially in your area of expertise.
Fast Decision Making: Leading with your intuition can speed up decision-making response times, resulting in direct, streamlined outcomes, which is critical in today’s fast-paced workplace.
Reduces Second-Guessing: Intuition cuts through the noise and distractions, helping us stay mentally clear. Instead of solely relying on an analytical approach, where overanalysing can lead to decision fatigue and second-guessing, being more in tune with your intuition can drive decisiveness and resilience.
More Accurate Decisions: A study by neuroscientist Joseph Mikels found that when decisions are more complex, we make better-quality decisions by trusting our gut feeling. However, when using a feeling-focused approach, subsequent deliberation resulted in reduced choice quality.
Being Prepared: When leaders sense shifts before they happen, intuitive thinking can enable a pre-emptive management strategy and fast action. These shifts may be team dynamics, market energy, or cultural sentiment changes. This foresight helps them act before a crisis, giving them a proactive edge rather than just reactive.
How to be more in tune and trust your intuition
Surround yourself with intuitive thinkers. Being around people who trust and lead with their intuition helps cultivate this quality and bring more out of the team through the questions and ideas they ask.
Those who trust their intuition more are likely to regularly check in with themselves to pause, reflect, feel, and learn from past experiences to build further inner trust that they can rely on again. Learn from mistakes and accept that they will happen to build more neural connections and evolve, but equally learn to trust yourself.
When making a quick or important decision, rely on both the data and dig deep emotionally. Intuition is best utilised when the data isn’t complete. For example, the data may not show if the leaders in a new partnership are toxic; your gut will tell you that. Notice if something doesn’t feel right, if your mind is pushing you towards different thinking, or if you feel very energised by something in particular. Picking up on subtleties and leaning into our senses can reap great rewards.
