“The real challenge is not whether to trust intuition, but how to strengthen it to make it more trustworthy.” ~ Gary Klein, PhD, The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut to Make Better Decisions at Work (Crown Business, 2004)

Many executives will tell you that decisions should be based solely on a thorough analysis of data. But a new breed aims to achieve breakthroughs by harnessing the power of intuition.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, leaders must make complex decisions quickly, even when faced with uncertainty. Data and numbers rarely provide a complete picture. Making sound decisions in a chaotic climate requires us to strengthen our intuitive thinking. Refining our intuition ensures more accurate and innovative insights.

The more experiences we have, the stronger our intuition becomes. Repetition (practice) sets the stage for competency. Intuitive decision-making improves when we acquire more patterns, recognize how they play out and develop a larger repertoire of strategies.

Pattern Recognition

Repeated experiences are unconsciously linked to form patterns. A pattern is a set of connected cues. When you spot a few of the cues, you can expect to find others.

As we gain experience at work, we assemble a catalog of recognizable patterns. Over time, it becomes easier to match a situation with a previous pattern.

Action Responses

Patterns include routines for responding, known as “action scripts.” If we see a situation as typical, then we can recognize the typical action to take. We develop hunches about what’s really going on and how we should respond.

Using our intuition, we translate our experiences into judgments and action responses. When intuitive leaders see familiar patterns, their response is usually obvious.

Professor Klein offers the following diagram to explain the pattern-recognition process behind intuitive decision-making:

Pattern recognition occurs instantaneously, without conscious thought. We make intuitive judgments so quickly that they seem mysterious. Professor Klein’s diagram demonstrates the science behind these judgments. Situations generate recognizable cues, and patterns trigger typical action responses that, in turn, affect the situation.

The Role of Analysis

Analysis has a proper role as a supporting tool for making intuitive decisions. Not all situations and experiences are the same, obviously. The extent to which we apply previous action scripts or devise new ones depends on our ability to analyze projected consequences.

Professor Klein recommends using “pre-mortems”: discussions that imagine scenarios with various applied actions and consequences. Intuition helps us decide how to react, and analysis ensures our intuition won’t mislead us.

Know—and Check—Yourself

Intuitive thinkers admit their instincts are often plain wrong. They understand that human nature can cloud decision-making. For example:

• We will often take unnecessary risks to recover a loss.
• We tend to see patterns where none exist—a phenomenon statisticians call “over-fitting the data.”
• We tend to be revisionists. We frequently remember when we didn’t trust our gut and should have, while conveniently forgetting when we were fortunate to have ignored our instincts.
• We set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we hire or promote someone, for instance, we consciously or subconsciously expend extra effort to ensure the person’s success, obscuring whether our choice was actually a good one.

Intuitive People

Certain characteristics define executives who outperform their peers in intuitive decision-making.

• They’re open to feelings and impulses.
• They seek continual learning experiences and are unafraid of asking questions.
• They’re inquisitive and keenly observant.
• They have a good sense of what will happen next.
• They can articulate how a current situation has developed.
• They’re aware of their fallibility and are open to alternative interpretations.
• They’re confident when dealing with time pressures and uncertainties.
• They anticipate problems in time to avoid or defuse them.
• They aren’t put off by unexpected events; they use them to find new solutions.
• They understand their routines and are aware of system limitations and traps.
• They’re self-aware and acknowledge potential biases.

10 Tips for Improving Intuitive Decisions

Professor Klein offers 10 critical tips for growing your intuitive abilities:

1. Be the best. There’s no guarantee you’ll be an intuitive savant, but this strategy is backed up by empirical evidence.
2. Use analysis to support your intuition. Imagine which actions your impulse suggests taking; then anticipate what could conceivably go wrong.
3. Put more energy into understanding the situation than into deliberating over what to do.
4. Don’t confuse desire with intuition. Intensely wanting something to happen is not a reason to ignore commonsense intuition.
5. Override your intuition when it misleads you. Intuition is fallible. Your mind excels at holding onto inaccurate beliefs and faulty biases. Try forming an alternate story to get unstuck from a stubborn mindset.
6. Think ahead. Intuition helps us create expectations, connect the dots, flag inconsistencies and warn us of potential problems. A “pre-mortem” discussion helps teams run through a strategy to see how it will play out. In short, learn to foresee problems.
7. Uncertainty adds excitement to decision-making. Intuition helps manage this emotion.
8. Use the right decision-making strategy. There’s a time to rely on intuition and a time to analyze all of the factors that go into a decision. If the issues are complicated and no one has good intuitions about the situation, analysis makes more sense.
9. Consult the experts. If you’re in unfamiliar territory, learn to trust the intuitions of experts with experience. Experts will see cues you won’t notice and will introduce options you may never envision.
10. Stay alert for intuition barriers. Red flags should go up when everyone is expected to follow specific systems and procedures, regardless of the situation at hand. Understand when to question the data, and find out how parameters are acquired. You should clarify each step of your organization’s standard operating procedures to understand their purpose.

Practice and feedback are the secrets to developing skilled intuition. Work on noticing situations, recognizing patterns and discerning best possible actions. You’ll eventually enjoy the rewards of sound intuitive-thinking skills. If you struggle with this aspect of leadership, consider seeking help from a trusted mentor or executive coach. Practice and feedback are the secrets to developing skilled intuition. Work on noticing situations, recognizing patterns and discerning best possible actions. You’ll eventually enjoy the rewards of sound intuitive-thinking skills.

If you struggle with this aspect of leadership, consider seeking help from a trusted mentor or executive coach.

I offer a 30-minute phone consultation, which will be scheduled at no cost to you. Request at motykoppes@coachmoty.com.

I also welcome your referrals.

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