intuition

Unleashing Intuition through situational self-leadership

The Adventurer’s Guide to Unleashing Intuition

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Introduction:

In an era defined by rapid change and complex challenges, the ability to blend rational analysis with intuitive insight is more crucial than ever. Yet, many of us find ourselves trapped in the confines of our rational minds, not really trusting the creative and intuitive resources that lie just beneath the surface. However, the same models which enable us to develop and empower new people to safely take on greater responsibilities can also be used to enable our intuitive subconscious to take a more effective role in finding powerful solutions.

Navigating Complexity with a Balanced Mind

All around us, in business, in government, in social media, we’re constantly navigating an increasingly complex world. A world that has moved beyond our individual logical ability to make sense of it. A world where the consequences of relying on argument and opinion can be seen in increasing division, conflict and polarized debate. Where the temptation is to retreat into echo chambers which feed and reinforce a black and white rationale that belongs to a simpler world.

And this can be true of our own professional and personal lives, as much as it can the politics which govern our country. But the truth is, our greatest insights often emerge from the subconscious mind—those ‘Eureka’ moments that seem to come from nowhere. But how do we consistently tap into this well of creativity?

The Situational Leadership Model: A Guide for Personal Growth

The Situational Leadership model, developed by Hersey and Blanchard, which adapts leadership style based on the maturity and competence of the team, can surprisingly guide us in harmonizing our rational and intuitive selves. By viewing our conscious mind as the ‘leader’ and our subconscious mind as the ‘team member,’ we can embark on a transformative journey toward holistic decision-making.
In this way, we can adapt the model as follows.

The Four Phases of Inner Leadership

  1. Direct (Tell): Start by acknowledging the dominance of your rational mind. It’s your go-to for decision-making, but also the gatekeeper that often blocks the intuitive insights from your subconscious.
  2. Persuade (Sell): Begin to open up to your subconscious. Let it know that while the rational mind holds the reins, there’s room for the intuitive thoughts to surface. It’s about saying, “Show me what you’ve got,” and being open to the creativity that arises.
  3. Support (Coach): As your intuitive side starts showing its potential, learn to nurture it. Understand its strengths and how it complements your rational thought processes. This stage is about building a partnership between the two sides of your mind.
  4. Delegate (Empower): Finally, reach a stage where your rational and intuitive minds coexist in harmony, seamlessly switching roles to leverage each other’s strengths. This is the pinnacle of self-leadership, where you fully harness your inner genius.

Applying Situational Leadership Internally

  1. Acknowledge Your Growth Potential: Understand that engaging more with your creativity and intuition is a journey that starts with self-awareness and openness to internal dialogue.
  2. Embrace Challenges as Opportunities: Use everyday challenges as a training ground for your subconscious. Recognize that it’s like a muscle that needs to be exercised and strengthened over time.
  3. Constructive Collaboration: As your confidence in your intuitive side grows, actively seek ways for both halves of your mind to collaborate on real-world problems.
  4. Continuous Reflection and Development: Regularly review and refine how your rational and intuitive minds work together. Celebrate the successes and learn from the challenges.

Resources

The adventures in our adventure library are all about taking you to places that your rational mind would typically discount. The provide 50 week by week exercises to develop greater confidence in your intuitive capabilities.

Conclusion

In a professional landscape that values innovation and agility, mastering the art of situational self-leadership can be a game-changer. By fostering a dynamic partnership between our rational and intuitive minds, we unlock new dimensions of problem-solving and creativity. Let’s lead ourselves with the same wisdom and adaptability we strive to lead others, and embark on this journey of self-discovery to unlock the full potential of our inner genius.

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Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?
Refining intuition - colourful head in glass orb courtesy Geralt via Pixabay

Refining Intuition – Making better, faster decisions in complex contexts

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Intuition is increasingly key to making fast effective decisions. But can we rely on it? Only if we refine its accuracy with better heuristics.

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Intuition and heuristics

Intuition is becoming more and more important as the world get more complex. And the time to respond gets ever shorter. It is increasingly difficult for rational decision making to take account of all the variables. Furthermore, those variables often change before the decision is complete.
As a result, we are finding more people relying on intuition. Or to be more specific, on heuristics. Basically, heuristics are mental shortcuts which embody the wisdom of our experience and insight. Some are conscious, like estimating the volume of a rubbish tip. But others may be less so – like deciding we have enough time to cross the road before a car reaches us. It is these less conscious heuristics that play a large part in our intuition.

The problem with heuristics

Sadly however, heuristics are not always helpful. As examples, consider unconscious bias, our tendencies to prejudice, our addictions to gambling, and other bad choices. By and large, these are often a result of our heuristics. A list of the ways in which heuristics have been shown to let us down is surprisingly long. The diagram below (courtesy of John Manoogian III and Buster Benson) reflects a lot of potentially flawed thinking (not by them, I hasten to add).
The problem arises when we use particular heuristics in situations, or in a manner, which is not suited to them. And since much of our use of heuristics is largely unconscious, this can become a serious problem. Particularly in business situations where we will be using them more and more.

Refining intuition – the need to improve heuristics

Conscious or unconscious, heuristics are a skill like any other. Poor outcomes are not a reason for abandoning these skills, they are a reason for developing them. And for creating an environment in which we can use them more effectively. So how do we do that? How do we set about refining our intuition?
As businesses face increasing levels of change, and local autonomy increases in order to cope with this, this question will naturally increase in importance. Businesses which find good solutions will aggregate better faster decisions, and will deliver better performance – and not just financially.

A current example of refining intuition

One solution is training. For example, many companies have greatly improved their ability to harness greater benefits from diversity through delivering unconscious bias training. In essence, helping people to take more conscious control of their stereotyping heuristic.
To be clear, stereotyping can be an extremely helpful heuristic. Specifically, it enables us to arrive at very fast and reasonably accurate predictions of how complex systems might respond to changing situations. However, it can be very unhelpful when we apply it unconsciously to people.
Heuristics themselves are not good, or bad, but our application of them can be. However, it is impractical to train people on every single heuristic (there are over 200 listed in Wikipedia). Therefore, businesses will need to find mechanisms by which people can better train themselves.

Collective participative decision making

Key to enabling this is a collective decision making culture. One in which heuristics become clearer, and their application more transparent. This enables people to develop implicit agreement on where and when to apply particular heuristics. Furthermore, it helps them to recalibrate their own use of them. And it is this recalibration that is key to refining our intuition.
To a large extent this is already happening as a result of a growing interest in autonomous teams supported by collaborative tools. As team members share perspectives on situations, their underlying heuristics become exposed. In this way people begin to learn together what works and what doesn’t. Thereby refining intuition together.
This naturally, almost effortlessly, helps to form cultural heuristics. In other words, patterns of thinking which are validated, proven and then collectively adopted and further disseminated.

How thinking tools become, and develop, cultural heuristics

Inspiring interaction and engagement through Exploration TemplatesCultural heuristics can also exist in the processes adopted to provide the context for this learning.
Shared decision making tools such as fishbones, SWOT, six thinking hats, business canvas, force-field analysis and many others are themselves a heuristic device. They are a means of collective learning, discovery, and problem-solving in situations where outcomes are necessarily uncertain.
But they have an added advantage of breaking down complex issues into their component parts. Thereby enabling greater clarity over each element of the decision. And thus providing a much more explicit understanding of what personal heuristics are in play, and reconciling their conclusions.

The role of meetings

Change grows ever faster, and our people become increasingly dependent on personal heuristics to make their decisions. Therefore, our need to help them to ensure that these are effective heuristics becomes more pressing. Rethinking our meeting and decision making processes is the best means we have to refining intuition.

Useful links

For more on cultural heuristics, take a look at our main article.
For meeting tools that act as cultural heuristics in their own right. And which also help to recalibrate personal heuristics, take a look at our tool selector.
To explore greater meeting participation as a basis of continuing heuristic readjustment, take a look at our main piece on agile collaboration.

Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?
Picture of someone timidly stepping onto rickety bridge - metaphor for tapping intuition

#019 – Clues in Timidity – Tapping Intuition

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Tap into your intuition and use it to ensure a more secure footing – Use your subconscious to check whether your conscious has the whole picture

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Benefits of tapping into your intuition

Why take this challenge?

Access deeper levels of wisdom within yourself

Increase your success rate by recognising and avoiding issues in advance

Develop the skills of your team in predicting the future

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

It is a little known fact, but it turns out that most project failures could have been foreseen before they launched. The article ‘Using intuition to predict the future’ tells of a study of failed projects across a wide range of businesses.

The study was undertaken by a large consultancy firm. The interviewers asked those who had been involved a very insightful question. They asked whether, at the point of launch, people would have bet $500 of their own money on the project’s success. And overwhelmingly the answer was ‘no’.

It turns out that, after we have applied all of our logic in planning success, there is still an emotional component within us which has more to tell us. A subconscious sense which assesses things that are too complex and involved and uncertain for factual assessment. One that doesn’t return its answers in words and numbers. But in a sense of discomfort, or disquiet, that is highlighted when we are asked to ‘bet our own money’.

This week’s adventure is all about tapping into that intuition.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

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Useful links:

 

Picture of someone timidly stepping onto rickety bridge - metaphor for tapping intuition

Using intuition to predict the future

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Tapping into Intuition - using our timidity to augment our logic

How can we use more of our inherent wisdom to make better decisions with a more secure outcome?
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What would be the value of knowing, right from the outset, which of an organisations projects will most likely fail?
Supposing there was a simple test you could use to provide a reliable indicator of future failure? How much money, effort and enthusiasm could you save.

Surprisingly, it turns out that this simple test already exists.

The $500 Bet

Back in the 80s, I read that one of the major consulting firms undertook a study of failed projects. In this study, they interviewed the original team members of those projects. One of the questions they asked was: “Think back to the time when you launched this project. Imagine you could have bet $500 of your own money on the success of this project. Would you have placed that bet?”

The question threw people back to how they were feeling at the point of launch. It tended to make them reflect on their emotions and intuition at the time. And almost universally, they answered: “No, I wouldn’t!”

It turns out that  the two aspects of their wisdom were in contradiction. The conscious, rational part of their minds were pushing, maybe enthusiastically, for the project to proceed. But, somewhere inside them, at that very point in time, there was unease. The more subconscious, intuitive parts of their minds were already communicating concerns. And all they needed to help them to access that intuition was a thinking device. In this case, a hypothetical bet of their own wealth.

Thinking devices help us access intuition

The thing is, our intuition can process the ambiguities and uncertainties that are beyond our capacity for analysis and calculation. Even amid the complexities that exist in large projects (and increasingly also in small ones). We can sense truths even before they are realised. And that sense can be remarkably helpful if we access it at the right time, and in the right way.

It is this phenomena that lies at the heart of a meeting tool called “The $500 bet” (which you can find as a template for virtual meetings here). People simply place their avatar (or cursor) in the ‘Yes’ square or the ‘No’ square in response to the question: “Would you bet $500 of your own money on this being a success?”

The purpose of this question is not so crass as to decide the fate of the project. We simply need it to help us access that intuition. And to do it in a way that we can use it to work with our rational minds. In that way, we can work out how to fix whatever is causing the greatest risks.

Highlighting opportunity

The follow up question is therefore: “So, what would need to be different for you to feel comfortable in making that bet?”

This enables people to use their imagination in conjunction with their intuition to reveal the truths that we need to address if the team to be truly be confident of success. In the template, these can be added as sticky notes. The team prioritises these to a practical subset which they need to address, and then ask the question again of themselves (provisional upon the actions). And they do this up until the point when the team really would bet their own money on its success.

A few minutes intuition, or hours in rework?

The tool is simple. It takes barely seconds to apply if the answer is ‘Yes’ from the outset. And if the answer is ‘No’? Well, the extra time in getting to ‘yes’ from ‘no’ is a pitifully small investment in comparison to the costs of failure. Try it out in adventure #019

“The $500 bet” is one of a suite of easy to apply tools and templates for virtual meetings. Activate any of them, in seconds, right in the middle of your meeting, with no prior set-up or preparation, and no cost. Each is designed to better engage people and their ideas, and to build greater commitment in the outcomes.

Simply bookmark the page https://meeting.toolchest.org/participation for the next time you sense that it would be good to gain more involvement, new perspectives, or a more balanced exploration.