Intuition is something that’s difficult to put your finger on…
But, pinning it down will allow you to reap tangible rewards.
What is intuition?
· Uninvited and instant: it’s an automatic, involuntary response to complex problems and decisions
· Affective: it’s accompanied by gut feelings of varying level of intensity
· Holistic: it allows us to “parallel process” information quickly and efficiently, and to see the bigger picture
· Non-conscious: we’re aware only of the outcomes of intuition.
“Intuitive experts aren’t born; they’re made – and there are few, if any, shortcuts to becoming one”
Potentially powerful and perilous: in the right hands, intuition can be a powerful way to handle complex problems under time pressure; in the wrong hands, it can be ineffective and even dangerous.
When is intuition very useful?
· Sensing when a problem might exist – for example, when someone’s story doesn’t stack up or there’s an ethical dilemma
· Performing well-learned behavior patterns rapidly. We can often simply go ahead and do something is a situation that’s familiar, rather than think too much about it
· If expectations are violated. When we expect a situation to go a certain way but it doesn’t, this can set off our intuitive alarm bell
· Synthesising the big picture. When faced with several isolated pieces of information, intuition lets us stand back, avoid “analysis paralysis” and sense how the pieces might fit together
· Checking out the results of rational analysis. Sensing when hard data doesn’t feel quite right, intuition can sound the alarm for us to seek more information or look at what data we do have from a different angle
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