This is the most underused leadership tool

Leaning into our instinct to solve problems and make decisions is nothing new. Leading academics have long debated it, bestsellers have been written on it (see Gary Klein’s seminal The Power of Intuition), and some of business’s greatest success stories have been driven by intuitive choices. 

Back in 1914, facing falling demand for cars and high employee turnover, Henry Ford doubled his staff’s wages. It might have sounded crazy (especially to investors and stakeholders), but within a year Ford’s turnover dropped by a factor of more than 20, productivity doubled, and demand for Ford cars soared among its workers who could now afford them. 

So much has changed since Henry Ford’s tenure—most of all, our access to data. When you level up and the decisions get more challenging and lonelier to make, it’s tempting to depend on data-driven insights. However, relying on data alone risks losing the best ideas. The ones that might sound risky can really drive us forward. 

In a data-driven age, we need to know when to step away from spreadsheets and trust our gut. Remember, instinct isn’t something we pull from thin air; it’s a skill carefully honed over years of hard work, practice, and experience that allows every decision to be a bespoke solution.  

Here are three ways to gain trust in our intuition and support those around us to develop theirs.  

Develop learned instinct 

Neuroscientist and psychologist Joel Pearson defines instinct as, “the learned, positive use of unconscious information for better decisions or actions.” It’s a solid definition for something we haven’t quite yet been able to put our finger on, and it makes an important point.  

Beyond the fight-or-flight survival instinct that protects us from harm, there’s also the more refined instinct deployed in problem-solving and decision-making. A key learning in our development as leaders is that by consuming information and making thousands upon thousands of decisions over time, we learn to read situations in a more instinctual way where we start to intuitively see the potential impact of our choices.  

But we can start sharpening our instinct early in our careers. When a problem arises where you need to figure out a solution or get back to a client quickly, practice potential responses with a trusted line manager or mentor. Articulate what the problem is, come up with three possible ideas, and share which one instinctively feels best.  

When mentees tell me they don’t know the best way forward, I encourage them to take a guess. We might not always be right first time but the more we try, the more we train our instinct “muscle.” Keep practising your trade until you start to trust your own decision-making. Seek line managers who will allow you to stretch and to fail in a safe environment. 

Have a trusted sounding board 

Doubt is an inevitable and necessary part of decision-making, so find a sounding board where you feel safe to share ideas and lean on other people’s practice. In order to push yourself to think creatively and be a leader, not a follower, it’s a good practice to have a solution that needs to be prefaced with, “I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out.” 

This is where having a strong, trusted senior leadership team around you counts—ideally with a complementary balance of traits. As a person who has a bias toward action and quick decisions, it’s invaluable for me to have a long-term, trusted partner in our chief creative officer, who approaches problem solving very differently. She takes time to look at every angle, and slows me down just the right amount, so that we challenge and support each other to explore every possible outcome and its potential impact on people.  

Joint leadership won’t be right for every business, but for ours, it works. Another option is to seek counsel from people outside of your organization by talking to people beyond your industry who have no skin in the game. Being part of Chief, a network of C-suite women executives from sectors spanning pharma to non-profit and everything in between, has shown me how universal leadership challenges are.  

I recommend any leader join a coaching cohort. It helps to understand that no matter what product or service the business sells, ultimately everything comes down to making the right choice for people.  

Make instinct your operating model 

We’ve all heard of the survival instinct; the fundamental tendency of people (and animals) to behave in ways that avoid harm and boost our chances of survival. At an organizational level, instinct is less about self-preservation, and more about acting acutely in the best interests of the whole and guiding others to do the same. 

The pandemic was the perfect example of leadership by instinct. COVID-19 caused a grand social experiment where businesses across the globe had to make decisions based on gut feel and what they felt was necessary.  

Personally, this meant going against the grain and asking our teams to work in the studio twice a week when most competitors were still 100% remote, then increasing to three days a week when it felt right to do so. There was no data, no proof that this would improve our creative work or agency culture, but years of instinct-led decisions gave us confidence that this was the move we had to make.  

Using instinct doesn’t just mean running with the first thing that comes to mind. Every decision has myriad possible options and outcomes, and landing at the best one is a process of questioning and refining our first instinct (which might, of course, be wrong). Instilling a company-wide culture of instinctive awareness means getting comfortable with failing forward, learning with good grace, and inviting mutual feedback.  

Helpful as it would be, there’s just no single formula for effective decision-making. We can make cases for why we made a certain choice, but with practice and experience we can also grow confident to say, “Because I felt it in my heart.” As leaders, we should probably say that out loud more often.