Intuition or Reason?

 

“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery; the only real valuable thing is intuition.” - Albert Einstein

Intuition is defined as the faculty of attaining cognition “without evident rational thought and inference.”  Increasingly, this intuitive “ability to foresee” is being assessed as a valuable skill necessary to be an effective leader.  Even with a plethora of available rational data , leaders use their intuitive sense to “find the meaning in data” to complement or supplement their decision-making capability. 

Malcolm Gladwell explores intuitive thinking and decision making in his bestselling book ”Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” Backed by extensive research, “Blink” illustrates how people form “very quick judgments based on very little information” that are “every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.”  The ability to do this lies in a part of our brain called the “adaptive unconscious” where a great deal of high level thinking, data and learning is quickly processed and stored.

In Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman et. al., the author frequently credited for bringing emotional intelligence into the mainstream, refers to this process as “silent learning”   This is because neurologically, the brain constantly and unconsciously registers and stores lessons along with associated emotions as to what works and doesn’t work during experiences.  Then when a similar situation occurs, our brain unconsciously pulls information from the past and informs us through a compelling sense or feeling of either right or wrong within our gut. 

However, both Gladwell and Goleman don’t advocate for the sole reliance on adaptive or unconscious intuition.  It is better to use with other kinds of data because of the potential for “other interests and emotions and sentiments” to influence intuitive feelings.   Senge supports this notion of integrating reason and intuition as part of using every available resource to develop the discipline of “personal mastery.”   According to Senge, studies show leaders “rely heavily on their intuition,” combined with other data, to identify patterns and parallels “to other seemingly disparate situations.”  

The premise of learning and strengthening intuition with practice correlates with my own experiences.   Like most of us, I spent most of my formative years and life developing my cognitive rational abilities.  Why?  Because this is the more socially accepted and valued of the two abilities.   I routinely ignored my intuition because it conflicted with others that valued rational data and thinking.  Often the consequences or outcomes were less than desired, either to myself or the situation.  While these situations were difficult, they taught me valuable lessons that led me to consciously practice listening to my intuition.   Like all skill development, I realized the more I practiced it, the stronger and more frequent my intuition became - it self-perpetuates.  At times the strength and frequency of intuitive hits is somewhat unsettling.   The remedy is surrendering control – sitting with it without judgement or attempt to change it.  By letting it be what it is and go wherever it leads, it shows whether it is true or simply a bias acting out.  In other words, not only do intuitive abilities strengthen, but so does the ability to sort out truth from fiction.  

The inevitable by-product of this growing intuitive abilities is a growing confidence in who I am as a person.  I believe that intuitive judgment is a real andtrue rather than some mysterious power.  It is the result of the unconscious and conscious, experiencial learning, courage to follow ethicalconvictions and surrender to spiritual guidance.  Finally, I believe to solve the increasingly  complex challenges facing today’s world, our effectiveness as people and leaders requires embracing and engaging all that we are - the power and intelligence of our conscious left-brained voice of reason and our unconscious right-brained, spiritually connected intuition.  

   References 

 

1. Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html
2. Goleman, Daniel, Social Intelligence, New York: Bantam Book Random House, 2006. http://www.danielgoleman.info/blog / 
3. Goleman, Daniel, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee. Primal Leadership. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.
4. Laseter, Tim, Matthias Hild, The Power of Plausibility Theory, Many Worlds website, www.manyworlds.com
5. Merriam Webster OnLine, http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=intuition 
6. Royal Roads University. Lt 566 Leadership in Organization Course Notes. Victoria: Royal Roads University, 2005. http://www.royalroads.ca
7. Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline; the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Currency Doubleday, 1990. http://www.presencing.com/People/Peter.html
8. Spears, Larry C. “On Character and Servant-Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders.”   The Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership Website, http://www.greenleaf.org/leadership/read-about-it/Servant-Leadership-Articles-Book-Reviews.html 

 

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Social and Ecological Intelligence

Read Are You a Socially Intelligent Leader? for a succinct overview of the importance of social Intelligence.  For more read Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatz in the September 2008 Harvard Business Review.   Visit http://www.morethansound.net./ for more from Daniel Goleman and other leaders in emerging fields that are crucial to our time about ideas that deepen our understanding of the human experience.  You can also watch Daniel Golemen discuss his book “Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships” as a part of the Authors@Google series.   

Daniel Goleman’s newest work Ecological Intelligence may seem a bit of a divergence, but it is certainly relative and critical to ours and our world’s future.  It  ”reveals the hidden environmental consequences of what we make and buy, and shows how new market forces can drive the essential changes we all must make to save our planet.”  Read exerpt from the book.  Also, find out why Time Magazine listed it as one of ’10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now’ .

the brain, leadership and change

If you want leading edge research and implications about how the brain works, check out the offical site for the emerging NeuroLeadership field, The Global Neuroleadership Summit .   What is Neuro Leadership you ask?   It is a new field of study fo­­cused on bringing neuroscientific knowledge into the area of leadership development, management training, education, consulting and coaching.  David Rock, author of Quiet Leadership , Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work and Founder/CEO of Results Coaching Systems, is one of the key people leading the charge to marketing and promoting Neuroleadership worldwide.  Good on ya David! 

Hear interview with David Rock on NeuroLeadership and the Global NeuroLeadership Summits. Learn how to apply the latest in neuroscience to the art of coaching and leadership Brain-Based Coaching and Leadership.  Listen to why change is so hard from a physical perspective from the teleseminar Insights about the brain that change everything.   Learn about companies that brought in and built a coaching culture report significantly reduced staff turnover, increased productivity, greater happiness and satisfaction at work.

And just to keep things a little in balance, here is a healthy dose of skepticism on the value of Neuroleadership….Is Neuroleadership More Than Reinventing Wheels?

tiltability

Essentially everything in our universe strives to reach a state of   equilibrium or Homeostasis.   This principle applies to single individual entities to massive complex systems either metabolically, physicaly, socially or psychologically.    Paradoxically, while the drive or equilibrium is ongoing, there are always some other forces tilting the system off balance into a state of disequilibrium or change.  The result is a dynamic interconnetion between these two opposing yet complimentary states of equilibrium and change.  They are two sides of a same coin where one cannot exist without the other where the purpose of change itself is to reach a new state of balance and harmony. 

When it comes to poeple, by and large the preference is for the known or equilibrium over that of change.  In fact, it is fairly safe to state that people generally have difficultly with change.    It is part of why there is so much focus and time dedicated to the study for effectively managing change.   It is relatively simple to change situations when people are not involved, but the more people are impacted by a change, the more difficult change becomes.    Ironically, while people and beliefs, expectations, assumptions, concerns and hopes can present a significant obstacle to change, they are also the solution.   for withiout them, realizing successful sustainable change would be impossible. 

As a business and organizational development consultant and coach, I am acutely aware of the challenging phenomenon change presents for people.   It is for this reason why my my passion and primary area of practice is focused on facilitating positive change within and through people and people-driven systems.   Driving change, whether it’s personal, professional or organizational, requires some form of catalyst, either internally or externally imposed, to overcome the inertia inherent in people’s homeostatic circumstances.  The catalyst may be some political, environmental, sociological, technological, market or other force that inevitably tilts people and organizations out of their comfort zone and into wobbly uncertainty.  By empowering people with the necessary functional and soft skills of leadership, emotional and social intelligence, they are better equipped to positively manage change.   The best of who they are is expressed and shared, enabling a collaborative search for and implementation of sustainable options for transitioning more easily to a new changed state of equilibrium.     

Post Script…Intuition or Reason?

Through a series of synchronous events, I happened across this article called ‘Right Brain Meets Left Brain: Applying Intuition to Business’ on The Banff Centre Leadership Development Library that is related and surprising aligned with my own thoughts on the topic of value of intuition.  In this article, Bill Overend succinctly outlines the growing evidence supporting not only the value of developing and using our intuition, but its necessity given the increasingly complex and fast paced nature of our world today.  The volume of available information coming at us everyday from multiple means and ways is growing exponentially.  The expectations for innovation and pressure to succeed are higher than ever before in our history.  These circumstances demand that engaging all of the power of our brain with our intuition playing a more important role and key success factor not less.  While the whole article is insightful, the heart of its message is how using intuition can help organizations today…

In his Harvard Business Review article “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning,” McGill’s Henry Mintzberg made a compelling case for the use of intuition in strategy development. Mintzberg believes use of intuition in “strategic thinking” can deliver more relevant results than lengthy analytical planning exercises, particularly in the synthesis of information.

Better hiring decisions, staff motivation, increasing sales, assessing partnerships, predicting industry trends, as well as gaining vital and valuable insight into yourself and your associates are all business benefits ascribed to intuition.

Particularly worth examining is intuition’s relationship with innovation. Incorporating aspects of intuition into organizational development may help avoid the pitfalls of “data paralysis” in corporate life – and encourage a culture of innovation and calculated risk taking. Writes Tesolin: “Organizations don’t innovate, people do … the future is all about unleashing innovation and invention capacity to dream and then create … move a concept from the unimaginable to the conceivable and finally to the created.” The “guesses,” hunches,” and “gut feelings” of intuition may well be what separates “the innovators from the managers that follow their leaders.”

I find this all quite interesting and affirming considering I have felt like a ‘duck out of water’ most of my life.  I have frequently experienced the inner conflict of my right-brained intuitive sense telling me thing while the largely left-brained linear-thinking world dismissed this as nonsense and demanding rationalfacts.  Finally…intuition is gaining the credibility it deserves as a valuable component of human thinking and being.  INTUITION ROCKS!