Leading with Intuition: How to Practice Intuitive Leadership

Nothing stays the same; it just changes faster. If there is one simple rule of leadership, it’s to learn to navigate the chaos, because there’s plenty of it about. But all is not lost. We have some great tools for finding our way through different dimensions: creativity, ingenuity, cooperation, flexibility and perhaps the greatest of them all — intuition, which leads us towards intuitive leadership.

The good news is that intuition is a birthright. It’s a deep knowing, an instinctive wisdom. According to Joel Pearson, a psychology professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, intuition is real and measurable.

The pragmatist might say it is little more than superior pattern-recognition based on years of experience and experimentation. The idealist says it is more magical than that. Either way, intuition is a deep knowing about things that are not yet consciously known. It is the source of creativity and invention. Whence came the theory of relativity, satellites, or smartphones? From practical applications and hard work, of course, but first of all from creativity, inspiration, and intuition.

Understanding the Intuitive Leadership Coaching Model

We live in a world of VUCA — vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity — and rest assured, there will be more of that tomorrow than there is today. But a guiding light is intuition.

The Co-Active leadership and coaching model rests squarely on the belief that we all have intuitive wisdom and that we are all influenced by a greater experience of what is beyond us. For want of a better word, we can call that wider influence and experience “the field.” When we are open to Leading in the Field, we are open to creativity, sensitivity, and wisdom that may seem at first to be beyond sense and sensibility but that often mutates into the commonplace and practical. Cathode ray tubes? Transistors? Semiconductors? Quantum computing? What’s next? Imagination and intuition?

Do the Best Leaders Rely on Their Intuition?

We need to trust our intuition. We need to trust that intuition in and of itself is never wrong. It is just our interpretation of intuition that can be wrong — as if we sometimes hear wisdom in a different language and pretend that the sounds and syllables belong to our own mother tongue.

Two things help a leader to be a Leader in the Field, from that greater awareness of inputs and intuition. The first is to know the way we individually experience intuition. The second is to practice blurting out what we sense through intuition. Let it out, without attachment, to practice the use of intuition in decision-making. Risk appearing wild and crazy, irrational, and illogical. With true leadership, your intuition is invaluable.

Do you adopt an intuitive leadership style? How does that work for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!