When you make a decision, do you rely on your intuition?

[Ginette Gagnon]

We live in a period of time when rational abilities are highly valued and essential to our professional performance. There are at the heart of our North American academic system. Research in Management, specifically, invested decades of efforts to understand and model the rational processes of leaders, in particular regarding problem resolution and decision-making. It recognizes that the rational process is deliberate, slow and effortful; our reason juggles with a wide array of information, and progresses step by step to arrive at a logical conclusion. It dissects, analyzes, organizes, and concludes.

The rational process has proven its usefulness, I’m sure you will agree. But we must also admit that it could be wrong, and that it is not well adapted in certain situations.

What happens when there is not enough information to make a decision—and no hope to gather more? Or when there is so much conflicting information that it becomes arduous, if not impossible, to arrive to a conclusion? The rational process is slow and deliberate. Then, how are we capable of making decisions when it is urgent to do so?

The key lays with another thought process, generally misunderstood and unspoken of, at least in corporate settings. I am referring to your instinct. Your feelings. Your gut feelings. Otherwise said, your intuition. Not a supernatural power, nothing magical or esoteric. In fact, neuroscience confirms that our brain functions not only through reason, but also through intuition. Your brain, as well as your counterparts’. Thus, rational arguments have their limits: it is essential to also connect with the intuitive process of your interlocutors, as well as to take into consideration what your own inspires you.

Human thinking arises from a dual process:Reason + Intuition

Intuition arises from knowledge accumulated and models that we created for ourselves through past experiences. Contrarily to reason, intuition is rapid, and involuntary; it imposes a conclusion spontaneously to our mind, without us being consciously aware of the intermediate steps which led to that conclusion — while most of the time, we can figure them after the fact. Instead of dissecting information, intuition conceives relations, find analogies, synthesizes, and jumps to conclusions. In fact, as it is spontaneous and effortless, intuition is the thought process which leads the majority of the decisions we make in a day. For example, when we choose what meal to have in a restaurant. We read the menu, and we automatically make a choice based on how we feel about it. It is thus our intuitive process which intervenes without conscious recognition to what led to that choice—unless we consciously decide to slow down (for example if we are on a special diet) to analyze which elements of the menu best meet our requirements.

The same principles apply when making decisions in a professional setting, even for the most rational among us. We may easily brag about the in-depth research and analysis that we performed to add credibility to our arguments. However, do we realize, or worse admit, that intuition may also be involved in the decision process? Yet, in reality, leaders take into account their intuition—in additional to their rational analysis—to make decisions:

• “90% of participants in our study said that they had used intuition in combination with rational data analysis and felt that it expedited decisions, improved the decision in some way, and facilitated their own personal development” (Burke, Miller, 1999) [i]

• “Managers at the top in every organization studied scored higher than middle-or lower-level managers on their ability to use intuition to guide their key decisions” (Agor, 1986) [ii]

To be rational does not suffice to be successful. To be intuitive is also essential.
My objective is not as much to glorify intuition as it is to raise awareness of its intrinsic value, as it is innate and inevitable, and allows to reach acquired knowledge that may not be readily available to our reason.

It is not either to praise intuition to the detriment of reason, as some other authors suggest. Instead, I hold the conviction that being equally aware of these two abilities and combining them is a way to reach our full potential. It is infinitely more powerful to navigate smoothly between the two thought processes, then to rely solely on one in abstraction of the other.

Our professional success depends on our rapidity to make judicious decisions and in our capacity to adequately influence others. Taking advantage of our intuition, in combination with our reason, can make a difference between a potential success and a sure failure.
We invest years developing our rational abilities. Maybe it is time to also cultivate our intuitive competencies?

Best regards,

Ginette

[i] BURKE, Lisa A., MILLER, Monica K., Taking the mystery out of intuitive decision making, Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 13, No. 4, p. 91-98, New York, Academy of Management, 1999
[ii] AGOR, Weston H., The Logic of Intuition: How Top Executives Make Important Decisions, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 14, No. 3, p. 5-18, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1986

[Author]

Posts