Intuition is often spoken about in women’s circles as a vital component of decision-making. However, intuition isn’t just for women. Intuitive knowing is available to everyone, and as a man, it’s crucial that you know how to access your intuition in tangible ways with real-world applications to be a stronger leader.
In a report from Deloitte, it’s emphasized that intuition has become a necessary part of business. With a global economy moving at lightning speeds, business decisions that used to take weeks or months are now made in minutes. That means business leaders must use limited knowledge to decide which choice to make without the luxury of consulting with others or double-checking the data. The only way for leaders to viably keep up with this pace is to listen to and develop their intuition.
Here’s what you need to know about intuition, how to access it, and how to use it to become an even stronger leader than you are now while earning the respect of those around you.
The truth about intuition
There are a lot of misconceptions about what intuition is, so let’s clear those up. Intuition is not some mystical thing reserved for psychics, witches, and prophets. Intuition is also not reserved for women. The only reason that women seem to have a natural disposition for accessing their intuition is because western societies have socially conditioned men to disconnect from their emotions and bodies. If men had the same emotional expression freedom as women from the time they were children, the intuition disparity would not exist.
The good news? That means you can still access and develop your natural intuitiveness—you just need to know how.
Intuition is your mechanism for feeling into a situation and making instinctive decisions based on your gut feeling. There’s not necessarily an audible voice that whispers directions to you from on high that you follow (although sometimes it may sound like your internal voice or it may feel like just a knowing in your body or mind).
Accessing your intuition for leadership
Accessing your intuition is about being in your body so that you can receive the information you’re taking in from everything around you. One of the reasons that intuition can often feel like some mysterious thing out of reach is because we often think about intuition as something that is given to us or happens outside of us. The truth is that intuition is the gut feeling we have from our body processing all of the data it picks up from our environment, other people, situations, and more. Because a lot of that processing is automatic and subconscious, we’re often not even aware that it’s happening. That’s partially why our conclusions or gut reactions can feel non-sensical. Intuition is not a logic-based process. Your body is capable of sorting through information that can’t be contextualized by your logical mind. That’s why the more you are in your body and in the present moment, the more access to your intuition you will have, and the more you will be an effective, connected leader.
One way to be more present and in your body is to create space to check in with yourself. Having spaciousness in your day to receive the messages from your intuition will give you the ability to tap in because it’ll take some of the anxiety and pressure off of your plate from constant activity. You can’t go-go-go all day long because it suffocates your intuition.
If you implement more space throughout your day, that alone can help. But there are practices that can support you too. Have you ever been on a walk and all of a sudden you were flooded with ideas or something made sense to you that you were struggling with before? That’s your intuition communicating with you.
The most common practices that can help you with this are taking a daily walk in nature, not having your phone with you for some of the day, doing yoga or meditation, and practicing different mindful breathing techniques. By incorporating even one of these practices into your daily routine, you give your intuition space to communicate with you.
Deciphering your intuition
Sometimes it will be clear to you what your intuition is saying. Other times, it won’t be. This exercise can help you when things aren’t so clear.
Exercise: To receive intuitive insights about someone at the office or about a situation that you’re facing, do this. Stand with your feet hip’s distance apart, remaining neutral in the rest of your body. Keep your knees soft.
Ask your body for insight about that person or situation you’re curious about.
Your body is naturally going to sway forward, back, or stay neutral. Don’t think about it, just see what your body does. Swaying forward means that there is either something that needs to happen between you two or that your body is saying yes to an experience with that person. Swaying forward also means yes when you ask about a situation.
Swaying backward is your body saying no; the energy doesn’t jive between you and that person or situation. If your body stays neutral, that means the interaction can go either way.
The important thing with this practice is learning what your body is telling you. This helps you make quantum leaps in business because you won’t get stuck in second-guessing yourself which often leads to the wrong answer (remember how second-guessing yourself messed you up in school on tests? You don’t need those shenanigans in real-life).
Remember, there are so many things that sound good and look good on paper, but if there’s something contracting inside of you, something’s not quite right with the situation. Even though it looks like everything should be a yes, something in your body is telling you no. That is your intuition.
Another way to do this exercise is to feel into your body for an expansion (yes) or a contraction (no). When you learn how to feel those two things and how to pay attention to what your body is saying, you’ll avoid negative things more often.
Limbic leadership
Leaders in the past were used to operating from the space of mechanics and logic because there was more time to collect data, consult with others, and make decisions. Not only has that timeline condensed, but that’s not how many people are making investment decisions today either. Most of our biggest investments have to do with the limbic brain and our emotions.
If you’re trying to escape this emotional part of leadership, you’re missing the gateway to intuition and influence. When you connect with other people’s emotions and speak and lead from the heart, then you attract the epic team, partnerships, movement, and audience. By developing and listening to your intuition, you can speak beyond the data and logic, and speak to the emotional well-being of others.
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