Leaders Voices: Listen to your gut, but don’t follow it

If you had the chance to go back in time and offer your younger self some advice on your leadership skills, what would you say? What have you learned through experience, good and bad, that would have been so useful to you if only you had been aware of it?

This is exactly the question we asked a group of leaders with global experience across many sectors including high ranks in the military, those working as entrepreneurs, and leaders in the tech sector. The answers are fascinating – often for their simplicity and, perhaps, because they ought to be obvious! Other points they make, however, are much more subtle and yet equally significant. Take, for example, the issue of decision-making.

The classic view, and, it is widely and loudly expressed in our data, is that it is important to build a decision on understanding and facts. And hence the need to gather this information.

One leader quoted Rudyard Kipling, ‘I keep six honest serving people* … their names are what and why and when and how and where and who’. Similarly, leaders identified the need to ‘swallow judgments and not think I knew the answers’. And they exhibited a keen awareness of their own bias and the need to avoid ‘thoughts, words, needs to be based on outmoded, wrong biases, or assumptions’.

However, an important, yet clearly contrasting skill was also expressed: that leaders get a feeling for a situation. These leaders were coaching themselves to ‘find your ground’ and to ‘make time’ to ‘trust yourself’ and ‘learn to trust your gut’.

This discrepancy between head and heart is rarely explored, but our research shows that individual leaders seem to lean one way or the other. Those who trust their gut, probably don’t gather enough data; those who trust their data, probably don’t listen enough to their gut. We think these Leaders’ Voices are telling us to become more grounded in our decision-making and to recognise that humans always have gut feelings upon which they then select data to pay attention to.

Unfortunately, we may not recognise that this is the order in which we’re doing this. Tech is a sector that gives pride of place to data and rationality: so heed these ideas well. On balance we don’t agree with the simplicity of ‘trusting your gut’, but we do agree with making time to scan all types of information, including what your gut is telling you. Your gut is one form of information it should never be the only form. Hence, listen to your gut, but don’t [always] follow it.

About Leaders’ Voices

Leaders’ Voices is a research project by Dr. Phil Renshaw (Cranfield School of Management) and Jenny Robinson (Henley Business School), Authors of ‘Coaching on the Go: How to lead your team in 10 minutes a day’.

The project aims to give voice to leaders’ real unfiltered experience and to examine the nuances and ambiguities that are rarely heard or noticed.

In doing so, we aim to reveal the range of personal experiences that demonstrate that leaders are humans, not demi-Gods. That we can all demonstrate aspects of leadership.

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