Almost every decision I’ve regretted started the same way:
I felt that something wasn’t right, then I talked myself out of it.
There were times when every outside voice said, “Do it,” but something deep inside me whispered, “Wait.” When I ignored that whisper, I almost always paid for it in lost energy, misaligned effort, or unnecessary struggle.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is pause long enough to hear what your instincts are trying to tell you. Your body often knows before your mind does. Tension, unease, hesitation…those are all signals from your intuition.
If you’ve led a business for any length of time, you know that feeling too. Most leadership advice tells you to override it with data. Knowing the data is part of making a good leadership decision, but it’s not the full story. Years of second-guessing has taught me that data combined with intuition is actually the wisest way to make good decisions as a leader (and psychologists and neuroscientists agree).
Where Does Intuition Come From And Can You Actually Trust It?
You can’t always put words to the feeling in the moment. You might want a clean, logical reason before you’ll act. You might feel that something is off, but you talk yourself out of it. Intuition usually doesn’t give you the reason why. You get the conclusion first, and the reasoning is buried in your lived experience.
We’ve been told our gut is emotional, impulsive, something to override with a spreadsheet. But here’s what I’ve actually learned after years of second-guessing it: intuition is not impulsive.
Your body will catch the pattern before your mind can put it into words. Researchers have actually watched this happen. In a 1997 study published in Science, neuroscientists Antoine Bechara, Antonio Damasio and colleagues had people play a card game with a few decks secretly rigged to lose. Before players could explain which decks were bad, their bodies were already reacting. Their skin showed small stress responses as they reached for the risky decks.
That’s what a gut feeling is: your body flagging something your mind hasn’t caught up to yet.
Intuition is informed by your past experiences
Psychologist Gary Klein spent years studying how experienced professionals actually make decisions in real-world, high-pressure environments.
He famously shared a story about a fire commander who led his crew into a house to put out what looked like a kitchen fire. They started spraying water, but something felt off. Without knowing why, the commander shouted, “Let’s get out of here!”
Seconds after the crew cleared the building, the floor they had been standing on collapsed.
The fire had never been in the kitchen. It was in the basement, directly beneath them.
In the moment, the commander couldn’t explain his decision. He called it a “sixth sense of danger.” Only later did he piece together what his body had already noticed: the fire was unusually quiet, and his ears were unusually hot. Years on the job had taught him what a kitchen fire should sound and feel like. This one didn’t match.
His intuition came from his past experiences.
Klein later teamed up with Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who retells this story in his bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Together, they found that intuition can be trusted when it’s built through repeated experience with clear feedback. The commander’s gut wasn’t a lucky guess; he was drawing on every fire he’d ever fought before.
I’ve seen this play out in my own business. I can often tell within days whether a new hire is going to last. I couldn’t always tell you why, but I’ve learned not to ignore it. Now, I tune in when I get that feeling and I trust it more.
What Gets In The Way Of Trusting Your Intuition?
Most of the time, the problem has nothing to do with your intuition. It’s that every other voice is louder, so your intuition gets drowned out by:
- The time and effort you’ve already sunk into a situation
- A room full of people telling you no
- Your own ego wanting to be right
- The pressure to make an “informed” decision as a leader
It’s like staying in a relationship too long despite the red flags. You know better, but you keep trying to make it work.
Here’s what I’ve landed on: everyone deserves to be listened to, but not everyone should be followed. A true leader listens to the room, and that also includes the quiet signal in their own chest.
Oprah Winfrey has made major moves in her career this way, from Baltimore to Chicago to owning her show and eventually ending it. Oprah puts it this way, “life comes in whispers”. If you miss the whisper, it gets louder, until it turns into a crisis.
But what I appreciate most about Oprah’s approach is what happens before she listens to her gut. She takes in all the information she can. She listens to the proposals, the ideas, the advice. Once she has gathered and listened, then she goes with her gut to make the decision.
How Do You Know It’s The Right Decision Before You See The Outcome?
When I say I trust my gut, I’m not saying to move forward blindly. You still plan and prepare.
I use a problem-solving method from Leanne Harris, an executive coach. Her method is simple. Ask yourself:
- What are you really trying to solve?
- Who needs to be in the room to solve it?
Focus on the desired outcome first. Then, understand everything you need to get there.
Trusting your gut doing the prep work and hearing what your intuition is saying. Most of the time, they point in the same direction.
When there is a conflict between my gut and what’s on paper, I don’t force it. I take it to my team: here’s what we’ve got down, here’s what I’m feeling, what do you all think? At that point it’s bigger than me. Something’s not aligning, so it needs to be a bigger conversation. I’m not on an island, so why act like it?
And if you try it and you’re wrong? You pivot.
We look at failure negatively as a society, but failure is the feedback that trains your intuition. How many times did you fall off before you could ride a bike?
You have to face the fear, and keep at it. But in the moment, fear and intuition can feel almost identical.
How Do You Tell The Difference Between Fear And Intuition?
Both can tighten your chest, and both can keep you up at night. The difference shows up after you decide. When I follow my intuition, something shifts. I feel peace, and things start to work out.
Fear doesn’t settle like that. It keeps the knot tight long after you’ve chosen.
Following your intuition doesn’t make a decision comfortable, either. The right call is often the hard one. You’re going to be uncomfortable either way. You choose what your discomfort is in service of: your fear or your inner knowing.
Make Good Decisions As A Business Leader Starting Today
Solve one problem at a time. Focus on that one problem, develop your steps, take action, and see if you succeed.
If you fail, go back to the beginning and reanalyze. Maybe you weren’t even looking at the right problem to begin with. That’s how the bank fills up. That’s how that feeling of intuition eventually becomes something you can trust 95% of the time.
Your intuition is the echo of everything you’ve already learned.
If you want to make good decisions as a leader, start by listening to what you already know. For more resources on intuition and leadership, go to evolvingonward.com.