Thursday, November 8

Leadership and Intuition

“Listen to your intuition. It will tell you everything you need to know.” ~ Anthony J. D'Angelo

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” ~ Albert Einstein.

Intuition is defined as the ability to sense or know immediately without reasoning.

One of Dr. John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is The Law of Intuition. I love that Dr. Maxwell included this because we tend to think of leadership as hard and fast rules about leading people. The majority of leaders would look at intuition as being too spiritual, too airy-fairy, or just delving in the realm of the unknown.

As Dr. Maxwell states that “leadership depends on more than just the facts. Leaders see trends, resources and problems, and can read people. The law of intuition is based on facts plus instinct and other intangible factors. A leader has to read the situation and know instinctively what play to call. Leadership is more art than science.”

Intuition is a divinely inspired gift that we must learn to tap into. The tendency is for women to be the ones to only use their intuition, hence the term, “feminine intuition.” Well, I am here to say that female and male alike have this remarkable gift and ability. As leaders, we need to learn to tap into this gift more. We can all remember a time when we have had that little gut-wrenching feeling or that inner gnawing that there was something you should or should not do. When you went contrary to the feeling, you say to yourself, “I should have listened to my gut feelings about that!”

A leader has to be able to read the situation, as Dr. Maxwell says, knowing what decision to make based on something outside of reason. This is not a bad thing, in fact, it is very wise. A leader should access all of his or her available resources, the ones seen and the ones unseen yet very much felt.

To lead is to serve,
Coach Carolyn

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