Have you ever felt something to be either right or wrong in the pit of your stomach, but meanwhile your head kept repeating, “No, I can’t trust it. I can’t act on it; I need more information?” Most of us have experienced this at one time or another. Somehow we respond to a new situation with some knowledge that comes out of nowhere. What we are talking about here is intuition: the difference between knowledge and knowing.
Knowledge concerns facts. It is painstakingly learned through listening, reading, studying. Ideally, knowledge is public and accessible. Intuition, on the other hand, is an exquisite sensitivity to picking up patterns and minimal cues, storing them for future use, and then acting on those observations.
We women may have good guts, but we are not necessarily gutsy. We know, but do not act on our knowing because the knowing comes from intuition and we have been taught that decisions should be based only on knowledge, on fact, on logic, and rationality. What we “know,” what we feel in our gut, is valuable data that can be trusted and used as valid and legitimate information. By identifying the components of our intuitive skills, we can sharpen them so that we can better use them consciously.
The three components of intuition are scanning, storing, and selecting.
Scanning
We women are always scanning our environment. Studies have shown that across cultures and classes women see details and discern small changes better and quicker than men. When we enter an unknown place or unfamiliar territory, our antennas help us size up the situation and quickly determine the suitable course of action. There is a good reason for our antennas. Women are often treated as “one rung down” on the power scale, and as such, our survival depends on knowing the needs, expectations, strengths, and vulnerabilities of the people who often have more power and who can influence our fate. The needs of the more powerful do not usually require them to understand the less powerful.
We all are familiar with the poor lines of communication that frequently exist between the people at higher levels and their employees. The people on top do not bother much to know what is going on at lower levels, but the people toward the bottom are always talking about the people on top, gathering information, anticipating their needs. Survival is then based on being able to become master observers. A good observer sees things others don’t, pays attention, and notices patterns where others only see unrelated events.
Storing
Many of us have experienced surprise when we recall something from a long ago past. We overheard a conversation, read an article somewhere, or saw a report, none of which was important at the time, yet we stored these items. I frequently act on the principle of “you never know” or “just in case” and try to remember bits and pieces of information that may seem irrelevant to any current concerns or activities. Then one day, there it is… at my fingertips, just when I need it.
Selecting
Seeing the connections, noticing the patterns, making analogies, and being able to act based on this data constitutes the process of selecting. The selecting process includes picking out the appropriate responses based on the information we have stored. Still, one of the hardest tasks is to make a decision in the face of incomplete information. There is seldom, if ever, “enough” information to make a foolproof decision.
There is an unwillingness in American business to acknowledge intuition. It may protect management from fads to some extent because the demand is for experiments before making an economic or emotional commitment, but in a rapidly changing world of technological leaps, numbers do not always provide answers because certain things cannot be predicted and measured in advance.
In order to comply with the demands of business, women need to change their language—instead of saying “This just feels right to me,” to explain a business decisions—substitute “My hypothesis is…” or “Based on my experience, my prediction is…” or “All the evidence seems to indicate that…” However, with the rapid changes in technology, reason and logic don’t always seem to be able to keep up with the constant fluctuations of new information. Living in our rapidly evolving world, we are beginning to see that good managers will follow their noses—their gut reactions, their instincts, their intuition, and consider these as data ready to apply.