Dr. Gregory Stebbins is the Founder and Master Coach at PeopleSavvy. He is a member of the American Psychological Association.
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There are many variations of the word “hunch”: intuition, gut feeling and so on. Hunches generally emerge from a person’s unconscious intelligence. The unconscious works with patterns, metaphors, symbols and more. It’s said that 95% of our brain’s gray matter is dedicated to the unconscious.
Leaders use their intuition to make significant decisions. In a survey of 13,000 executives done by Harvard researcher Jagdish Parikh, participants said that 80% of their business success was based on the influence of intuition in their decisions. Dr. Dan Siegel’s research found that all areas of the prefrontal brain communicated rapidly with each other. He further explained that when individuals listened to their hunches, they were actually integrating their whole self. The Wisdom Cycle incorporates the Knowledge Cycle, with hunches providing the bridge toward wise decisions.
Early in an emerging leader’s career, they develop skills via the Knowledge Cycle. The Knowledge Cycle is a flow of three elements: data, information and knowledge. One way to describe this cycle is via children’s Legos.
For example, we are handed a bag of Legos; these Legos represent data. They are of various colors, sizes and shapes. Our first step is to sort the Legos. We might sort them by color, size, shape or a combination of these three categories. By sorting, we are creating information or patterns about the Legos. Once you know the patterns, you might begin to determine that the Legos make up an object, which we can classify as Knowledge.
For many leaders, much of the Knowledge Cycle happens at an unconscious level. They are only aware of the basics. Because of this limited understanding, their natural reaction to any lack of clarity is to declare that they need better or more data. If they have implemented artificial intelligence (AI) within their organization, they might use AI to uncover additional information patterns and make knowledgeable recommendations. AI is a helpful rational process. Emerging leaders are now being exposed to these tools and are making use of them. Yet only making a decision based on our analytical intelligence, the head, means that these leaders are missing a significant piece of natural intelligence.
Hunch develops as leaders make decisions. As they make decisions, both good and bad, data patterns that provide information are gathered by the unconscious and stored away for future reference. An emerging leader can enhance the usefulness of the information through two skills.
The first is self-awareness. When we transfer information patterns to our unconscious, other elements tag along with the information patterns. We might be having strong emotions or overactive imaginations when the pattern is stored. These aspects of consciousness might influence future decisions.
The second is the leader’s depth of understanding of the patterns found in the information and the resulting knowledge. Asking deep questions about the patterns — for example, what created the pattern, who made it, the time it started and how it was created — may provide greater understanding. One additional question is vitally important, and that is, “Does the pattern affect people other than just the ones being led?” Asking this question allows us to incorporate diversity and inclusion considerations.
In the future, when similar patterns emerge, our unconscious intelligence (hunch) will whisper a course of action based on the success of our previous experience with the patterns. Will we listen? If we do, and it influences our final decision, we take advantage of our integrated intelligence.
Are there risks to this approach to making decisions? Yes! If we have not done the work to increase our depth of understanding, then we might inappropriately discard a successful choice. At that point, we might reenter the Knowledge Cycle and continue looking for more or better data in hopes of looking at different patterns. Without our unconscious intelligence, this do-loop can continue indefinitely.
Always check your hunches out, even if you don’t plan to follow them. Checking things out allows us to understand the hunch's accuracy; how much time takes place between having the hunch and having an experience similar to the hunch.
I had a hunch about building a business relationship with a potential client. We had spoken a couple of times at a conference we both attended. My hunch was to contact him via email to reinforce our initial conversations. His response was, “Who are you? Have we met?” His two questions were delivered in an email that implied, “Please don’t contact me again.” As I compared my hunch with my experience, it was clear that my hunch was wishful thinking masquerading as a hunch. Even though this was a slightly painful experience, checking out the hunch helped me fine-tune my intuitive intelligence. It also let me know that a hunch can be an unreliable projection from my unconscious.
The checking-out process is part of moving from being an emerging leader to being a successful senior executive. When an emerging leader moves up the ladder, the patterns that they deeply understand become mixed with new patterns that they may not understand. For example, a person develops in the accounting/finance space within an organization. After becoming part of the C-suite team, they now must work with sales, marketing and manufacturing and have little understanding about the patterns their colleagues have unconsciously learned.
Our ability to listen deeply to others while they share their experience with different patterns supports creating an integrated team in the C-suite.
There are more profound aspects of our hunches. Jung stated that each person’s unconscious is connected to every other person’s unconscious. That connection allows communication between two or more individuals’ unconscious. Remember that communication may be in metaphors, symbols and patterns but not necessarily words. Paying attention to all of our hunches we may have about ourselves, others and culture, understanding them and checking them out moves us further into the Wisdom Cycle. The choice is not either/or, it’s both/and. The next progression after hunch is insight. To move entirely to having a wisdom moment also requires following our heart’s wisdom.
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