Data is useful. Until it isn’t.
There are moments in leadership when the spreadsheet says one thing and your gut says another. When everyone in the room has agreed and something in you hasn’t. When the deal looks clean on paper and you cannot shake the feeling that it isn’t.
That is not weakness. That is information.
Intuition is not mysticism. It is pattern recognition operating faster than your conscious mind can track. It is every meeting you have ever sat in, every organization you have ever watched succeed or fail, every decision you have ever made and lived with — compressed into a signal. Your nervous system has been paying attention even when you weren’t.
The question is not whether to trust it. The question is how to tell the difference between intuition and fear.
Fear says: don’t. Intuition says: not this way, not yet, not this person.
Fear is about you. Intuition is about the situation.
Here is a test. Sit with the decision for a moment and ask: what specifically feels wrong? If you can name it — even loosely, even imperfectly — that is intuition working. It has something to tell you. If all you have is dread with no direction, that is more likely anxiety, and anxiety deserves a different response.
When the signal is real, don’t bury it in more data. Get curious about it instead. What is it pointing at? What would you need to know to either confirm or rule it out? Who else might see what you are seeing?
The leaders who make the best calls in the dark are not the ones who ignore their gut. They are the ones who know how to listen to it and then ask the right next question.
Trust the signal. Then do something smart with it.
Julie
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