“Wow, that was close! I didn’t even hear that car,” Mike exclaimed.
“I’m not sure I heard it either,” I replied.
Seconds earlier, as we biked up a steep mountain road, I had intuitively told Mike to move way over to the right side of the road. As he obeyed, a sportscar raced around the curve behind us and sped past us, much too close for our comfort.
We continued cycling up the mountain and had a long discussion about the wisdom of intuition. More specifically, when to trust the gut and when not to.
If you are a "go with your gut" believer, you have a lot of company. People frequently tell me that they listen to their intuition when making many decisions. In addition, a quick search on Amazon.com for the words "intuition books" yields over 10,000 results. The majority of these books kneel at intuition's altar, urging people to trust their instinct, access intuition on demand, tap into intuition with the magic of color...
As we continued peddling up the mountain, I told Mike that the question is not whether to trust the gut or not. The wise question is: How much should we trust our intuition? I explained that my research uncovered three keys to answering that question, as illustrated and described below.
I. Quantity Counts (Q1). Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman points out that intuition is a skill developed over an extended period. (1) Thus, when you're making a gut decision, consider assessing how much experience (Quantity = Q1) you have in that area. I reminded Mike that I had biked up the mountain road we were on at least two thousand times over the last thirty years. Thus, I was subconsciously in tune with the sounds of the cars on the mountain. That’s how I “sensed” the speeding car.
II. Quality Counts Too (Q2). Quantity is not enough; the quality (Quality = Q2) of the experience must count too. Quality is defined by having both rapid and accurate feedback. (2) Rapid feedback occurs when you can quickly learn what happened as a result of your decisions. Thus, every time I thought I may of heard a car racing up the mountain, I received immediate and accurate feedback.
One of the areas supervisors, managers, and leaders tell me they often use their intuition is to make hiring decisions. That’s unwise. Why? Because considerable time usually elapses between hiring decisions and the performance assessments. Thus, hiring decisions seldom provide the rapid and accurate feedback necessary to develop hiring intuition.
III. Gray matters. The final key to wisdom’s way of evaluating the gut tells us that intuition is seldom black-and-white. There are shades of gray that help us consider how confident we should be in gut decisions. To determine how much to trust your intuition in any given situation, follow the three simple step illustrated in the Gut Check Indicator:
A. Estimate how much quantity (Q1) and quality (Q2) you have in that domain, and place a dot on the Q1 + Q2 Experience Scale (the horizontal – X-axis).
B. Draw a line (vertically) from your dot until it intersects the Expertise Line.
C. Draw a line (horizontally) from the Expertise Line to the left until it intersects the Trust In Intuition Scale (the vertical – Y-axis). This intersection is how much you should trust your gut in that situation on a scale of 1 – 5.
It was wise for Mike and me to trust my gut on that mountain because I had experiences that were of high quality and quantity. Next time you're wondering how much to trust your gut (or some else's), use the Gut Check Indicator. How surprised will you be that your decisions are better because you have grown wiser? To learn more about making great decisions, see chapter 31 in my book, Wisdom’s Way to Happiness Today.
1. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011, page 239.
2. IBID. Daniel Kahneman, page 241.