The Most Underrated Skill in Leadership: Intuition

I’m someone who loves data. Facts, patterns, trend lines, diagnostics - all the things that help you uncover the truth beneath the noise.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned over decades of leading, transforming, and stepping into complex businesses:

Data tells you what’s happening. Intuition helps you decide what to do next.

Somewhere along the way, intuition started getting a bad rap - as if it’s reckless, fluffy, or the opposite of rigor.

But intuition isn’t the enemy of good decision-making. It’s the accelerator.

What intuition actually is (in business and in life)

That Feeling You Can’t Explain? It’s Years of Experience Talking Intuition isn’t a wild guess.

It’s not a five-minute “gut feel.”

And it’s definitely not the absence of logic.

Intuition is:

• Years of experience

• Thousands of conversations

• Patterns you’ve seen before

• Data you’ve previously analysed

• Decisions you’ve made (and survived)

• Failures you’ve learned from

• Successes you’ve reverse-engineered

It’s the stored wisdom that sits underneath your conscious thinking - the kind that surfaces in an instant when something simply feels right… or wrong.

Intuition is experience made fast.

People often know the answer long before they say it aloud

In coaching, consulting, and executive work, one thing is constant:

Most people already know the answer within themselves. But they cloud it with overthinking.

• They wait for “one more report.”

• They want perfect certainty before they move.

But clarity rarely comes before action.

Often, action creates clarity.

Data + intuition = better decisions, faster

Data is essential.

Facts matter.

Evidence reduces risk.

But data on its own doesn’t tell you what to do next.

It gives you insight, not direction.

That’s where intuition steps in — not to replace evidence, but to translate it.

When data and intuition work together, you get decisions that are:

• faster

• more grounded

• more human

• more accurate

• more aligned with your long-term experience
  

Intuition isn’t guesswork . . . it’s accumulated wisdom

When leaders say, “I’m going with my gut,” what they really mean is:

“I’ve seen enough, learned enough, and experienced enough to recognise this pattern even if I can’t articulate it yet.”

That’s not careless. That’s earned.

And even if your intuition leads you slightly off course… that’s still progress

Because taking action is powerful.

If it works . . . great.

If it doesn’t . . . you haven’t failed; you’ve learned faster.

• Fail fast.

• Reflect.

• Adjust.

• Apply the learning.

• Move again.

That cycle builds better intuition — and better leaders.

The bottom line Intuition and data are not competitors. They are co-pilots. Data illuminates the path. Intuition helps you choose the direction. And in a world moving this fast, the leaders who trust both — not one or the other — are the ones who make the most meaningful, confident, and impactful decisions.