The Cost of Ignoring Your Intuition: A CEO's Tale
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Really get how listening effectively can prevent costly mistakes in leadership. In this blog, Bodhi shares a personal experience of how ignoring subtle cues led to real-life consequences — for his team and himself.
As CEOs, we need to make so many decisions, often on the fly. This requires us to use our heads…a lot. We’re constantly thinking, strategizing, planning, and calling the shots.
Not only does this require a ton of mental energy, but it keeps us primarily in our heads, which isn’t optimal for decision-making.
Being so concentrated in our heads makes it harder for us to notice our intuition and other subtle cues — critical information that has the potential to either undermine or enhance our success.
How Ignoring and Overriding My Awareness Cost Me
Have you ever been in a situation like this? My Director of Development was soft spoken, could read people well, and was great at closing deals. His most effective team member was a driven analyst who was great with numbers.
One day, the Director approached HR, then me, about his desire to let the Analyst go. He said the Analyst had a tendency to confront anyone who wasn’t as driven as he was, and as a result, impaired team dynamics.
However, the guy was a strong performer, so even though I could feel my belly tighten a bit — a warning signal from my intuition — I guided the Director to better support the Analyst’s behaviors through quarterly performance reviews and as part of that process, to provide him with communication skills training.
A Painful Lesson in Ignoring Intuition
A few months later, the Director of Development resigned — one of those gut punch moments. Not only because he was so damn good, but because in that moment I saw all those prior discussions flash through my mind and knew I had contributed to his exit.
It was obvious to me that I could have prevented it. I failed to really listen to my director and to pay attention to a momentary awareness that I needed to better address this. I was just too busy to deal with it.
We’ll come back to this, but first, let’s address the basic concept of awareness and what that means in this context. Then we’ll look at how awareness fits into our role as CEO.
The True Power of Awareness
Awareness is about bringing our attention to what’s going on around and within us. It’s about being tuned in to our own feelings and motives, as well as sensing the feelings, moods and behaviors of others, to the degree we’re able. In real-time. Now.
I knew. I knew when my Director came to me that he was very uncomfortable with how in-your-face the Analyst could be. How did I know? Even though he didn’t say anything about that, I could sense it. I observed it in meetings, watching his eyes look downward. I could hear a subtle shift in his voice. Less assured. Less empowered.
Awareness: More Than Just Noticing
But my own desire to retain the Analyst for what he brought to the team caused me to override my gut, my instinct that this was not going to end well.
We’re all capable of being aware of what we sense in ourselves and others. It’s actually quite natural for us, but since our culture hasn’t prioritized this ability, most of us haven’t really developed the talent for registering what we’ve become aware of.
But we have the potential for it and the more we practice, the better at being aware and present we become. Awareness is definitely a muscle that grows stronger with consistent exercise.
The Pitfalls of Ignoring Our Gut Feelings
What’s more, awareness is powerful.
Particularly in roles where we must be “on” all the time, or where our decisions impact much more than just ourselves, awareness is perhaps one of the most potent tools that we have at our disposal. And the good news is, it is always available to us.
The Wide-Ranging Impacts of Practicing Awareness
To better understand the power of awareness, let’s look at some of the far-reaching impacts this practice can have.
Oftentimes we can get so focused that we lose sight of factors in a situation that are impacting or influencing our decisions. Or when facing a time crunch, we can miss potential opportunities or consequences because our focus is on making a timely decision versus making a wise one.
It’s not that we are unwise; it’s just that we need to make so many decisions, and our time is limited, so we think something must give.
But the truth is CEOs can’t afford not to consider what's going on inside of ourselves and how that is influencing the ways we are relating to or approaching an issue. Self-awareness gives us a more holistic perspective, providing us with valuable internal data that we can use to make better decisions.
A Broader, Deeper, More Holistic Perspective Through Awareness
The key to and benefit of awareness is that it gives us a deeper, broader view or experience of any given situation. It helps us to see, sense, and discern the bigger picture.
Unfortunately, I muted my awareness and ignored my gut feeling when the Director of Development wanted to terminate the Analyst. I knew it would be very difficult for him to deal with his discomfort and “manage” the Analyst. I set us up for a high impact loss of talent and time, and we all suffered the consequences.
The Cost of Ignoring Awareness
The more awareness we have of our situations, the better able we are to respond wisely. When we see more, and see more clearly, we can become more sensitive to the needs of various stakeholders.
This more “whole” awareness of customer needs, team needs, etc., provides us with essential information necessary to optimally prioritize and focus our resources.
Aware Clarity Can Save Us a LOT of Headaches
And it’s not just “them” we’re seeing with greater clarity, it’s ourselves, our drivers, and whatever within us that is steering us a bit off course.
Awareness can shine a light on those moments when we’re overriding what we know needs to be addressed — even when we may not want to deal with an issue.
With the broader perspective and greater clarity of raised awareness, we can make better decisions. But that doesn't mean we have to study the topic at hand for weeks before arriving at a wise choice.
It just means we consciously pause. We pause to consider both the obvious and more nuanced aspects of our situations, our intuition, our gut feeling, and then we decide from that clearer, calmer, wiser place.
The Time-Saving Power of Awareness
It doesn't necessarily take more time up front, but it can certainly save us the time and stress of recovering from the fallout of an unwise, not fully vetted decision.
In my situation, had I allowed myself to stop, breathe and fully consider what I was aware of, sensing and feeling, I could have better deliberated on the best possible course of action for my team and the company. In all likelihood, I would not have overridden my awareness.
Practicing Awareness: A Call to Action
Being aware is actually quite natural, even if some of us have spent a lot more time in our heads for much of our lives. Hey, we were exceptionally aware as children, and now it’s just a matter of getting back in the swing of it.
And the more we practice being aware, the richer the awareness and the more readily available it is to us.
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