6

Trust Your Inner Compass

MYTH

When I am under pressure, I can’t tap into my intuitive insight.

TRUTH

I always have access to my intuition and the ability to use it.

Here is what successful people have had to say about trusting your inner compass:

Oprah Winfrey: “Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.”

Albert Einstein: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Gisele Bündchen: “The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become.”

Steve Jobs: “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

How do leaders reach their positions of power? How did they know when to take the smart risks that led to their success? What fueled their decision-making processes? Often, you will hear them say that in the end, they relied on their intuition.

Research shows a positive correlation between intuition and business success. In a 1976 article in the Harvard Business Review, management guru Henry Mintzberg notes that the use of intuition “may be more important at the top of an organization.”¹ Perhaps higher-level managers have less time to make decisions and more leadership experience to draw on.

You may have already noticed my many references to intuition throughout the book. I believe that listening to your inner voice is key to making the right decisions for your career. Tara Mohr talks about the “inner mentor”—“an imagined version of an older, wiser you” that you can access for guidance.² With discipline and practice, we can learn to connect with our intuition more, no matter our age or position. And as we begin to follow the direction of our inner compass, we will feel more ready to take the smart risks necessary to advance professionally.

Make intuition your business edge

I’ve gone over the many ways that gender biases make the workplace a more challenging environment for women. At times we can find ourselves being swayed by prejudices that we know aren’t true. And when that happens, we may doubt our abilities. Intuition, a faculty that I believe women are underutilizing, can get us back on track.

Although intuition is often thought of as a feminine trait, research from Hayes, Allinson, and Armstrong, as well as others, shows that women are not necessarily using their intuition more than men at work.³ Hayes and Allinson also found that using intuition has more to do with job level and position than gender.⁴ Women may also be trying to avoid being judged by the female stereotypes of being “too emotional” or “irrational.”

When we ignore our inner voice, we are shortchanging ourselves. Your inner voice is a compass always giving you signals about which way to turn—it is your unique professional edge. Careful and judicious use of this kind of emotional intelligence is a plus, helping us make the right decisions and boosting our confidence in our choices. In the Women and Confidence Survey, we asked respondents: “What would your adult self say to your younger self to inspire her to have more confidence?” The answers underscored the importance of listening to your intuition with responses like, “You are smart. Trust your gut instincts!”

Take this example: As a baby boomer, I really prize the opinions of millennials when it comes to social media. They grew up using these tools, so I usually trust their judgment. When a young woman whom I respect advised against a new form of graphic posts I was considering for our business Facebook page, I began to question the merit of my idea. At the same time, my gut sense was to give it a shot anyway. I’m glad I listened to my inner voice because those graphic posts were a huge success. My years of experience and my wide knowledge of our audience fed into my instinctive decision, leading me to make the right choice, and now we reach millions of people around the world who are inspired by our page.

Most of the women leaders I interviewed told me that they listened to their inner compass when making important decisions. Sandra Dewey of Turner Entertainment and Cartoon Network, shared that she believes intuition helps us to become effective, confident decision makers.

Debbie Storey of AT&T has her own take on intuition. She uses her intuitive ability to make business decisions, but explained that intuition is not some unrefined, magical gut instinct. Rather, it stems from a rapid processing of data points that come from years of experience.

This view of intuition is backed up by journalist and noted author Malcolm Gladwell. In Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, he argues that what people perceive as intuition is simply rapid cognition.⁵ He explained in a Q and A on his website that rapid cognition is “thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with ‘thinking.’”⁶ Gladwell writes that in the first two seconds of appraising a situation, you bring to bear all of your beliefs, attitudes, values, and knowledge of similar past experiences. He calls this process “thin-slicing,” which is “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.”⁷

A gut feeling is a compilation of all your knowledge distilled into a simple impulse. Your intuitive sense stems from the rapid processing of everything you already know, everything you have learned and experienced. We can trust in our vast stores of life experiences to help us take the next professional leap.

Even those in the most analytical positions can benefit from intuition, as Charisse Lillie of Comcast shared. “I’m a lawyer, so I’m trained to be logical. You collect the facts, analyze the data, and come up with a few solutions. From this you try to figure out which one is going to get you to your goal, wreaking the least amount of havoc. But intuition is at play for me too—following my gut.”

Charisse gave an example of how she followed her intuition at a previous job. She had to develop a book of business for the law firm. Her mentor questioned the value of her bar association work and encouraged her to focus only on getting her name out to general counsels who could give her business. However, her gut told her to stay with it. She followed her instincts and eventually served as chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Diversity, something she was very passionate about. Ultimately, this position was an important platform that helped her develop a great deal of business.

I believe that intuition is a higher form of knowledge. When we get still enough to connect with it, we know which actions are the right ones to take. Several of the survey respondents agreed that a connection to something greater helps them make the best decisions. One woman wrote, “Believing in a power greater than myself keeps me grounded, focused, and invigorated, thus allowing me to be the best I can be.”

However you define it—gut instinct, intuition, inner compass, or inner voice—when we veer away from it, we are vulnerable to making bad choices. As Jacqueline Hernández of Telemundo put it, “Intuition is core to who we are. When we question it, we start to question the truth.”

Using your intuition to make better choices is a process. It consists of considering your options and listening to your inner guidance to choose the right one. As we begin to trust our intuition and see how it helps us make better business decisions, we will find that relying on our instincts for all sorts of choices will get easier.

Confidence spark

Reflect back on times when you trusted your gut sense, and it was right. Also bring to mind times when you knew you should have but did not. What transpired as a result? Now take a fresh look at a challenge you are facing. What is your intuitive sense of how to handle it? Create an action plan based on that.

Consider your options using intuition

When our inner compasses tell us that we are making the right decisions, our ability to step up and move forward is boosted. We may still be shaky about what will happen next, but knowing we can trust our instincts and ourselves is the foundation for taking action.

For any decision we have to make, we have at least four options: moving straight ahead, proceeding with caution, waiting to act, or deciding that it’s not right for us. The following examples demonstrate how the women I interviewed used their intuition to consider their options and make some tough decisions.

Move straight ahead

When presented with an opportunity, you may know that you should proceed, whether others agree or not. In the story below, Jackie Hernández felt strongly about how Telemundo should be rebranded, and she was able to get the market research to support her choice. She moved straight ahead without hesitation.

“We decided to relaunch the brand, and for two years we did a tremendous amount of research. We used to have a beautiful blue T—the logo was very traditional. My gut told me to go with red because it’s a vibrant color, and we deal with Hispanic culture. We also wanted something that was contemporary and modern. We asked consumers what they thought. I got enough information to back up my gut reaction and went with it. The relaunch was a huge success.”

Proceed with caution

Some opportunities create doubt, but not enough to stop you from moving forward. Although Jill Campbell of Cox Communications considers herself a high risk taker, she proceeds with caution when necessary. She looks both ways and then takes a leap in the direction of her inner compass. Below is the story of when she took a lower-titled position in order to move ahead. “I actually went backwards for one of my jobs. I was managing a cable system and they asked me to fill the number two spot in a larger one, so I lost the status of being a general manager. But it was the best move I could have made because I was able to learn how to run a big system. That set me up to be the general manager of other big systems. It was a gut feel on that one.”

Wait, then decide

Sometimes sitting on a decision for a while to gather all the information—including what is not being said—and connecting with what your intuition is telling you is important. Such was the case with Susan.

Susan had been with her company for two years as a senior director, and she was one of two people being considered for a promotion to vice president when her boss retired. In conversations with him, the implication was that she was next in line. Around the same time the decision was being made, a recruiter called about an amazing opportunity as president of a pharmaceutical division. Her skills were in demand!

Susan wasn’t sure about the new opportunity for a number of reasons. First, she had a good chance of being made vice president at her current company. Second, this new job would be a big jump in levels. She waited an entire week before she accepted the interview for the president position. In the end, she trusted her instincts about who was shooting straight and who had other agendas: “I thought about it a lot. I kept coming back to the fact that I didn’t trust my boss—I knew he didn’t want to lose me (he did not want to have to train someone else), but I don’t think he wanted to promote me either. That’s what my gut told me. After several rounds of interviews, I was offered the job, which I accepted—best move I ever made.”

Confidence spark

Think of the person who is your strongest supporter—did you sense at the beginning that you could trust him? Now think of someone you know professionally, a person you keep your distance from. Did you know not to trust him initially? Don’t discount your first reaction to people; it is usually right.

Decide it’s not right

If your inner voice is advising no, then it’s an indication that an opportunity is not right for you. Even if the opportunity is presented as being in your best interest, have the courage to turn it down if that is what needs to happen. For Kathy Murphy of Fidelity Personal Investing, saying no is a matter of being able to sleep at night because she made the right decision. In the world of financial products, competition is intense, but she has learned to follow her inner compass and only offer products that have a positive value proposition for the consumer.

“My rule is that if we are not comfortable selling it to our own parents, then we shouldn’t sell it to anyone. I would take the hit with our sales figures because I didn’t want the reputational risk. It’s a much better way to grow the business long term . . . and you can sleep at night!”

What would you do?

Power tools

• Don’t shortchange yourself. Your intuition is your unique professional edge. Rely on it more.

• Practice trusting your intuition for all sorts of choices. Your first reaction to people and the difficult situations that are presented to you is usually right.

• Let your inner compass decide which course to take in making a decision: move straight ahead; proceed with caution; wait, then decide; or decide it’s not right.