Trusting your gut
As a senior leader in the private and public sector I was programmed to analyse, research and plan. To dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. To check, double check and in some cases, triple check! These are valuable tools and ways of thinking and yet sometimes, your subconscious processes information in ways your conscious mind can’t really articulate.
In those moments instinct isn’t irrational, it’s your experience and expertise communicating through feeling rather than thought.
It’s not about blind leaps of faith, but occasionally when that persistent feeling won’t subside perhaps it’s worth asking yourself, ‘What might happen if I trust my gut?’
The head and gut are often in constant argument with each other. When you wake up you ‘feel’ that now is the time to do something, then the head takes over and the gut takes a back seat until you next have the chance to ‘listen’ to it again.
It could be a decision in work about a relationship you’d like to build, a way of presenting information or of doing things differently. It could be your instincts about an individual in a role or it could be a feeling about your own development and future career path.
If the gut feeling is strong, then sometimes, logic needs to be placed to one side.
An early workshop!
I had no plans to ever work for myself, and yet 10 years ago I found myself at such a crossroads. We had a young family, no money and had not long arrived in a new country.
Yet I knew three things to be true in my working life:
I was tired of undertaking bland ineffective development programmes
I was bored of uninspiring leadership offsites with crammed agendas; and
I was frustrated working with managers who lacked the basic skills to get the job done
Not that I thought I was the perfect leader, far from it, however I was good at facilitation and had developed a formula for building high-performance teams, one that consistently produced results when traditional approaches failed.
Each morning, I'd arrive at my comfortable corporate job and feel that same feeling: “I think there’s a better way and I want to share it with other companies.”
Starting my own practice terrified me. There was no five-year plan, just a determination to get started before my head took over! Where would I find clients? How would I manage the administrative side? Could my approach scale?
But instinct doesn't provide detailed roadmaps, money or a perfect date on which to start, it simply points in a direction and says, "Trust me."
So I did.
Today, my client list spans industries and countries I never imagined entering. My books have helped individuals and teams in places I’ve never heard of! My team-building formula has evolved through application in diverse environments. Most importantly, I've witnessed transformations that validate what my instincts knew all along.
Yet, had I based my decision on my head alone I wouldn’t be in this position now. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut, then work hard to prove it was right!
