The 6th Sense for Great Leadership
Leadership can be equated to juggling three fragile balls:
Vision, People and Tasks. With all the skills and abilities required to successfully
manage these various dimensions, a leader can benefit greatly from a little magic
too.
Don’t worry, we not going to delve into the mystic arts as a
module of leadership. We are, however, going to look at the advantages of a
leader’s Intuition. Even before we discuss Intuition too deeply, let us
demystify the word.
Intuition in leadership helps us define those hard to
measure elements around leading people, teams or tasks that, even though they
are hard to measure, are important to the success of the outcome.
These “hard to quantify” elements include: Effectiveness and
Value of the Vision, Morale of the team, Attitudes and commitment of team
members, True value of a skill / attitude / Knowledge set without testing, Timing
of launching or ending a project, Perceiving the effect or value of a
product/service/approach will have before launch.
Even though these are not all the “intuitive elements”, a
leaders sense of timing and value of these is so important, and so hard to
measure. Often intuition is more about experience – past experiences that give
one insight to potential outcomes. These past experiences could be the leader’s
personal efforts, or someone’s experience the leader chooses to learn from. As a result – intuition falls into the “magic
of leadership” file.
So, let’s look at various areas that a leader’s sensitivity
to timing and value will have impact:
1.
Themselves:
Self awareness is often overlooked, causing leaders to make impulsive
decisions. Making permanent choices while experiencing temporary emotions is
dangerous and potentially destructive to your team. Get your intuition in tune with yourself.
Know who you are, know what you are experiencing, know when it’s a good time to
make a decision and know when to steer clear of others. Know your highs and
lows, and their timing. This will save you a lot of “apology” time and effort
trying to repair damage.
Self
Awareness is important, regardless. Keep discovering yourself, your
strengths, your weaknesses, your values and your beliefs. Discovering these
elements will give you insight to the most important factor to personal success
– Mind Mutter. It matters! Know yours; make friends with your inner voice. It
will be of endless benefit to you.
2.
Resources: Keep your finger on the pulse of what
assets and resources are where. Knowing what resources you have, and how to
best utilise them is a key matter of timing and intuition. We are not
suggesting that you count peas, that is time consuming - but be sure of what is
available.
Resources need to be applied at the right
time too. There is no easy way to define when the right moment will arise.
Experience and intuition is key. Talk to other leaders. Ask about their
experiences. Learn to recognise the correct moments from their input. Einstein
says – A true genius doesn’t learn from his own mistakes, he learns from the
mistakes of others.
3.
People: Assessing people, their strengths,
weaknesses, moods and motivation is a constant cycle of success and failure for
any leader. If I was to put my money on the single greatest challenge for
people, I would bet on the People Horse.
Never cease to learn about people, and what
makes them tick. Developing intuition concerning people is no easy task, and I
suggest focusing on the following areas to speed up your learning curve:
-
Values and Beliefs: Group as one heading these
are two different aspects of people that will give you two important keys to
understanding people and their makeup.
-
Sensory Perception Patterns: We all use our five
physical senses – see, hear, feel, taste and smell – to absorb and process
information. Each of us has a preference, which will dictate likes, dislikes,
and prescribe certain behaviours. You will do well to uncover these
preferences.
-
Motivational Direction: Towards and away from
are the two direction described by this method of understanding what makes
people tick. Towards people are motivated by the carrot, and away from people
are motivated by the stick.
-
Comparison Preference: Match or mismatch. People
group and compare everything in their lives. Get the process wrong and you
could lose the commitment of a follower.
4.
Situation: Any situation is divided into five
different elements – people (people involved directly and indirectly), place
(or environment), Activity (or tasks, actions), Time (time on the clock but
also season – birthday, Christmas, before a holiday, etc.) and resources
(Objects, assets) A leader must develop intuition to understand and assess the
relationship between these five elements.
5.
Trends: Spotting potential trends before the
bandwagon is overpopulated is possibly one of the most desirable intuition
aspects any leader could hope for. Like the other elements, learning to
identify trends is a matter of experience and learning. Learn from past trends,
and learn to recognise the signs and respond to that insight before it makes
sense to the rest of the world.
As you can see from these five elements – intuition is not
an easy thing to develop. Sometimes a little magic (or more often – a little
luck) is welcome! A personal belief concerning development of intuition is –
Either you win, or you learn! A learning attitude is a leader’s greatest asset (even
more so than magic) to developing intuition. However, having God on your side could
bolster your intuitive abilities to levels legends are made of.
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