Home topics workplace managing-blogs Managing Managing Intuition: Why every good leader needs it Dr Martin Robson July 25, 2012 Non-rational influences in the public domain have long either been ignored or seen as irrational – something to be avoided, negated, managed or corrected. Educational institutions prepare students for an organisational life in which instrumental rationality is assumed and expected. However, the assumption that leaders in organisations are exclusively rational in their behaviour and decision-making processes is one that has come under increasing scrutiny. Non-rational elements of cognition play an important role in organisations. In particular, research has shown that intuition use is both widespread in organisations, and increases with seniority and experience. In research conducted with CEOs, directors and chairs of major Australian organisations, I found that all participants used intuition on a regular basis and that their reliance and trust in their intuition had increased throughout their career. There are many definitions and manifestations of intuition (sudden insights, psychic intuition and philosophical intuition to name a few), however, the kind of intuition that is valued by decision-makers is ‘gut feeling’. Gut feelings are not emotions nor do they come out of the blue. Intuition in this sense can be defined a feeling of knowing or certainty about an issue, a person or a strategy based on previous experience and pattern recognition. Consequently, the more experience in a particular domain, the more your intuition is likely to be accurate. Intuition is useful because it can cope with more complexity than