After an interview for a job at bp, the hiring manager told me I wasn’t going forward to the next round. The feedback: “You’re too intuitive”. Hmm…
Five years later, I am still staggered that someone might not value this attribute, especially for a pretty senior position. For what is the opposite of “intuitive”? According to Thesaurus.com it’s “calculated, meditated, reasoned, taught”. And that makes sense, I’m not really any of those. And where would you need those skills – Lawyer? Auditor? Evil Mastermind? Sometimes I think it’s a minor miracle I lasted 16 years.
Intuition or ‘gut feel’ has helped me many times pick friends and team-mates, as well as ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘doing things right’. But it has also let me down. I’ve fallen victim to Takers, backed the wrong horse and have buggered things up more than once.
Intuition isn’t magic or some kind of gift bestowed on special people (even if I would secretly like that to be true). Scientists believe it’s just unconscious pattern-matching from past experiences.
Last week (other than the Techstars mentoring stuff, which was ace), few things seemed to go well for me. I felt I was pushing hard for little reward or response. Nagging doubts about my ability, my business idea, my network, my superfluousness seemed to get louder. And my intuition began to tell me “OK buddy time’s up”.
It reminded me of something I read on Instagram by a fantastic customer researcher Katie Tucker @productjungle: “Don’t confuse gut feel with ego”. She says time and again, she sees product teams overlay their own hopes and fears (ego in disguise) on what they believe the customer feels – and claim “gut feel”.
I’ve realised I’ve been doing the same. I was letting all my anxieties about myself, my ego, (which I don’t really trust) get bound up in my gut feel, my intuition, my perceptiveness (which I do trust - mostly).
When I look back at bp I didn’t need my intuition too much; there were so many rules and guide-rails. And even though I ignored some of these, the opportunities to break out from the norm were limited. Consequently, the amplitude of the waves was pretty small: the highs weren’t that high, the lows weren’t that low.
Whereas when you start something on your own – or in fact start anything new (even joining a new corporate), there’s much larger amplitude and volatility. And to preserve your sanity, you need to call on that intuition because either there are no rules or you haven’t learnt them yet.
This week I have been offered a really exciting opportunity to join a startup. And, just to test me, the day after I got a second offer by a different startup. My head and heart are a bit all over the place. Despite faith in both my intuitive and rational thinking, I actually don’t trust either right now. But I’m increasingly realising this is normal.
Here’s a few things I’m doing to try to make sense of it all; I hope they help you:
Some people swear by Morning Pages, where you just write a page or two first thing in the morning of whatever comes into your head. I like running first thing, before I get distracted or allow myself to bail out, but I’m going to try “Evening Pages” before bed to knock out the noise.
When faced with a choice or approaching a crossroads, don’t be bulldozed into a decision. If the other person can’t wait, that tells you something. If they’ll wait so you can make the best decision for you, that tells you something else.
Apply a frame to your decision-making where you consciously bring in both your intuitive and rational powers. Draw up a simple table headed with each and write what comes into your head. It’s taken a few attempts for me because there are times when my intuition is more helpful than my rational processing - and vice versa.
Train yourself to filter your intuition from other baggage. Be alert to unhelpful voices masquerading as intuition. It’s always good to write these down somewhere.
One bit of advice I read to ‘train your intuition’ is to make use of feedback to evaluate the outcomes of your intuitive decisions – are there patterns you can learn from?
This week more things have gone my way. I’ve rebounded and so I think I can trust my intuition again; my gut feel feels right.
But I am wary.
Just as a host of negative feelings can influence our intuition and lead us to make some bad choices, so can a load of overly-confident feelings do the same.
I hope you’re making some good choices right now.
Last week I got a few ideas from some of you of topics you wanted me to cover – feel free to send over what’s bothering you right now.