Guts and Minds

Guts and Minds

There’s a delicate balance between following your gut and following your well thought-out strategy. There are so many times we have an intuition about something, but we go with our strategized plan because it makes good business sense. When we look back after the decision pans out we might say, “I should have followed my original instinct.”

How do you know when you should follow your gut or your intelligence? The truth is that BOTH are forms of intelligence. For example, when you’re hiring someone or negotiating with a vendor, you may have a momentary hesitation. Then the process begins and during the interview or the meeting, all the facts stack up really well. So we make the job offer or we hire the vendor. Then months down the road we remember that original hesitation – why, because it shows up again. And you realize that all the things that have transpired all go back to that moment in time your gut said, “uh oh.” One is Emotional Intelligence (our gut or our heart) and the other is Thought Leadership (our mind and our logic). You need to listen to both. You had that hesitation for a reason. Guess What! That reason is still there. It doesn’t disappear. Even if everything else is A+, that little voice told you that something was amiss. It might be true that the thing that made you pause can be fixed. Or perhaps it can be remedied or overlooked.

The question is, do you want to spend the time and is it worth it?

The best thing we can do in business or in the workplace, is to listen to BOTH – our gut and our mind. United they will serve us well.