July 2000 Intuitive
Decision-Making Opens Doors By
Drema McCoy, Staff Writer Imagine
being given two job offers. They offer equivalent opportunities and
salary. Which one do you choose? After all the analytical thought
processes have been exhausted, you may find that one choice just seems
more "right" than the other—and your decision is made. "Intuition
is a mental faculty that allows you to know the answer without getting
to it in a logical, linear way, and people need to be open to
that," says Nina Gibson, who conducts intuition workshops. As a
scientist who provides consulting services to the Space Shuttle program
and the Federal Aviation Administration, Gibson says she was trained to
think logically in college. However, she says that once she discovered
another way to process information, more doors were opened to her.
"There's something about just using more than your logical
intellect," she explains. Making
decisions by intuition is becoming a more widely accepted approach in
business and is gaining attention from management scholars and
practitioners alike. Far from being some mystical force, intuition is
the ability to think about things subconsciously. Intuition allows one
to draw on unconscious knowledge and past experiences, including
accumulated successes and failures, in both work and personal life. Because
intuition works in ways contrary to the analytic methods in which many
engineers are trained, it is often ignored or discounted. To some
degree, however, everyone incorporates intuitive knowledge in the
decision-making process. In a study of 60 U.S. professionals, conducted
for the Academy of Management, 47% indicated that they often use
intuition in the workplace. An additional 30% percent said that they
used intuition in the workplace sometimes. Only 3% said they rarely used
intuition. "I
think a lot of people in technical fields may not realize they use their
intuition, but they do every day," says Gibson. And, intuition may
be the only viable option when time is short or key aspects of a
situation are hard to quantify. Often
described as instinct, or a "gut feeling," intuition is the
process of receiving information without knowing exactly where it comes
from or how you access it. "It's sort of like they are coming to
the answer before they know what the steps are. We see this over and
over again in discoveries," says Gibson. "Engineering is a
very creative field, and intuition has a lot to do with planning and
understanding the creative process." Intuition
is not a substitute for analytical thinking, however. Instead, it
becomes an additional source of information. Decision- making should be
a process of allowing the inner knowledge to be recognized and combined
with outer data and analysis. "I think they have to be used
together," says Gibson. Whereas
logical, analytical thought processes stem from the left hemisphere of
the brain, intuition comes from the right hemisphere, where creative
processes take shape. In using both sides of the brain, logic and
intuition become integrated to provide a more balanced approach. People
who are more in touch with their intuitive skills are better listeners
and are better able to see the big picture. Intuition
needs to be developed and practiced, Gibson says. The first step is to
simply become aware that intuition exists. Next, learn to distinguish
intuition from other emotions, such as fear. "You have to know the
difference between an emotion and your intuition," explains Gibson.
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