Intuition in Leadership

This article builds on ideas I first explored in Portuguese in an earlier publication, and reflects how my thinking on intuition in leadership has evolved through practice and research.

Early in my career, trained as an engineer, I learned to trust logic, structure, and deduction. Intuition felt unreliable, too close to “jumping to conclusions” and too far from what I considered rigorous thinking.

Years later, working with senior leaders and studying behavioural change, I encountered a different understanding: intuition is not the opposite of rationality. In many cases, it is simply fast, experience-based pattern recognition.

This matters in leadership, because many of the most consequential decisions are made in conditions where perfect data simply does not exist.

What Intuition Actually Is (and Isn’t)

Intuition is often described as knowing something without fully knowing how you know it.

In research terms, this is not mystical, it is well documented. Fast, automatic processing often associated with what Daniel Kahneman called System 1, allowing us to react quickly to complex situations.

Research by Gary Klein shows how experienced professionals develop intuitive judgment through repeated exposure to patterns. Gerd Gigerenzer’s work on heuristics demonstrates how the brain uses efficient shortcuts to make decisions under uncertainty. Antonio Damasio’s research suggests emotional signals often guide decisions before conscious reasoning fully engages.

In practice, intuition is rarely random, it is usually compressed experience.

The problem then, is not intuition, is unexamined intuition.

The Persistent Myth of “Female Intuition”

The idea of “female intuition” remains culturally strong. Research tends to suggest differences are less biological and more developmental. In many contexts, women are encouraged earlier to read emotional signals, relational dynamics, and subtle shifts in group behaviour.

For leadership, the more useful conclusion is simple: intuition is a human capability. Context sensitivity can be developed.

In my own professional journey, from engineering to consulting to executive coaching, I didn’t learn to “trust my intuition blindly”. I learned to treat it as data that deserves exploration.

Where Intuition Shows Up in Senior Leadership

At senior levels, leaders rarely choose between logic and intuition, they integrate multiple layers of information simultaneously:

• Hard data

• Experience

• Stakeholder signals

• Organisational memory

• Cultural context

• Personal judgment under consequence

Often, intuition is simply the first indicator that something requires closer attention.

It’s not a decision, it’s a direction.

How Senior Leaders Can Use Intuition Responsibly

1. Notice Early Signals, Especially Physical Ones

Physical reactions often precede conscious reasoning. Tension, discomfort, or sudden clarity may indicate pattern recognition is already happening.

This is not proof, but it is often a useful prompt to pause and investigate.

2. Separate the Signal from the Narrative

The intuitive signal may be valid, the story we build around it may not be.

Useful questions include:

• What exactly am I sensing?

• What evidence supports this?

• What evidence contradicts it?

• What else could explain this signal?

3. Close the Feedback Loop

After important decisions, reflection matters:

• Where did intuition help?

• Where did it mislead?

• What patterns am I learning to recognise faster?

Over time, intuition becomes more reliable because it becomes calibrated.

A Final Reflection

Senior leadership is not about eliminating uncertainty, it is about making responsible decisions despite it. When combined with reflection and evidence, intuition becomes part of disciplined judgment.

If you notice a strong intuitive signal, don’t automatically trust it, but don’t automatically dismiss it either. Curiosity is often more useful than certainty.

Many leadership failures do not come from lack of intelligence, they come from ignoring signals that did not fit the spreadsheet.