Tag Archive for: gut instinct

Seven Things about Gut Instinct You Might Not Know

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Gut instinct Gut instinct – that instinctual sense of knowing that does not come from conscious reasoning, also sometimes called intuition – is one aspect of your decision-making that is worth better understanding – including how and when to leverage it. Here are seven things to know about gut instinct.

  1. The gut truly is the “second brain.” – A neural network of 100 million neurons line your digestive tract, evidencing the gut’s processing ability. The gut has more neurons than the spine. It’s not only the stomach that has a brain, but the heart also has neural cells – there’s more to processing than we “think.” According to Sarah Garfinkel, professor and cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, “Instinct is when physiological signals change quickly in response to different stimuli, with or without the conscious awareness of the properties of those stimuli. A capacity to tap into and be guided by those signals gives us a route to gut instinct, which bypasses higher-order awareness mechanisms that don’t yet have access to that information.”
  2. Gut instinct is not a mind “or” body thing, and it’s complicated. – When considering a decision, the brain works in tandem with the gut, making intuition a mix of emotional and experiential data as the brain accesses memories, preferences, needs, past learnings and more. The mind-body dualistic idea that suggests mind and body responses are separate has long been disproven. They are interrelated. We feel in the body the result of cognitive processing happening in the brain. As a predictive processing network, the brain seeks to quickly compare sensory information with past experience, knowledge and memories, sending signals to the gut. These rapid assessments are subject to error, due to things like confirmation bias where we scramble to see what we already believe true or when we impose past circumstances upon a current situation and perceive danger.
  3. Gut instinct is often a valuable part of decision-making. Partnering gut feelings with analytical thinking leads to better, faster, and more accurate decisions and increases the confidence behind your choices – especially when there is no “correct” and clear-cut option and you’re overthinking. The majority of top executives report that they leverage feelings when managing crises. Women often speak to The Glass Hammer about their ability to read the room as way of informing how they approach a meeting or having gut instinct around an idea that comes up. And when, for example, you are in a familiar setting or with a familiar person, your intuition can pick up subtle cues that something is off or amiss by noticing indicators that are not usually present. It can also guide you against making a wrong choice that presents unnecessary risk. Without gut instinct, and a sensitivity to somatic cues, we can fall into analysis paralysis.
  4. Gut instinct is NOT such a good indicator for decision-making at other times – such as in hiring and recruitment. A clear example for where gut instinct should not be trusted in decision making is in hiring and recruitment, when guts instincts (fast thinking) around the “right candidate” and “culture fit” or “likability” are usually just unconscious bias (such as affinity bias, anchoring bias) – especially related to race, disability, gender and sex. Within seconds of hearing speech, Yale found that we make snap perceptions on social class (based on speech patterns such as pronunciation), competence and pay package. We also like people who are like us in tone, body movements and word choices – and the things we like cast a positive halo over the rest of the interview. Assessments from unstructured and organic interviews, where managers go with their gut, have very poor correlation with job effectiveness and finding the most qualified candidate, because unconscious bias is rife and gut instinct is often rationalized.
  5. The quality of gut instinct is interrelated to emotional intelligence. Research has shown that people with lower EI tend to misread their own bodily signal and somatic cues, misinterpreting the warnings of intuition that would normally guide us against bad risk-taking and decision making. But just as emotional intelligence can be strengthened through intentional training, as we become more sensitive to our ability to read and discern different emotions, where they are coming from and how they influence us, so can we develop our gut instinct. Discerning fear from intuition is an important part of honing our ability to use gut instinct in decision making, as these can often be confused. People who are highly sensitive – and perceive, process, and synthesize information more deeply – often have stronger intuition but may also have learned to distrust and invalidate this strength. Like a muscle, intuition can be built up. Practicing using it through fast, decisive actions on relatively inconsequential matters to build up trust and your ability to emotional regulate through discomfort. By role-playing the outcomes of different decisions, you can also see if your intuitive-based decisions would be aligned with your highest values on the other side.
  6. Distraction from overthinking helps our intuition to weigh in on decisions. When processing a lot of complex and difficult to remember information around a big decision, the tendency can be to painfully overthink – going between all the pros and cons – or to make a snap decision to escape the pain of indecision. But research has found that there’s a value in allowing our minds to wander in unrelated activity, as the unconscious mind helps to sort through the seeds. Participants who were distracted by an unrelated activity after being presented with a bunch of information about a decision made better (and more intuitive led) objective choices than those who consciously weighed up options before making a final decision. Overthinking in a strictly analytical way can muddy your judgement. But in the pause, the unconscious mind can help to surface the gist from the information overload and improve the accuracy of intuitive judgement.
  7. Timing and context is critical and most people don’t know when to use their gut instinct. Because it’s intertwined with many other rapid processes happening in the brain (triggering, bias, memory), it’s critical to assess when to rely on gut instinct in decision-making and when not to, and most business leaders do not know the difference – not only that, but it’s the same for most doctors, therapists and other kinds of professionals.

All in all, gut instinct is a valuable aspect of processing that is bound to contribute it’s voice into your decision-making, whether you are going with it, weighing it up or fighting against it. The more you can learn about gut instinct, the more you’ll be equipped as a leader to use it – and not use it – wisely.

By Aimee Hansen

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Erica Klinkowize: CBNA Treasurer, Citi

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Erica Klinkowize“It can be intimidating in finance when you’re fresh out of college, but I would encourage anyone to not discount their own opinions or gut instincts,” says Erica Klinkowize. “It’s important to differentiate early on between this is who I am and this is who my company is.”

Klinkowize speaks to developing gut instincts, the shorter- and longer-term journeys of networking, and intensive listening.

Hone Your Personal Gut Instinct

After working a short while at Prudential Securities, then at Goldman Sachs for over a decade, moving to Bank of America for seven years, and then to Citi last summer, Klinkowize observed that she, early in her career, internalized a gut instinct that was highly influenced by organizational viewpoints.

She found herself consistently asking what would the company do? While a valuable perspective, she realized it was important to differentiate her own gut instincts as she grew as a leader, so as to discern different perspectives, including what was her own intuition.

“Something would pop up, for example, in a meeting or conversation, and I’d have a negative feeling,” says Klinkowize. “I’d often quash it or question it until I came to a rationalized conclusion or the whole thing dissolved, which is not the same as listening to your gut instinct.”

She intentionally learned, with the help of executive coaching, to develop her gut instincts, recognizing that her emotional responses are often held in her upper stomach where her ribs meet, around her solar plexus: “You should know where your emotions strike you.”

Learning to discern, trust, and develop her gut instincts has been a core component of her leadership journey: “First, you need to be able to identify it: I’m having a feeling. Then you need to name the feeling and ask yourself: What is driving that feeling and is it worthy of speaking up for? Then you ultimately need the self-confidence to speak up, be potentially willing to engage in a disagreement, and simply not question it too much. The more you question it, the more likely you are to miss the appropriate moment to say something, or to lose the feeling entirely. As you move through life, your gut instinct is one thing that stays with you, no matter what you choose.”

Enrich Your Leadership With Exposure

Her background is largely in Treasury, but Klinkowize spent over two years partnering to head up a trading desk for Global Markets at Bank of America before joining Citi and returning to Treasury.

“It’s like riding a bike coming back to Treasury, in that things don’t change that quickly, but I found that I was different,” she observes. “Every experience changes you. Every risk you take, every career move you make, each one enhances your perspective on things, provides you with moments to improve your ability to hone your gut instincts, and increases your understanding of human beings. How you respond in situations changes, and you learn to do things better for everyone around you.”

Klinkowize attributes her recent move to Citi once again to instinct. She loved her team and trading desk journey at Bank of America and the rich connections she made. But when an unexpected opportunity came, along with an interview journey full of sparks and connections, she heeded the call on what was right for her development.

Along with diversifying experiences, she takes inspiration from other leaders and mentors to catalyze her growth.

“I spend time observing the people who I feel are ‘ahead of me’ in a way that I feel matters, and I ask myself what are they really good at – I watch people in meetings, noticing mannerisms, how they sit, how they dress, the speed and cadence of speech, the way they organize a deck or argument. I also note what characteristics I would not want to adopt,” she reflects. “That practice has helped me bring out a wider breadth of traits and abilities within myself.”

Klinkowize feels a big part of her own value as a mentor is her willingness to share openly all kinds of experiences including the most challenging moments of her career, such as going through pregnancy with an unsupportive manager at a previous employer. She sees mentorships as mutually beneficial and useful for reflecting on her own growth.

“Everyone looks at people who they consider successful and thinks it was a straight shot up,” she notes. “But it’s been a very up and down experience. I’ve constantly tried to remind myself that perception is reality and ask myself what am I doing (or accepting) that I need to change, which comes back to gut instinct.”

Network Early and Broadly

While at Columbia working on her MBA, Klinkowize was given the challenge to draw her network, which turned out to be very closed relative to her fellow professional classmates.

“It didn’t really register with me until I got to business school that I needed to network beyond my group and then beyond my organization,” she admits.

A latecomer to networking, initially more comfortable with keeping her head down and doing the work, Klinkowize is now its biggest advocate. She emphasizes the importance of networking early on and broadly – beyond formal programs, beyond your company, beyond your direct area of work.

“When I look back, I saw my (performance) equivalents at Goldman getting promoted faster than I was and only later did I realize that I had done a bad job at networking,” she realizes. “I had done a bad job at those things that felt hard and that I didn’t want to do.”

Klinkowize notes that while she was well-liked, she hadn’t cultivated the professional connections who would be pounding on the table for her at promotion time. Later, she gained that level of sponsorship and really felt the difference in support and validation of having someone put their name and reputation on the line for her.

Getting over her resistance to networking required having patience with the journey: “There’s a short-term experience and a longer-term experience to doing what is hard to do (for you),” notes Klinkowize.

“I’d walk away from a networking session exhausted and needing to recuperate, yet I would have learned new things and heard relatable experiences,” she reflects. “Then, it’s like a butterfly effect. You don’t exactly know how, but every interaction you have with someone makes you feel a certain way and changes your trajectory. It can be five minutes that simply reminds you of something that you forgot about yourself, and it’s revolutionary. Or it’s the fact that you’re now top of mind with that person when the next unexpected opportunity comes up.”

“On the other side of doing the hard thing (networking), you see both how your trajectory changes,” says Klinkowize, “and how it becomes more natural to you.”

Model Presence and Perspective

Klinkowize emphasizes the importance of intensive listening: “It’s about deep breathing, calming yourself, listening and not getting caught up in the chaos or the transactional nature of things but instead sitting back and observing the whole thing.”

She feels team members look to leaders for broadness and expansiveness, and embodying yourself in a meeting as a leader sets a tone for the team in terms of moderating stress.

Klinkowize feels intensive listening also helps her hear people on many levels beyond their words, and she tries to “hear with her gut” – for example, catching that moment when someone on the team suggests an idea and she knows intuitively, that’s it.

Despite days of back-to-back meetings, Klinkowize has stopped multitasking 75% of the time, noting that while her days may take a little longer, her stress levels have plummeted.

When with her daughter, her practice is to be fully present and immersed. She has come to appreciate, and actively chooses to spend, more time outdoors, along with their dog, Ash.

By Aimee Hansen

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Rachael Sansom: Managing Director, Red Havas UK

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Rachael Sansom“As a leader, teams take their cues from you. Everybody has different styles, but people have to feel some sort of essence from you,” says Rachael Sansom. “And in the agency business, that’s also true in terms of the client relationship.”

Sansom speaks to creativity, why Gen Z inspires her, the value of your essential energies and reconnecting to gut instinct.

Motivated By Creativity

With an intrapraneurial mindset, Sansom stepped in to manage the public relations (PR) agency Red Havas in London, when it opened as part of the global network.

“I’m in the game for the love of the people,” says Sansom, who feels working from home has underlined how much this means to her. “Agencies are creative working environments. I’m incredibly privileged to be working with really talented and fabulous people, with strong points of view.”

While managing business and growth, creativity is the core of her personal motivation. The most satisfying part of her work is participating in team brainstorming sessions to ponder creative solutions to difficult business questions: “Creativity can come from anywhere and it can mean different things. It can be creating a campaign. You can be creative in how you manage a client or how you create opportunities for people.”

Sansom notes that the multiple industry award-winning NHS Blood and Transfusion Service’s ‘Missing Type’ campaign, – in which 1,000 organizations removed the A, O and B from their signage and social media branding to bring attention to the ‘missing types’ of donated blood – was catalyzed by the two most junior people on the team.

Inspired by Generation Z

Sansom finds it inspiring that many of the Gen Z junior coworkers have creative outlets and creative side hustles, away from their day jobs, such as designing mobile phone covers. If they’re starting this early, she feels creativity will continue to be a guiding thread through their lives.

She observes her Gen Z team members do not have the same conditioning as Gen Xers, but instead she sees a healthier notion of living in all directions: “They want to look at life in a 360-degree way – they want to work, have a side hustle, do other stuff, travel. Not only is their creativity and entrepreneurship refreshing, but they are also redefining work, relationships and sexuality.”

“I truly think it’s going to be a fundamental generational shift in the dynamics of society,” continues Sansom. “And an interesting challenge for our generation is how can we present ourselves as relevant enough? We have a lot of experience and knowledge, but how do we combine that with what Gen Z is bringing to make something special?”

Showing Respect and Self-Compassion

Sansom feels her moral compass for fairness has been a constant and has built her reputation in both the companies she’s worked in and the market: “I’m very much business is business, but there is no reason why you don’t treat everybody – down to the most junior person – with the same kindness and respect.”

She recommends to be aware not only of the reputation you’re creating through your achievements but also your manner of being, which ultimately becomes credit in the bank with others. She also recommends doing the best you can do while also being realist enough to go easy on yourself when things don’t work.

“You’re not going to be able to win every time, you don’t have to change the world every time, and sometimes things are just what they are,” says Sansom. “So it’s important for people coming up to do their best, and to know if it occasionally doesn’t go how you want, you’re probably still going to be winning 80% of the time.”

Channeling Your Energy As a Leader

Sansom has often been complimented on her bubbly energy and enthusiasm: “I work in an agency. It isn’t an easy business, and you can’t underestimate how much energy is important if you’re trying to bring a team together.”

Sansom is reluctant to admit that men in the workplace can at times, whether consciously or unconsciously, seem to dampen or discredit the energy women bring to the table. She’s definitely had the experience of being told she’s too emotional, which seeded self-doubt in the past.

“The biggest thing you can do to be successful is to be yourself and not listen to the detractors. Just let your light shine.” She confesses her own energy could be considered a bit of the “disco is about to start” in spirit – which absolutely has been a boon and a resource to draw on.

“I’ve become more conscious of my own energy as I’ve become older, and that it’s always flowing in me, but you can also learn to use it and channel it,” Sansom says. “If I’ve got to get a team going, I really think about bringing that energy to the table.”

Similar to the Learning & Development field, PR is full of women at entry level but then dominated by men at leadership level. Sansom feels the industry has a long way to go in valuing the differences in women’s more collaborative approaches to business (more focused on connection than securing transactional benefits), as well as accommodating their total responsibilities, since women often remain the primary caretakers.

Being Inspired to The Next Level

One of her “North Star” mentors, Sally Costerton, (who at that time was CEO and Chairman, EMEA of Hill & Knowlton) succeeded in a very male-dominated environment with major power figures and passed onto Sansom the playbook on how to dissect issues and problems. This insight has helped her overcome obstacles and focus on long-term planning.

“Having a mentor that inspires you, and to a certain extent protects you, will help you get to the next level, even if they’re outside of your organization,” says Sansom. “They will help give you the skills that will up your game and that is absolutely key.”

The leaders that truly inspire Sansom have the human touch: “they are as approachable to the most junior person in the organization as the most senior, and mindful of all of their people. They are thinking about how do we inspire someone at junior level? How do we draw the pipeline through, in terms of people, all the way to the top?”

She also values down-to-earth pragmatism and a genuine supportive approach in backing the team in taking risks, which is a quality she feels is essential to enabling creativity – “the freedom to make mistakes”.

Reconnecting with Gut Instinct

Though it’s not the message she feels she received, Sansom would advise more junior women who want to start a family that it’s absolutely okay to take time out with your kids because you only get that opportunity once.

“Don’t compromise what you want from a family for the sake of your career,” says Sansom. “We need to remember our job is there to fuel our life. It shouldn’t be your life itself. It’s going to be fine it you stop for a bit, if that’s what you want to do, and you will be able to come back.”

Recently Sansom has been reading philosopher Alain de Botton, which to her own amazement, has helped her reconnect with her gut instinct and her own boundaries.

“I used to lead more from my gut instinct, but being in a more male-oriented industry knocked some of that out of me, and I learned to trust my gut instincts less. I trained myself to be more rational than I was emotional,” reflects Sansom. “What reading his philosophy has done for me has made me understand that so much of my gut feeling is right, and I should go back to relying on it more, because at this point, my gut feeling is also being fueled by 25 years of experience.”

Amidst the chaos and trauma of the pandemic, Sansom also feels more people have come to the heart of the matter in their lives. She has taken to wild water swimming, loves art galleries and enjoys beautifying her home – and speculates her own creative side hustle (à la Gen Z) would be renovating old houses with recycled materials.

By Aimee Hansen

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