Intuition – this is how it works!
If you have ever wondered what intuition is and how it works then stay tuned. A recent article in People Management describes the process of intuition in general terms which concurs with the process I have modelled using NLP in a number of fast-thinking CEO’s. Modelling gives you more detail of the thought process and with it you are able to elicit the specific micro-strategy a person uses to activate what we generally call intuition.
On one such occasion the CEO and CFO were puzzling each other. The CEO was frustrated at the CEO’s seeming lack of analysis before making big ticket investment decisions, and the CEO was angry with the CFO for dragging his feet, and sometimes even blocking investment funds that had been agreed in previous meetings.
It was the speed at which the CEO made these decisions that led the CFO to believe he had not thought it through adequately, but with a little modelling of the CEO’s process we determined that:
- 100% of his previous big ticket decisions had successful outcomes.
- He was able to draw upon relevant past experiences very quickly using mental imagery, most of which he was unaware of until we pointed it out to him
- He had an excellent kinaesthetic sense and knew exactly what a good decision felt like, and what a bad decision felt like.
- His job was to be progressive and drive change – he knew how to do this – it was his purpose in business.
NLP tools give you a deeper awareness of the things which people call ‘gut-feel’, ‘intuition’ and ‘personality-clash’. Through modelling you can get to the very specific micro-strategies people employ to get their results. This gives you a completely fresh set of references with which to understand, communicate and ultimately trust. We also modelled the micro-strategy used by the CFO to hesitate and block and discovered that he used an auditory/kinaesthetic system for decision making which took much longer than the CEO’s visual/kinaesthetic system. It was this difference which had resulted in the frustration felt on each side.
The People Management article articulates the intuition process relatively well as a generalisation, and with NLP skills you can model this process for a specific person, and you will find, as I have, that different people do it very differently. When people become aware of these differences they are more ready to trust each other, and when you know how intuition works, you can utilise it to the full rather than hold it with suspicion and mistrust.
NLP modelling is a feature of our Master Practitioner course which takes NLP Practitioner skills to a deeper level. Over the years we have used modelling to learn the micro-strategies of consistently high performers including managers, sales executives, tax consultants, customer service engineers and sports people. A number of examples are described in my book ‘NLP Business Masterclass’.
David Molden – FCIPD
Quadrant 1 International
