There is a famous saying which is helpful in many situations, the corporate landscape being one of them: “Go with your gut.”

This is because many people strongly believe in the power of intuition. And this 'gut feeling' is your intuition pointing to a specific solution, encouraging you to go forward. 

However, following your gut feeling cannot be blindly considered, and depending on how you take that input, it can be your best or worst decision.

Let us discuss this in a bit more detail, understanding the concept behind intuition from a more scientific perspective and also talking about when you should trust your gut.

The Science Behind Intuition

The psychology and science behind the concept of gut feeling and how intuition works are two subjects that many professionals in their respective fields have extensively researched.

After a great amount of research, trials, and brain activity monitoring, it has been understood that the regions trigger any reactions relating to our gut in your brain which is associated with handling and processing emotional and primitive thoughts.

Due to this, these reactions have always been more suited to survival, and their significance can be traced back to ancient times.

During times when many tribes existed throughout, and people were more at threat when it came to violence due to the primitive nature of those times, thoughts such as immediately recognizing whether someone was on your side or gauging someone's loyalty to the tribe, intuition came in handy.

This was during an era when survival was much more meaningful for many people due to how at risk they were.

However, times have greatly changed since then. Because living in modern society poses a much lesser risk, it is more likely for our gut to register wrong information when it comes to certain decisions regarding work.

This is especially relevant when it comes to making decisions as a manager of a company because these gut feelings are in response to ensuring survivability.

Keeping this in mind, a manager's intuition may sometimes lead to an incorrect decision because our gut would automatically identify your team members and employees as someone belonging to their tribe, leading to a decision that may put your position at risk.

However, this does not mean that following your intuition will always result in you ending up in deep waters because there are times when it can lead to some surprising outcomes as well; it all depends on how you use the information at your disposal.

As a manager, you have many variables to consider before making a managerial decision. This is why you should take your experience and knowledge into account as well before deciding on what you think is right.

Furthermore, there are many practices that you can adopt that can make decisions based on your intuition comparatively more effectively, such as keeping a journal in which you can note down all decisions you have made so that you can reference them in the future.