Great Leaders Have the Guts to Admit When They're Going with Their Gut

In my last article I talked about Molly Graham’s “Disagree and Let’s See”framework. That framework is based on having some testable hypotheses. That got me thinking of some decisions, my own and others, that weren’t frame around testable hypotheses. They were based on on feelings. 

My dad* is an awesome parent, and as an engineer himself, mostly operates on a pretty logical basis. When I was growing up, most of the rules I had to follow were easy to understand. They were based on good things like keeping me safe, living within our means, or treating people kindly.

 When I was a teenager I would, of course, try to renegotiate rules to do the things I wanted to do, with varying degrees of success. But my dad would always listen to me respectfully if I made a reasonable case and sometimes change his mind. Cue many Saturday nights at Rocky Horror Picture show as that was one exception to my midnight curfew. 

But every now and then my dad would say something that meant it was time to stop arguing. He would say, “I know it’s not logical but that’s just the way I feel.” I knew he was being honest, and that he trusted his parenting instincts enough to go with his gut even if my argument was good on paper. And I respected that he was honest enough to just tell me this and not let me just keep arguing an unwinnable case. 

Not many leaders have that same self-awareness and willingness to be honest about it. But the ones who do build trust and save a lot of fruitless back and forth. 

Coming out of COVID lockdown when leaders started talking about returning to the office, employees would ask things like “what metric will we see change that will show that being in the office is better than working at home?” and “Didn’t our productivity numbers go up since we’ve been working from home?” And for CEOs who were running on instinct, vibes, or intuition, these was unanswerable. That didn’t mean they were wrong, necessarily. But the outcomes they wanted, like cross-team collaboration, or innovation, or esprit de corps, or just a general sense of “better” were hard to measure. Yet arguments would often arise and revolve around specific outcomes, and how to measure them. And, just like with my dad, they didn’t get to the core point which was that the person in charge just felt that way. 

What if a CEO had simply said, “I have a feeling that we’ll be more successful in person. I can’t quantify it, and I can’t point to irrefutable data that supports this. But it’s my job as CEO to do the best thing I can for the company and I believe we do better when we see each other face-to-face on a regular basis.” If you have built up enough trust with people, they’ll give you a freebie every now and then. And you’ll actually spend less of your credibility balance than if tried  convoluted logic, hiding behind Human Resources, or making every other manager in the company try to come up with a rationale when they have to explain it to their team. 

This kind of honesty in decisions is a gift to the other leaders in the organization. Instead of cycling through unwinnable debates, a manager is now in the position to simply say, “Look the CEO usually makes good decisions, and they’ve got a good feeling about this. We can’t argue with feelings, so we’re just going to have to trust them on this one.” 

I’m not recommending you do this as a regular thing, especially leading technical organizations with a bunch of people who thrive on the scientific method. But, a lot of leaders have learned that ignoring their gut gets them in more trouble than following it. They’ve tuned that gut based on decades of experience and have been bitten when they ignored it. So if that’s where you are, have the guts to know it, and own it.

Your Dot Release: If you’re someone who makes a fair amount of decisions based on your gut, try picking a small decision and being honest about it. Maybe it’s a font for the newsletter or it’s what bug to fix first. Tell your team you’re going with your gut on this one and see if they don’t nod, like they knew all along you were doing that. 

If you’re not someone who makes a lot of vibe-based decisions, look around you for someone you trust and admire who you think does. The next time they take a deep breath to lay down a bunch of data to overwhelm you into agreeing with a decision, just hit pause and tell them, “You know what? Let’s just go with your gut on this one.” 

*And reader of this newsletter, so hi, Dad!

Every issue of the Dot Release has one thing you can implement to work better with humans. All articles are available for free and you can subscribe on my website. If this has been helpful, I’d love it if you shared it with someone else.

Have a question or comment? Hit reply to email me, a real person, who will read your email and probably answer it.