The Value of Intuition in Leadership
An MSP business needs to have clear data to help define decisions, but that’s not all. Leadership must be intuitive. There is something to be said for learning from previous mistakes, but you’ve got to keep learning new things and go with your gut, too.
Tips to Hone Intuition
Your “gut” or internal intuition is going to be right more often than not. But learning which internal voices to listen to is difficult. Some are negative, some are positive, some are downright uninformed and emotional. You’ve got to clear mental noise and make the right decisions. These tips should help:
Inner Critics Can Kill Key Decisions: Keep Yours in Check
The reputation of an MSP business will reflect the decisions management. Management personnel will have thoughts of a critical nature which are positive and negative.
Sometimes, internal misgivings emanate from a voice that isn’t helping you hone operations, it’s actually working against you. For a tangible example, imagine the interplay between “Gollum” and “Smeagol” in The Lord of the Rings.
Gollum, the psychological creature made of Smeagol’s evil obsession, is sensuous and evil. Smeagol is a thread of sanity making weird faces and voices, but mostly harmless.
The inner critic of this fantasy creature took him over, becoming a pillar of personal pride eventually casting the character into a pit of lava. Tolkien wrote in veiled parable what he meant to teach readers. As a tech leader, you may well have inner criticisms that will rot you. But sometimes, that inner voice is right, too. You must find the balance.
Humor Alleviates Emotional Slavery: Anger Dies with Laughter
If you can laugh at a frustrating client, an under-performing employee, or an impossible situation, then you’re in more control. When your anger, fear, or pride take over, it’s like a feedback loop that keeps feeding into itself.
When you catch anger directing you rather than rationality, you’ve got to find the humor in it. The humor can diffuse the anger, clearing your mind for good decisions.
Determine If Reservations are Legitimate or Synthetic: Self Honesty
Sometimes, you’ll have internal reservations based not in the rightness or wrongness of a certain policy change, but based on how that change affects you. It could make you look less than perfect. Pride may prevent you from making the right decision.
This will hurt your company. You’ve got to have the strength to decide against inner reservations that aren’t productive. Sometimes that which makes you pause internally is legitimate, sometimes it’s not. Know your own motives.
Facilitating Intuition
Your MSP business will have seasons of difficulty requiring intuitive choices that can’t derive strictly from the data. Know your internal reservations and what kind they are. Be familiar with humor to diffuse emotions which overpower you. Control your inner critic. If you can do these things, you’ll reduce impositions on clear intuition and so be better able to make important decisions in the moment.
