On Counter-Intuitive Leadership

Okay, I said I was going to post but once a week....

...but sometimes the Muse takes over.

I got into a cyber-discussion with a colleague about "Intuitive Leadership". My colleague -- as I understood him -- was suggesting that sometimes intuition isn't all that it's cracked up to be, because sometimes when we look back, we see the mistake we made. He was suggesting that perhaps "counter-intuitive" leadership is really the best way to go.

I started thinking about what he said, got into the zone and wrote this response to him. Feel free to listen in....

ON COUNTER-INTUITIVE THINKING

Okay, here's my research geek side coming out, so bear with me....

With a psychology and philosophy background, I was always trained to consider the definition of words. I'd suggest that the word "intuitive" gets used a bit haphazardly in our culture, and we have to be careful in applying it to leadership.

Used in common parlance, "intuitive" often means "common sense", i.e., the solution to a problem that presents itself with the least amount of reflection. IMHO, when people say that they made an "intuitive decision" that turned out to be wrong, what they really meant was that they grabbed at the first common sense response that presented itself.

"Intuition", as it was developed as a concept by Jung (who really brought the word into Western language), was much more interested in what might be better termed (by Ken Wilber and Robert Kegan and those folks) as post-rational thought, which is what Gary Klein is writing about in "Intuition at Work", as well as what Malcolm Gladwell is talking about in his best-selling "Blink".

Depending on how we use the term "intuition", then, we can go in one of two ways:

1. If we use it "intuition" in the sense of "common sense", then it is possible to move in counter-intuitive ways, and often wisely so. Ask any medical or mental health professional -- what often seems (from a 'common sense' perspective) to be the problem is 9 times out of 10 not the problem at all.

2. If we use "intuition" in the sense of "post-rational thought", then it is probably not possible to move/think/be in counter-intuitive ways, and certainly wouldn't be wise (as post-rational thought is a higher order thinking process than rational, and 'common sense' thinking, which would be like trying to solve a problem by moving from (in Piagetian stages) formal operations to concrete operations -- the solution you come up with is NOT going to work.

[My colleague wrote about how teams/groups could have a person playing the role of the "counter-intuitive...]

In your leadership example, I think it's better to use the term "Devil's advocate" than counter-intuitive person. My comment above were only approaching intuition from an individual level. If we begin to move the level of system to the team/group level, then it gets increasingly more complicated. IMHO, what is often seen as "intuitive" by the group often is a very serious case of groupthink. (And also brings us to the "Fifth Discipline" error (after Peter Senge's book), which might bring us to speak about a group or organization as a "thinking organization" or an "intuitive organization", when, in fact, such a thing is impossible, as neither groups nor organizations have a central point of consciousness.)

[He then began pondering whether "counter-intuitive thinking" would be an Art or a Science....]

As to Art or Science....why not avoid the 'tyranny of the OR' and have it be both? This area is particularly where I find value in the study of traditional Eastern philosophies. For a variety of reasons, Eastern philosophy didn't get as caught up in separting Art and Science as we in the West did (which led to some other problems unique to that choice, but I'll save that for another post). Therefore, studies like Zen and Aikido and Chado and Ikebana and things like that (to stay in the Japanese realm for a bit), could focus on both the aesthetics of Art and the precision of Science. And it seemed to work pretty well....to develop post-rational thought in the practitioners. So that an Aikido practitioner can block a punch without 'thinking' (rationally) about it. Rationally thinking about a punch to the face is too slow of a response -- you get punched in the face. An Ikebana (flower arranging) practitioner can 'see' the aethetics of a particular arrangement to see if it is in balance (i.e, to perceive the flowers from a post-rational perspective).

[He then observed that there is a nearby Metropark that where "Engraved on that rail is the statement "There is within us a deep place at whose edge we may sit and dream.", and he cautions people not to fall in...]

Finally, that park is one of my wife's favorite places to hike in the woods, so I'm familiar with that plaque. Perhaps, though, it might be best for us to fall in -- to take the creative leap that allows us to move from rational, 'common sense' approach to the world to a wider, broader post-rational place where the woodland trails listen to the harmony of the Universe and the waterfalls speak with the voice of Truth.