Is it better to listen to your gut, or should you go with what the data says?

Your gut is a culmination of all the experiences you’ve had and the emotions that went along with those experiences. Your gut does tell you a lot, and your intuition is important.

I have my pilot’s license, even though I don’t fly that often. Part of being a pilot is learning to read your instruments, especially in unsure situations. For example, as a pilot, if you enter into cloud, there are no visible markers to tell you where the horizon is. At that point, your instruments are the only thing you can rely on. The instruments may be telling you, “You are in a dive,” but your mind isn’t going to believe this because of the way your inner ear works. You have to trust that the instruments are giving you the best information about your current situation relative to the ground. If you ignore it, because your gut tells you, “I’m flying straight and level,” you’ll end up crashing into the ground.

Listening to both your intuition and the data can help you make even better decisions.

Use the data to cross-reference against your gut and vice versa. If one is out of sync with the other and sends a different message, dig into it a little further to figure it out and verify.

When you use your gut and your data together, you’re going to make better decisions as a leader.