Smart Business Magazine, February 2016

February 2016 Smart Business Columbus 11 LEE ELLIS President Leadership Freedom LLC Lee is a nationally recognized consultant presenter and retired U S Air Force colonel He shares his expertise in the areas of leadership team building and human performance His latest award winning book about his Vietnam prisoner of war experience is entitled Leading with Honor Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton www leadingwithhonor com Take time to reflect How to integrate intuition skills into day to day leadership Albert Einstein discovered this balance early on saying The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift So what is the gift Intuition is about listening to your subconscious mind gut instinct to pull forward information and feelings that youve accumulated over a lifetime Warriors have to rely on instinct using every possible sense from outside and every stirring from inside to stay alive Having a good visual memory for shapes and landforms is crucial for a military pilot Being able to store and recall patterns of logic and information is important for an entrepreneur or businessperson Emotional memory is probably the strongest memory that we have and its also the one most quickly accessed Emotional memory is the one we feel in our gut and it helps us access the gigabytes of memory stored in our subconscious faster than any processor yet made So intuition is this stream of awareness that flows from our subconscious to our conscious but it requires tuning in to hear the signal Learning intuition Can it be learned The short answer is yes but the issue is whether you will develop your awareness and then allow intuition to move from your gut to your mind Its not a problem when data is tagged with emotions its ready for quick retrieval and usually easy to access At other times its as simple as stopping to ask yourself What is my gut telling me about this what is my intuition Sometimes data needed for intuition needs help in getting to our awareness and this situation is where we have to be more intentional about accessing it It usually means taking time to shut down our rational thinking and reflect usually in a quiet setting away from distractions Sounds a lot like meditation and prayer doesnt it I believe its very similar and can be the same Reflecting waiting and listening with our feelings for insight is a practice used by wise people throughout the history of civilization and in our increasingly fast paced society its a lost art If we ignore or fail to cultivate the intuitive half of our decision making abilities we become less than our best as leaders and merely rely on the facts at hand Awareness of yourself and others natural behavior is also a strong element to developing intuition Leadership assessments like Leadership Behavior DNA summarize these behaviors and your mind can access these results after youve reviewed and used them Ive been observing an interesting leadership trend that deserves some deeper reflection In our western culture leaders are generally driven by data and metrics in daily decision making The other side of the leadership equation though is a leaders abstract intuitive skills www linkedin com in leonleeellis www facebook com LeonLeeEllis @ LeonLeeEllis LEE ELLIS LEADING WITH HONOR www pinterest com leonleeellis www youtube com user freedomstarmedia leonleeellis wordpress com