You need strategies that help rule things out. That's the opposite of saying, "This is what my gut is telling me; let me gather information to confirm it."

By the time executives get to high levels, they are good at making others feel confident in their judgment, even if there's no strong basis for the judgment.

Many business intuitions and expertise are going to be valuable; they are telling you something useful, and you want to take advantage of them.

If you mean, "My gut feeling is telling me this; therefore I can act on it and I don't have to worry," we say you should never trust your gut.

First, the skill of storytelling helps to galvanize your team. Second, the discipline of storytelling requires leaders to be clear about their intentions and to prioritize what fits into the story versus secondary goals and issues. Third, there is possibly an artifact here - great storytellers can make their exploits and achievements sound very exciting and memorable. Successful leaders who are not good storytellers won't get the acknowledgement and appreciation they deserve.

There needs to be a certain structure to a situation, a certain predictability that allows you to have a basis for the intuition.

My research suggests that when people get rebuffed they become frustrated and angry, but they would do better to become curious about the reason for the rejection. I also found that people assume that others are like them, operating under the same knowledge, beliefs, constraints and priorities. This mirror assumption makes it easier to speculate about why others act in the way they do, but sometimes the mirror assumption is wrong.