When should you trust your judgment?
I’m facing a situation where I have experts telling me to choose one option, and my gut intuition is leaning towards another. On the one hand, I trust my gut intuition, as my brain is good at pattern matching. On the other hand, pattern matching only works if you have enough experience in the domain, so maybe the experts are seeing something I’m missing.
This is also a situation that leaders commonly face, where their team has done the work to present a recommendation, but something seems “off”. While they want to trust their team, they have a voice inside that doesn’t feel comfortable.
So what do you do in that situation?
— Ask for more opinions, and/or gather more data. I sent out the options to a few advisors I trust this morning; so far, everybody is siding with the experts.
— Understand the feedback. My advisors shared why they preferred the other option, and helped me see what I was missing.
— Consider the consequences. In the end, it’s my decision, so I need to be willing to live with the consequences if I choose “wrong”. Which option will I regret less if I turn out to be wrong?
How do you determine when to trust your judgment instead of listening to others?
#decisionmaking #intuition #expertise