Helen and Tom have had some interesting discussions on intuition in the past and often seem to disagree on what it is and isn’t, and how useful it is in the coaching room.
This article is a summary of their discussion on the podcast that you can find here.
A dictionary definition of intuition is:
“the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning.”
Let’s Explore What Intuition Is
Helen thinks of intuition as a spectrum that there are different aspects of this spectrum, from animalistic gut instinct at one end right through to ‘how on earth did you know that?’ on the other.
If we consider the gut/ instinctive survival end of this spectrum, when we get an intuitive response there, it’s quite loud, if you like, for want of a better word, it’s our fight or flight response. It’s a big feeling in our body and it’s really getting our attention.
She is also a firm believer that if you suspect you might be in danger and/or your life depends on it, and you have no time to think about it, go with this type of intuition. Basically. if your body says run, run.
Tom believes that this is more than likely to be wrong as in modern times we are rarely in real danger. Both agree that we have survived as a species because we ran if we had an instinct that we might be in danger.
So, if you have time to give it some thought, listen, acknowledge that intuitive response, do some really good thinking around it, and be prepared to accept or reject that response.
And then we move further along the spectrum and we have this kind of middle ground, which is a bit of a quieter response, a sense of unease, a sense. and there are a number of reasons that this sort of quieter, intuitive niggle kicks in. and people think, ‘oh, something’s not quite right’. Or they might start to notice things. Sometimes that’s based on filters that we have, the values that we have, the biases which we’ve talked about before. Those biases impact how we perceive situations, and are often based on past experiences and memories. Sometimes it’s our imagination. Sometimes, though, those little niggles, those quiet moments of something’s off can be knowledge and experience. And even if all of that sits in our unconscious and we don’t recognise it, our conscious mind is being nudged to feel that something isn’t right. And again, we may be right, we may be wrong.
In this instance, you are much more likely to have time to think about what’s going on for you. Again, listen, acknowledge that intuitive response, do some really good thinking around it, and be prepared to accept or reject that response. This could even be something you take to coaching to explore.
Tom and Helen pretty much agree on these two parts of Helen’s spectrum idea.
Helen believes that there’s this other end of the spectrum where we feel that we know things that we have no explanation for knowing. And that is certainly up for discussion.
Helen’s suggestion is that you, ‘clean up your compass’. In other words, learn how the mind works. Do the work you need to do on yourself around biases, around understanding your triggers, reducing stress and psychological trauma, those instant knee-jerk responses from your body. This really helps you to learn about yourself and your intuition. It’s quite possible to do much of this work as a coachee, especially if your coach has been trained in the types of transformational coaching tools that we cover on our diploma course.
How Useful Is Intuition?
Let’s return to an example of that middle ground of intuition, where we have time to think about things. As an example, if we meet someone that reminds us of a person who lied to us, we’re going to perhaps assume, ‘I can’t trust this new person’. There is some crossover there with the things that we talk about in cognitive behavioural coaching around filters that we use to make meaning out of situations that can mean those feelings and those intuitive niggles can be wrong.
Equally, if we think about our medical professionals that we work with, they’re going to have experiences and knowledge in their unconscious and conscious mind that their brains are going to connect and maybe their intuitive responses are going to be correct. And that’s important to remember.
For example, if you are a medical professional and you have experience of seeing lots of patients with similar conditions, you’re going to recognise the symptoms that show up in your consultations and that will give you some intuition of thinking that you might know what is wrong with someone. You might not always be right, but you will have some intuition and that will guide you.
There’s a danger here that in having lots of experience of maybe one condition, you start to see everything as being that condition, that when some symptoms match, you say, ‘I know what this is because I’ve seen this before’, without fully exploring it.
We all, as humans, have thousands of hours of interacting with other people and watching dramas where people behave in certain ways when they’re doing certain things. We watch interactions, and facial expressions from the moment we are born, so we can have lots of intuition about people watching, calibrating people and their expressions, their body language, their gestures and knowing when something’s not congruent. In this case we will sense that ‘something’s off‘, but we can’t know what it is.
We’ve also seen people who think they’re intuitive, who sort of read people, if you like, from their body language, facial expressions, and got it horribly wrong. Remember, we can’t possibly know what other people are thinking.
That’s really important to remember as a coach.
Do I Need To Be Intuitive To Be A Coach?
Even if you call yourself an intuitive coach, you can’t possibly know what’s someone is thinking, you can’t put meaning on to the feeling that you get when there’s incongruence.
So, if as a coach, you notice someone start to, look down at the ground whilst they’re talking about something particular, just being able to notice that, and recognise that something different is happening. Being curious about that and asking about it is a better way to approach it than going, ‘ah. I’m intuiting that they are feeling sad about this’ because they’ve lowered their head, which is what people do when they’re sad.
We asked ChatGPT what it knew about intuition in the coaching room and it said:
“Intuition in the coaching room is a vital element that can deepen the connection between coach and client, enhance decision making and facilitate transformational breakthroughs. It’s often described as a coach’s ability to sense what is beneath the surface, beyond what is explicitly said or seen, and to guide the coaching process accordingly.”
We think this is potentially wrong.
If you’re talking about intuition as that magical thinking, of knowing what lies under the surface, then you’re probably going to get it wrong most of the time. Which isn’t good. And it’s also not good to be making assumptions rather than asking the coachee to speak about it. But if you think, okay, something’s not right, my intuition is telling me that there’s something going on under the surface. Then you’re right to bring that up and think about how you explore that.
If people believe this, that it is a vital element of coaching, and they’re thinking, they’re not very intuitive, they might think that they can’t be a good coach then. Actually, by learning to hold that space, be truly present, be listening to your client, you will develop rapport with them and you will know. You will have that sense of something being off. You will effectively develop this useful intuitive radar.
We have to be careful as coaches not to make assumptions. And to lead the conversation in a certain way because we are making those assumptions.
We do, however, want to notice the assumptions that are coming out in the coachee’s story.
It comes back to that idea of calibration. If you’re sitting with someone for an hour and a half at a time, maybe, over time, if you’re truly paying attention, you will start to recognise different facial expressions, different body language, different gestures, different tones of voice. It’s really noticing what you’re noticing and being willing to talk to your coachee and explore what is happening for them.
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