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I’m of the firm belief that professionals who master the skill of Intuition demonstrate higher levels of Emotional Intelligence.

Back in the days when I worked in the Insurance industry in Poland, my boss the Managing Director of our company was always able to predict how our insurance agents or clients would react when it came to difficult claims.

He knew how to get our annual budgets not only passed by Headquarters, but also get us more in the region spend.

This was around the time that Daniel Goleman published his bestselling book Emotional Intelligence: Why It can Matter More than IQ. We in the office didn’t know about it yet because it took time for us to get the latest books in Poland.

Instead, the entire office thought he was a psychic, possessed ESP and a whole lot of other attributes! We were in complete awe of him and he was our Hero.

If you look back at your professional career, you’ll realize that there will be at least 1 occasion when a manager or colleague has come up with a crisis management solution that saved the day.

When asked how they found the solution, they’d have put it down to a gut feeling or something telling them ‘this might just work’.

Actually, it was their skill of intuition at play. Rationalizing the ‘out of the box’ solution using logic came later.

If you think about it, in today’s world, you might say they possessed a strong Emotional Quotient too.

In my post Emotional Intelligence: you need to apply authentic kind of Empathy, I covered how the skill of empathy affected the domains of Social Awareness and Relationship Management

In this post, let’s explore Intuition as a skill for demonstrating Self Awareness and Self-Management.

Karmic Ally Coaching’s Quick Guide to Intuition

In simple English, Intuition is a form of instinctive knowing without the use of reasoning processes. It’s a natural ability that all people can develop and enhance.

Quite often people misunderstand intuition as being a power possessed through metaphysical techniques and meditation. While I have shown how to develop this skill in my post Are Psychic Powers Really a Fringe Benefit of Meditation?, there is more to it.

Intuition is one way our brain communicates with our conscious mind by subtle means such as Thoughts, Feelings, Sensations, Imagery and Sounds or various combinations of these.

Intuition appears to be a function of both our head and our heart and can involve any part of our body as it attempts to guide and direct our thoughts. Some people feel it in their solar plexus or gut. Others can feel a tingling sensation followed by an out of the blue thought.

Once you have an awareness of the forms of language your subconscious is using you can practice tuning in. Your strongest signals from intuition will come when you’re feeling calm and relaxed. This is why a daily practice of meditation, prayer or any other ritual that helps relax the mind is essential.

Intuition should flow naturally and easily without any struggle between the ‘brain’ and ‘heart’ and is devoid of emotion.

The emotion part is important because if you are experiencing an emotion, then it isn’t your intuition that is being engaged but your monkey mind chatter or fear that is talking.

This table gives a quick comparison of how to differentiate between the two.

Intuition is the secret weapon to improve Emotional Intelligence

Now that we understand intuition, how does it fit into demonstrating emotional intelligence?

When we look at Goleman’s definition of Emotional Intelligence

“Understanding one’s own feelings, empathy for the feelings of others and the regulation of emotions in a way that enhances living”,

the role of intuition becomes apparent. There are times when as professionals who provide a service, we simply have to go with our gut feeling, stay in control of our emotions and read other people the right way to create a viable resolution in a timely manner.

Looking at the domains of Self Awareness and Self -Management, the key skills are Know Yourself, Manage your emotions and motivate yourself.

Knowing oneself means understanding how you feel and accurately assessing your state of mind while self –management requires the skills to control our emotions and our behavioral tendencies.

It means not listening to or being controlled by fear. Instead rely on our observations to handle situations from a place of calm without letting our emotions get the better of us.

Interestingly, the very actions that can help us demonstrate emotional intelligence are the same ones that strengthen our intuition!

The intuition that we discussed earlier is basic intuition whereas in fact, according to William Duggan, author of “Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement,” there are three levels of intuition: basic, expert and strategic.

Basic intuition is the commonly known “gut instinct.” Expert intuition is a snap judgment, similar to what happens when you recognize something you’re familiar with. Strategic intuition is a clear thought.

All 3 types of intuition have the same feeder of experiencing the world around us. The information that we feed our sub-conscious mind allows our intuition to work out the best solution even when we cannot explain it rationally.

In the case of my boss who displayed a high Emotional Quotient (he never got upset even when the rest of us experienced headless chicken moments) he definitely applied expert and strategic intuition as the situation required.

I go into greater detail on how to improve your EI score with specific exercises to improve scores for these 2 domains in my mini-course Emotional Intelligence – the Basics.

For the purposes of starting our journey to improve our basic intuitive skills, I recommend the Quick Coherence Technique from the HeartMath Institute that helps to tie the heart and brain together while strengthening our Intuition Muscle.

This short video shows an easy way to practice the Quick Coherence Technique.

I encourage you to practice utilizing your intuitive powers. After a short time you may be surprised just what your intuition tells you.

Improving how we use our intuition takes practice. It may help you to begin by acknowledging how you already use it.

How many decisions or choices do you currently make with minimal rational thought? Can you name three from your experience?