How to Be Open About Your Intuition at Work

This week I had the honor of getting a group of women together to talk about intuitive communication (which I'll be doing again online soon if you're into it).

Toward the end of the class, after lots of information sharing and discussion, one woman spoke up and said something to the effect of "Yea, okay, but how do I tell my old-school boss who wants hard data all the time that I'm making a decision based on my intuition?"

Mmm, yes.

In this class, we'd created a sort of cocoon where everyone was in agreement about how clarifying and helpful our intuition is in the workplace. We were sharing our experiences, affirming our intuitive knowing, it was all happening, and then...we remembered that this stuff still isn't mainstream.

The old paradigm that worships hard data and efficiency above intuitive knowing and human connection is on its way out, but it's not going down without a fight.

As more and more people demand "high touch" experiences with organizations, we will have to reconnect with our own humanity, which includes our intuition. Unfortunately, many leaders in organizations are unable to access this for themselves, and so they continue ravenously hunting for external data that shows them what they already know in their hearts, and they put the same diseased pressure on their employees.

It doesn't have to stay like this, though. The tide is shifting, and intuition will become more and more acknowledged and accepted in our workplaces, but it's still at the edges for now.

So how do we, as intuitive people, be more open about accessing that part of us in the workplace?

How do we explain that we don't need to spend another hour looking at reports - that we already know what we need to do? How do we explain that we can't explain - we just feel something deep in our core that's leading us in another direction?

The answer isn't easy, but it is very simple: We just do it.

I don't know any other way. We just have to be more open about it. We have to do it for ourselves and for the people in our organizations who are starving for their own inner wisdom.

Now, of course, you get to decide how you do it, and with whom. And you can be choosy - maybe you drop "feeling" into a conversation with a colleague you think might be open to it. Maybe you tell your boss that you "just sense" something and watch their reaction. Or hell, maybe you're ready to open your next staff meeting with "This is what's in my heart, and I want to be more open about where my intuition is leading me because that's how I make the best decisions for our team."

You can also choose not to use the word "intuition" if it's still a dirty one in your organization. You can simply say things like "I feel..." or "I'm sensing..." or "Something that comes up for me is..."

If the tide is going to shift, we have to be more open about how our deeper, mystical, seemingly "less rational" selves inform our work. We have to do that and then hope that the person across from us is open to accessing their intuitive side and can meet us in that place.

In the last few weeks, I've been struck by how open-minded so many professional people are - people you may not expect to be on board with the more squishy, intuitive skills that I'm talking about here.

Last night at an HR Association event I was facilitating, I told about 20 HR professionals that next month we'd be talking about office auras, and no one yelled or threw food at me! Okay, sure, I live in Portland, and this was an innovative group of people, but it still gives me hope - I think people in the professional sphere are ready to talk about things we can't always name, or see, or measure.

We have to show up as our intuitive, authentic selves in our worklives and trust that the right people - the ones we want around us - are going to be able to meet us there.

Start wherever you are today, even if it's just imagining dropping "the I word" into a conversation with a colleague.

Honor yourself by making space for your intuition in your work - I can guarantee you'll reap rewards, even if it's just feeling completely aligned and genuine for one amazing moment.