When should you trust your instincts in business?

About half a year ago I had a rather unpleasant work experience. I had arranged a meeting with a potential new client and needed to bring along a team player with technical expertise. As my usual suspects were all too busy I brought along a new guy...

When I met him a few days before the meeting I did think to myself that, despite his amazing tech knowledge, he might not fit with my excellent team. But as the date for the meeting was already arranged I ignored my gut feeling.

You have to make a difficult business decision. What do you do? How do you go about it?
Data is of course absolutely essential. Most of us probably agree that a rational decision-making process includes facts and spreadsheets. 

I believe, however, that for certain kinds of decision-making it is your gut feeling that is your most important compass. Being intuitive is very often the best way to determine if you’re doing the right thing. If something doesn’t feel right, why would you do it? 

Intuition is based on our ability to recognise patterns and interpret cues. If you get into the habit of trusting your own gut feelings in all sorts of business scenarios you’ll find that over time you will become much better at making the right decisions.

Trusting your own instincts can also make you more aware of other people’s feelings. So by having a strong intuition, you’ll be more emotionally intelligent and therefore able to build instant rapport with just about anyone you meet. Learning to understand how to deal with others and tune into their feelings will give you a huge advantage. 

Many of us have forgotten how to listen to our intuition and trust our guts as we have become used to trusting our brains instead of our bodies. Had I relied on my hunch the first time I met that IT expert instead of being blown away by his technical brilliance, well then I wouldn’t have had that bad experience; Mr IT trying to steal the client. Thankfully the client was having none of it but then again, he wanted none of me neither...
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On the positive side I have become better at listening to my feelings since then and I am now a firm believer that rational decision-making only works up to a point.