Small change: trust what you notice

Leaders often dismiss their own instincts. Something feels off in a meeting, a dynamic seems wrong, a decision doesn’t sit right. But instead of acting on what they’ve noticed, they talk themselves out of it. Too busy, not enough data, probably nothing.

Your awareness is remarkably reliable. It picks up signals long before your conscious mind has assembled a case. That sense that someone is disengaged, that a plan won’t land, that a team is struggling beneath the surface: these are not distractions from clear thinking. They are clear thinking, arriving before the analysis catches up.

The noise in your head – the self-doubt, the second-guessing, the internal chatter – can make it hard to hear what your awareness is telling you. But it is always functioning. Learning to distinguish between the noise and the signal is one of the most valuable things a leader can do.

Something to consider: what has my awareness been trying to tell me lately?

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