Where Do Leadership Instincts Come From?

We often refer to highly effective leaders, especially those with less experience or background, as having great leadership instincts. In our estimation, they seem to know things we wouldn’t expect them to know. More importantly, these people land on a good or right answer seemingly without much effort. They are instinctively good at leadership, or so we believe. 

Technically speaking, an instinct is an intuitive way of assessing and acting on a situation or problem. Instincts are thought to be baked into the biology, family history, and personality of those who possess them. We are hard-wired to have instincts. We don’t develop or learn them. 

Which is why leadership is not a place where they exist. This is not to say we can’t use instinct as a metaphor and explain the prowess of a given leader as having a hidden clairvoyance that enables them to see things others don’t. Perhaps no better word exists to explain why some leaders inexplicably make quality judgments and decisions quickly and without much effort. 

But, when it comes to leadership, what counts as instinct is actually a very definitive recipe of two ingredients: past life experience and core values. 

Our past life experiences allow us to see what is important in a given situation and what will likely unfold. The more experience we have, the more insight we carry forward when assessing situations, problems, and people. When we’ve seen this movie before and we know how the story ends, then we have a big leg up on those who haven’t. 

But experience alone doesn’t allow leaders to land on so many right conclusions. There needs to be a second ingredient that binds past experience to decision or action. When it comes to leadership, that ingredient is values. 

All the best leaders are value-driven people for a reason. Values enable us to emphasize what is important in any given situation and how to elevate its significance. Decisions steeped in values can never be fully wrong, and the best leaders know that; therefore, they apply them religiously to every judgment and decision they encounter. 

While the rest of us attempt to deconstruct the many facets of a situation or person, great leaders always begin their examination from their core values. This guides them directly to what matters most and how any action is likely to align or impugn those values. 

When leaders combine deep, past experience with core values, something magical happens. They operate from what looks like instinct. They quickly and “instinctively” reach a conclusion without the need to hash out the arguments or explicate much of the data. By applying their values and experience to any situation or problem, they aren’t seeing things others don’t, but rather they focus everyone’s attention on what is an obvious answer.

Much of this process is done subconsciously, of course, hence the metaphor of “instinct” to explain what is not easily understood. Leaders who want to improve their leadership instincts only need to spend the time to know what they value and then gain more meaningful experiences to give them an edge in seeing what is possible and likely.

While the latter can take a lifetime, the best leaders constantly search for experiences from which to learn. Neither activity is instinctive and never will be.