How many times does your gut have to jolt you before you stop and think about what’s going on and determine what, if anything, you should do in response to your gut feelings? The range of your answers to these questions might surprise you. To get to those answers you will have to slow down then stop long enough and think deep enough about your gut feel and how you react to it when it jolts you.

A story:

Recently, I had a series of interpersonal exchanges that culminated in an eye-opening experience. I met a fellow. He was a buyer and I was a seller. Together, we were working to complete a purchase-and-sale deal. Our efforts to complete a deal occurred over a period of about 10 weeks. At our first meeting, the fellow commented on the shortfall of our product packaging. At least, that’s what I thought I heard. The next time we met and when I raised the topic of packaging the fellow told me I misunderstood his comment and, in fact, he was satisfied with our packaging. Then he mentioned he did not like our pricing and he specified a price range he could accept. We got back together a couple of weeks later and I presented new pricing, within his range. In response, the fellow told me I misunderstood his price range by about 10% and pricing would have to be altered to meet his desires or there would be no deal. At this point, I became quite curious about whether or not a deal actually could be done and I agreed to adjust our pricing to meet his range. With his price goal achieved he accepted the deal. We created paperwork to capture the key details of our agreement: one copy for him and one for us. He signed our copy but said there was no need to sign his copy. With our deal completed, we shook hands and parted company. One week later he wrote an apology note, confirming he had decided to purchase elsewhere for reasons way outside of anything we had discussed.

As these series of interactions unfolded, each time a misunderstanding was brought to my attention I experienced a little gut-feel jolt. I discounted each of my gut-feel jolts…accepting that it was possible I may have failed to pay attention or failed to remember those various pieces of conversation. Then, when the whole series of interactions ended, I stepped back to spend time thinking about my gut-feel jolts and I reached a different conclusion.

Now, my gut-feel jolts receive much more immediate attention and thorough thought.