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The Intuitive Leader—5
Developing Your Spiritual Intuition
On the Meyers Briggs, I am an ESTJ. My natural gifts lean toward reading concrete, measurable evidence. Thankfully, I’m not limited to my natural gifts—and neither are you. Supernaturally, God has given me an ability to become more spiritually intuitive as a leader.
Here are a few things I do to increase my leadership intuition.
- Ask God for wisdom. For several years, I read a Proverb a day and asked for wisdom.
- Link conversations together. As a leader, words and tones mean a lot to me. After listening to several people, I try to link their conversations and discover underlying consistent messages.
- Study trends. I try to study trends in numbers, attitudes, conversations, work ethics, spiritual temperature, etc.
- Vacillate from working closely with a ministry and at a distance. My mind and spiritual instincts work better when I vary my level of involvement. If I am too involved, I lose objectivity. If I distance myself too much, I lose touch. By varying the intensity of my involvement, I can know enough to stay in touch, but stay “above” the situation to examine it with a leadership mindset.
- Ask questions. It is amazing how much people talk and how rarely they listen. When I’m with a staff team, I want to ask more questions than anyone in the room.
- Trust hunches. When I sense something, I try to go with it.
What works for you?
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Very thought provoking insight in this post…..good stuff. I find that many things are revealed in time….the heart, motives, intentions, schemes, plans, etc… Therefore, I would think an intuitive leader would need a double portion of patience.
Find the God moments in everything, think, trust, listen, involve, interact, process, wait, realize, invest, learn, reflect, forecast…
1. I need to slow down and process information. I tend to respond way too quickly and by doing so I can completely run over my intuition. Or end up seeing it in the rear view mirror.
2. Prayer, asking God to help me see the real issue at hand. So often the real issues are covered in a facade.
3. The more I read the Word it changes how I see life.
4. I love to stand back in a group, watching and listening. It is amazing the insight you can receive by doing this.
Having “Thinking Times” - For me I tend to get so busy with everything about ministry I fail to take time just to think. I learned from John Maxwell that we have to be intentional about setting time aside to think. Maxwell (no relation unless it gets me a good seat at his conference) has a chair that he just uses to think. It is these times that I really hear from God and plan accordingly.
Craig, Thanks for the provoking to be intuitive.
As a trained police officer and emergency manager I have to pull myself away for the world of probable cause supported by hardcore evidence. I believe that we should run with our hearts wide open and take what is logical weigh it on case by case events.
I take all my skills and spiritual gifts put them together to increase my insight on how to lead or problem solve.
I found that God normally wants me to learn from everything…so He moves me to cover it ALL so I stand on faith and allow the Holy Spirit to move….
Just sometimes the logical thing is not the God thing to do….
Living Life Large
Great insight. I have seen those points you mentioned work in my life as well. I’d also add “A Biblical understanding of Kingdom” helps. I started really trying to focus on relationships as either a brother/brother or father/son relationship and have noticed a huge difference in how people resopond as well as a deeper understanding of “family of God” relationships.
Pragmatism for increasing intuition! I love it. I especially relate to “seeking God for wisdom,” “seeing trends,and “asking questions.” In some forum I’d love to know what you have to say about encouraging or fixing work ethic.
Dear Pastor Craig thank you for writing these posts and all the other outstanding work you do. One thing confused me as I read these posts on intuitive leadership, why do you use the word intuition, to me this sounds a bit humanistic, wouldn’t it make more sense to talk about how to strengthen the voice of the Holy Spirit in order to guide one in their leadership.
This is great, very practical advice! Thanks for sharing it!
I’ve always recognized the value in reading stuff from different perspectives. In the workplace it would be like reading trade magazines from different industries than what I work in. In the church, it might be reading popular secular perspectives on things. Whatever it is, breaking away from perspectives that are already like your own forces you to look at things differently.
Thanks for this insight! This just hit me as something I need to try to do more (or less, considering keeping distance at times) in ministry but also at work (which is technically ministry eh?)!
I agree with Deneen’s comment on the Holy Spirit. If we want to be the kind of leaders God intends for us to be, we have to put an emphasis on living a life that is controlled and led by the Holy Spirit (not our flesh).
I think you can talk about intuition and the Holy Spirit meaning the same thing.. after all, how could we have any _spiritual_ intuition without the Spirit?
I am thankful for the reminder we can learn and develop intuition. The Holy Spirit, obviously, is the Dispenser of the gifts of discernment and leadership. Patience and intentional reflective thought always pays off. Young leadership (like myself) tend to act quickly to prove leadership confidence while mature leaders are not afraid to wait and pray and discern.