What were the surprises during your research for the book??

In fact there are two pieces of research in the book The subtle superpower – how intuition is the key to succesfull leadership.

The first was done at the start of the millennium; it gave rise to the Three Dimensions model en later  to the book. And now in recent times we interviewed 27 leaders and explicitly asked them about how they experienced their intuition and how they use it in daily life and leadership.

All the results are in the book, of course, but the question was; what were the surprises?

In the first research, we interviewed young high-potentials aged about 35-45 years old. In the more recent research, directly for the book, we spoke to 27 proven succesful leaders. Their age is considerably higher, about 50-78 and yet the similarities are far greater than the differences.

The surprises from the first group were:

• The phrase ‘I just do whatever comes to mind!’ and yet they really did know what to do.
• The humility of these people and the idea: be ordinary, but think extraordinary!
• That even their heroes were unpretentious people.
• That they were really extremely observant and eager to learn and that they learned most by observation on the job.
• Looking after ‘their’ people was of prime importance.

Jim Collins’ book “Good to Great’ had just appeared and he was their hero. Without exception they recognised his message in their own day to day practice.

From the second round of interviews:

• That these leaders mostly were ‘level-5 leaders according to Jim Collin’s categorisation and that they clearly posessed such an excellent intuition.
• Most had started their ‘career’ in leadership at a very early age. Often informally.
• Again, humility and responsibility
• Impatience and eagerness to learn
• The art of being in the right place at the right time.
• Much more often than you would have thought, these leaders had no formal training (in the area in which they were working) and/or did any formal training late in life.

One of the biggest surprises was that many of these people had had the same experiences as I did. I had often felt  relatively alone in my ideas about leadership and all of a sudden I was no longer alone. That was pretty amazing.