Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive (14 page)

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any people live lives that are in poor rotation, which consequently impedes their mobility, because they don’t balance what they know with what they sense. You see, in order to travel at our maximum velocity, we must balance the power of our intellect with the truth of our instincts.

Information, here referred to as intelligence, in its purest form is irreplaceable in leadership as well as in life. I don’t merely mean one’s IQ as much as I mean the necessary access to relevant data, pertinent information, and the understanding to interpret it correctly. As essential as instincts are to exploring the design of your destiny, you must not ignore the facts for the feelings!

Balancing what you know in your mind with what
you know in your heart takes practice. This kind of instinctive intelligence requires walking a tightrope between what is verifiable and what is intangible. Successful people use instinct with intellect to make each one more useful. Without access to intelligence, one cannot develop policy or maintain order. And yet nothing you’ve read should replace your reliance upon instinct to inform the decisions you make.

The two must work in sync. If your gut feeling contradicts the facts, then ask people you trust to weigh in before you ignore the objective information at hand. Use what you know and what you sense to arrive at a more synthesized decision, one that integrates both objective and subjective realities.

While instincts may be the compass that gives direction, intelligence guides the process through which that transition can be realized. No one can make great decisions if they have poor information. The greater your efforts at understanding data, the more likely you are to liberate your instincts. Whether you’re forging alliances with corporations or governments, churches or clubs, investors or stockholders, you can’t quantify value purely based on instinct. Data has significant placement in determining value and timing of transactions and interactions.

On the other hand, always relying on the probability of progress by what appears on paper will not ensure success. Our instincts are informed by the data we
feed it. Sometimes we don’t realize how much more we actually know about risk assessment until we look beyond the facts.

Part of the impetus for writing this book was derived from sitting between the zoologist, whose intellect inspired me, and the Zulu guide, whose instincts forever changed me, on a safari. Seeing the significance and uniqueness of both roles in the wild opened my eyes to the universal truth in this metaphor. Not only does a wise person balance instincts with intellect, they must also make sure that the intelligence they’re using comes from reliable sources with balanced perspectives.

Finding the balance between intellect and instinct can take many forms, depending on your own unique considerations and contexts. For instance, I’ve had the privilege of working with a couple of ladies who are both public relations experts and yet couldn’t be more different. As they have each done work for me over the years, each has become personal friends of our family as well.

Knowing them personally as well as professionally has only emphasized how different they are. One of them is from a very conservative political background. Before meeting me, she had never been exposed to an
African-American whose background was so different from her own. The other lady, also African-American, is morally conservative but politically liberal. I don’t think they could agree on which side of the street to walk down on many issues.

Though they are both dear friends, having them both comment on an issue is like watching Fox News and MSNBC at the same time! Hearing them both always produces fireworks, and I love it! Their combined counsel has been a tremendous resource, providing a unique barometer from their constituency for each decision I contemplate. I cannot tell you how beneficial it has been to hear their varied perspectives on my pending decisions. Sitting between their ideas and input has helped me find the right balance and allowed me to balance the intelligence they provide with my instinctive response to it.

If you are sincerely interested in a balanced truth, you can’t be fed biased data. You need multiple points of view in order to see the big picture. Being able to determine principles from propaganda has been very important for me as a leader. There is always somebody who’s trying to use my mouth to convey his or her message. The only way to avoid becoming someone else’s mouthpiece is by channeling information from a variety of sources. If all the people with whom you associate sound like you, vote like you, dress like you, and think like you, then you have no litmus test to evaluate your instincts.

Perhaps you’ve heard the story about a group of blind men who unknowingly encountered an elephant. Each of the four moved cautiously toward the creature to discern him by touch. One of them touched his massive ears and said, “This beast is flat and flexible—like a palm leaf!”

The second grabbed the massive leg of the elephant and, amazed at its circumference and texture, proclaimed, “No, he is sturdy and round like a tree trunk!”

The third blind man grabbed hold of the elephant’s tail and said, “You are both wrong! This creature is thin and wiry as a snake.”

The last blind man, leaning against the side of the mighty beast, said, “You are all as stupid as you are blind! This animal is strong and sturdy, like a stone wall.”

Obviously, each of the blind men walked away thinking he knew what the elephant looked like by touching it. But in reality he had only encountered one part, a small unique piece of its whole body. Talk about not knowing your blind spots! It’s no wonder then that this story, which originated in ancient India, has been recounted in so many different cultures and religions.

The timeless truth of the blind men and the elephant remains keenly relevant in our understanding of balance. So much of what informs our opinions is based
on where we touch the subject. Do we see the whole elephant or just the small part we can touch?

When someone advises you, always know what part of the elephant this person is touching. Don’t build plans around a description that is, in fact, a narrow perspective based on touching one side of a much more global and massive reality. I’ve always known that each of the two ladies I mentioned informs me from a different side of the elephant. But when I interact with both, I can balance their perspectives and descriptions and judge what I should do without taking either’s description to be representative of the whole. As it was with my zoologist and my Zulu friend, sitting between instincts and information helped me to have balance.

For me, this is a very inspirational place to be. While in between them, I’m able to navigate more effectively and be much more flexible. When you consider how intellect and instinct work together, you progress that much further toward accomplishing the goals of the champion you were meant to be. If a person ignores comprehensive data, then he is going forward in partial blindness. Imagine having the instincts to buy a piece of property but not having an appraisal done over that land. That’s foolish, right? Absolutely.

As instincts might reveal to you that this is the right land to buy, information tells you what to bid based on trends in the marketplace. Information tells you about the schools in the area and the comparable properties that were sold in its neighborhood. Information shows
you the age of the property and who owned it before you. These variables are all significant to success.

Intelligence must influence decision making. Too many times I’ve seen people who move forward on whims and later regret the decision they made. As important as your instinct is as a tool, don’t exclude the other tools at your disposal. Generally, the instincts initiate the process that information validates.

Occasionally, I’ve gone with my instinct over information because my feeling to proceed was so strong. The writing of my first book,
Woman, Thou Art Loosed!
, comes to mind. Publishers resisted funding a book in the faith market that addressed women’s emotional and spiritual needs from a first-time male author. No comparable data could be found to predict sales. No barometer existed by which they could determine sales or even project print runs.

In spite of this data—or, rather, the lack of it—I went with my instincts and published the book myself. And literally millions of lives have now been touched through that book! There are times you have to go with your gut!

But more often than not, you want your instincts and your intelligence to have a collaborative exchange, with each enhancing the other. The combined influence of these two collaborative agents gives you a well-rounded perspective through which you can lessen the likelihood of mistakes and regret. Don’t make one obsolete for the sake of the other, but rather develop a
more perfect union, a stronger whole than either singular part can provide on its own.

In order to establish balance between intellect and instinct, you need agility and flexibility. Like a tightrope walker tilting one way and then another, compensating here and readjusting there, you must stay loose and responsive. The power of instinct-driven success relies on your ability to adjust and adapt. Instinctive leadership relies on this same dexterity.

Instinctive flexibility requires what I call “360-degree thinking.” Being flexible includes the understanding that anything you do affects everyone connected to you. Thinking in a panoramic way of all who will be affected by each move you make allows you to prepare your network in advance. Furthermore, you have no right to expect people to comply with a vision you haven’t shared and an expectation you haven’t articulated.

For example, I’ve told several leaders who wanted to pastor that their preparations must extend beyond their own ambitions. It’s not just a matter of whether they feel equipped and ready; what about their wife, their children, their finances, their business, their employees, their reputation, and their communities? It isn’t just a matter of your being ready for the performance.

If you are contemplating a move or a transition of
any kind, process all variables instinctively before making the final decision. Think through the options, possibilities, and contingencies. No one would plant a garden and not prepare the soil. The tools one uses to harvest must be purchased before one begins to plant. Are we going to can the vegetables or freeze them? Sell them at the farmer’s market or give them to neighbors?

In other words, do we have a strategy that anticipates all the variables, or are we only focused on our own accomplishment? Who would have a baby and not prepare the house? It’s simply a matter of preparing your life for the new arrival of what’s next in your life. Parents usually start stocking shelves, baby-proofing the house, preparing the right room, purchasing baby monitors, assembling cribs, registering for schools and day care, and so much more.

Or why would someone marry a man who was a great date without considering him being a great husband and father? Does he have a job? Does he like children? You can see how the 360-degree concept works. Go full circle and look at your new endeavor from all angles.

In my staff development training, the same approach is important to us. We learned that not considering everything is the equivalent of not considering anything. Some of the best and brightest people I know aren’t prepared for the increase that comes from following their instincts. They may have a great backup plan that manages crises but may not have a strategy for success.

If you don’t think in a circle, you will leave some area unprotected. Imagine a city with a protective wall in front of a few areas but with vulnerable holes exposed in just as many other areas. Wherever planning ends, problems begin!

Might I suggest that you sit down with a piece of paper and write down the idea? Draw a circle around the idea and write down every person, place, or thing needed to bring your dream to life. You may be shocked by how many individuals need to be in the delivery room for a great idea to be born!

Finally, if you inform, inspire, and impart to all those persons affected, you won’t find yourself having to compensate for poor planning by working all the posts you never assigned in advance. When people are prepared—that is,
pre
(in advance)
pared
(cut into the shape of the need)—things move smoothly.

You may not be able to give all those around you the instincts you have. But it is imperative that you share the information. If they have the information and you have the instincts, your goals will not only be achieved—they will exceed anything you have imagined!

O
ur instincts remind us that we are social creatures, made to be in relationship to others. You aren’t meant to dwell alone. You’re made to be in relationship for your own fulfillment and the enhancement of your ever-expanding community.

However, instead of maximizing the strength of our social bonds, we often allow social constructs and expectations to limit us. Whether these are imposed on us by society, our culture, our families, or our own perceptions and misperceptions, we frequently miss the mark of maximum impact and muddle through mediocrity! Too often, we limit ourselves and create barriers, visible and invisible, to opportunities around us.

But this is not how we were made! Like the lions of the field and the eagles of the air, we were born without
the inhibition of constructs. Most animals dwell in groups, whether packs, prides, herds, flocks, or convocations. Yet the lions don’t try to fly nor the eagles try to run through the wild!

We must stay true to our instincts. Our ultimate instinct is always freedom—freedom of thought, freedom of passion, and freedom of purpose. Too often we try to be what we are not! Soaring without limits is one thing, but we are the only species that has built fences and barriers, restrictions and walls. Man was the inventor of prisons both literal and figurative! You’ll never fulfill your destiny until you break out of the constructs and move beyond the socially induced systems that define and limit what is within you!

Living successfully by instinct requires a variety of complementary talents and abilities working in harmony to achieve results beyond what you could achieve by sheer talent or hard work alone. As we’ve discussed, you must build teams and lead them instinctively toward the focused objectives you’ve established.

But instinctive living will also extend beyond your employees, coworkers, and casual acquaintances. Follow your instincts, and you will encounter people from a wide spectrum of professional and personal endeavors. Typically, we call this networking. And if
you think about it, nets are woven from strings going in different directions, tied together at points of connectivity. Human nets must work the same way!

If you network only with people who do what you do and have what you have, then there’s no intersection of variations. You might make a nice mop or wig, but you won’t have a net that benefits the world! Networks are built on strands that cross lines and make connections in spite of facing different directions or diverse perspectives.

Nets can capture, contain, and convey more than any single string from which they’re woven. Fishing with a single line may be fun, but it is always a slow process. More times than not, Jesus used people who handled a net and not a line. There’s a benefit in working with a net that a single line can never touch: the potential to increase effectiveness by diverse associations.

If we were to consider your new relationships as diverse territories—similar to what I saw on my safari—then you would soon learn that natural elements do not recognize the boundaries that we often impose. Imagine a rainfall that stays only on your parcel of land. It’s not likely. Or an earthquake that stopped at a property line. This isn’t normal. Boundaries are sometimes necessary, but they can also limit your ability to
fulfill the destiny that your instincts know is possible. These silos must be leveled and these constructs must be crossed if you’re going to exceed the usual exploits of people who remain contained by rules rather than become empowered by potential.

Our instincts often lead us across lines to make new connections. It’s wise to know where the line is, but if you stay only on your side, then it’s a prison! If animals in the jungle stayed on one side of a boundary, then they might as well be in a cage at the zoo. On the other hand, we should not just go thundering into a new territory without any sense of what we’re getting into.

Or think of this instinct for boundary crossing this way: whenever there’s a question about land boundaries, it’s customary to have a survey done to determine where one property ends and the other begins.

These surveys assist in determining who owns which pieces of land and therefore who’s responsible for various expenses from taxation to maintenance. No smart person would just buy new territory and only take the seller’s words. You would do your homework to understand where the property begins and ends, discover what’s on the land, conduct an environmental analysis to study what is under the surface of the soil. Yet I frequently see people who walk into new relationships without giving any research to the nuances of what’s next. To not prepare for the new territory is almost disrespectful of the opportunity.

Surveying your property not only reveals boundaries but also includes topography of the land and geographic indicators such as underground water, mineral deposits, and unseen flaws such as seismic fault lines. Most of the time, busy people don’t take that same time and deliberation to survey their lives and identify opportunities in their relationships for shared goals, common interests, and mutual benefits. Everything in your life will touch other territories, and I want to help you navigate to broaden your territory!

As an instinctively creative person, sooner or later you will come up with an innovative idea that exceeds the parameters of where you’ve been before. You start out trying to accomplish something that is within your scope, and soon you are beyond the borders of your territory. During this journey of forging new partnerships and wrangling new relationships, I want to share with you the tools you need to go beyond the known maps of the past. These four basic principles will help you manage the opportunities that exceed the boundaries that you or others have placed on you.

First, you must consider your
inspiration
. If you have something on the inside that instinctively inspires you beyond those around you, this will help you understand why you don’t fit. People who are meant to lead
have trouble being satisfied with those who seek the normal and are satisfied with the status quo. Their inspirations instinctively take them beyond barriers and lead them to color outside the lines.

Inspiration springs from an instinct, an internal compass, that points across familiar lines toward the unknown. Like a spark kindling tinder into a flame, inspiration ignites you to act on what you envision in your imagination. Others may encounter the same external stimuli but fail to have it inspire them with new ideas or innovative approaches. Those who balance their intellects with instinct know that inspiration is often their offspring.

Your mind takes in data, performs due diligence, and processes information. But your instinct converts knowledge to power. Your instinctive deductive reasoning becomes inspired. It guides your quest to move beyond the scope of those accomplishments of ordinary people and will likely require you to blaze trails and cut through fences.

Inspiration is such a powerful tool and explains some of the way our intelligence complements our instincts. We take in information as raw material, as fuel, and then our instincts shape it into the best form for our current needs. This ability to adapt what we know externally with what we know internally yields the inspiration to bridge the two.

Whether we call it a hunch, an intuition, or a crazy idea, inspiration creates a fire that can provide heat,
warmth, and energy to a situation that otherwise remains cold and flat.

Inspiration alone, of course, is not enough. Even if you can express your idea without the help of others, you still face your own limited resources. In other words, you can’t catch big fish in shallow water! You have to leave the shore and venture into deeper waters if you want to cast a net that can catch the big fish.

For example, perhaps you started out to produce music, but in the process of producing you soon ran into needing distribution. Most people would either see that as a limitation or simply see the goal as beyond the scope of reasonable possibility. But forming alliances outside of your scope is how you make things happen! I’m amazed at the people who produce books or music that ends up sitting in the attic because the artists can’t seem to forge a deal beyond the scope of being a great singer or writer.

Talent is not enough. You can sing like an angel, but you need to think like an elephant if you’re going to move beyond where you are. Too many people waste their talent through timidity, afraid to move beyond that which is easy for them to do. For example, I have a friend who is an amazing baker. While excellent at what she does, soon she discovered that with excellence
comes opportunity. Her special order catering for private events grew until she was forced to move from her kitchen at home into an industrial kitchen she rented. From there, she carried her cookies to a TV network, and soon the orders were flying in so fast that she needed to go to manufacturers and distribution companies to keep up with demands.

Finally, she hit a wall. She walked away from a great opportunity because she didn’t have the cash flow to enlarge her business to the size of its potential demand. She refused to consider getting investors, because the prospect intimidated her.

For me, it was as sad as burying a loved one to see a dream die because the dreamer didn’t know how to survey the possibilities and forge relationships beyond her comfort zone. She reached a crossroads where she had to choose between scaling back or including other stakeholders who could take her to the next level and across the fence into new, unknown territory. My friend allowed her fear to dilute her dream.

Whenever you seek to forge relationships that will increase your impact and influence, it begins by surveying the possibilities and then acknowledging your deficiencies. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge when something is too big for you. But by the same token, just because you can’t do it alone doesn’t mean that you can’t facilitate it if you can find stakeholders willing to share the risk.

You don’t have to buy the land, or invest the capital
for expansion, or become a major distributor in order to benefit from alliances with people who do what you don’t do. In fact, I see far too many people who expend all of their energies connecting with people who only duplicate what they do, rather than building alliances with those who can transform their limitations into efficiencies. The art of such alliances is finding the connection between what they do and what you need.

This artful arrangement of alliances forms our second major tool, which I call
intersections
. Finding the intersection points among diverse associations provides the key to maximizing the opportunities God has given you. Like a driver who wants to reach a certain destination, you can’t arrive there without making some turns at crucial intersections. On the highway, we find an intersection when an east-to-west road crosses a north-to-south road. Two routes running in different directions briefly meet and cross at this point of mutual contact. Neither road changes directions, but travelers benefit from this connection because it enables them to reach new destinations.

When you follow your instincts, you will find yourself at the intersection of needing to build alliances with people who complete you rather than people who compete with you. Completion occurs when you join
forces with others who may not be going your way, but their vision and yours find an intersection and the relationship is built on what connects you rather than alienates or divides you.

Find the touchpoints of what you have in common with people, and don’t be so inclined to focus on what divides you. Again, you can’t make a turn until you find the corner. This place of connection is what I’m calling the intersection of ideas and inspiration. If we build on what unites us rather than focusing on what divides us—whether in a family, a church, or a business—we can achieve amazing goals with unlikely people because we understand the power of an intersection.

This process is the same no matter the scale or number of participants. Government and church intersect at the place of human needs. Business and philanthropy have different goals until they recognize the benefits from collaborations; big business needs a tax benefit and not-for-profits need funding. Suddenly, their interests intersect. But if they only focused on the major difference between them, then they would both lose out on mutually beneficial opportunities.

You will miss these kinds of benefits if you forge alliances only with those who do what you do. When a social service has a need, the survey says business can supply that need without changing its core. Our church’s outreach to former inmates needs our relationships with rental property owners so that we can
help one transition to the other. The former inmates need housing; the property owners need consistent tenants. It isn’t that they won’t take people who have been incarcerated. They don’t want to take on the screening process of better determining who’s really rehabilitated enough to be trusted to lease. Working with families, social services, and other rehabilitation organizations, we can provide that screen.