Tim Keel’s book Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor and Chaos is an excellent resource for leadership. His basic thesis is that leaders must learn to operate in the realm of intuition, so that they can determine the needed response to ever-changing circumstances. One way that intuition serves us, according to Keel, is in the midst of chaos. He claims that chaos is not something that needs to be resisted; rather there are times that it must be embraced. By drawing on chaos theory Keel suggests that the chaos that often times is all around us is not exactly all that random and unpredictable as we think. “Thus, in order to perceive this life and order, we must begin to look as different things with different eyes from a different perspective on a different scale.”
Keel points out that when chaos comes to us as a destabilizing force, we often respond by trying and regain control. But as he further points out, many times “we misread what is happening in our environments. We equate chaos with crisis and take immediate and decisive action.” Often times the chaos that we experience in life is simply the final stage in series of unfolding events that we were previously oblivious to. Being an intuitive leader means that we are people who have “the ability to read the environment in a way that allows them to be adaptive and creative in keeping with what is happening.” In this way the leaders moves forward with fluidity and adaptability.
As I read your post, I started thinking about intuition and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I do not know if the author this book is Christian or if the book is written for Christian leadership but I see the parallels between using intellect and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to help us "react" to the ever changing culture around us. There are those who have taken the Myers-Brigg and are not strong in intuition so they would struggle in this kind of leadership environment. But if those leaders rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them and help them discern truth then they can operate from an intuitive perspective. However, those of us who did score high on intuition in the Myers-Brigg also need to rely on the Holy Spirit. As human beings our intuition is fallible and will make mistakes and sometimes create more chaos. I do agree that chaos is not something we should fear as leaders but rather embrace because we can learn a lot of lesson from it. We can learn about ourselves and how we respond to pressure situations and we can learn about the leaders and followers around us as well.
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