Trust Your Gut

10.01.19

Failure. In Kim Hammonds' experience, her biggest failures have come when she’s not paid attention to what her gut was telling her to do. She shares her strategy for making sure she’s listening to that inner voice, along with the facts and data.

Trust Your Gut

Summary:

Failure. In Kim Hammonds’ experience, her biggest failures have come when she’s not paid attention to what her gut was telling her to do. She shares her strategy for making sure she’s listening to that inner voice, along with the facts and data.

Facts and data are great. But sometimes they’re not enough. Kim Hammonds, tech exec and founder of the Zoe Foundation opens up to Keith about the times she’s made bad decisions, and what she does to avoid them now.

Keith_Krach

Keith Krach

We know as leaders, you collect a lot of battle scars, and you learn more from your failures than you do your successes. Can you talk about one of those things you might consider an epic failure of yours or something that, like that?

Kim Hammonds

Every single time I followed my gut, it's been okay. When I haven't followed my gut, like, for example, I made a people higher, you know, higher, that, I remember thinking, "I'm not totally 100% sure, but I'm just gonna go with it. And it turned out to be the wrong decision. So I should have followed my gut, and I didn't. I got swayed by circumstances or whatever it is.
Keith_Krach

Keith Krach

I think that's such great advice to young, transformational leaders is, because everybody's still trying to be analytical these days, your gut really is a great, it's a great indicator.

Kim Hammonds

Yeah, so I always tell people that, when we're getting ready to make a big decision, it's like, okay, we've gone through what I call the facts and data, so the analytics, the business plan, on and on and on, it's like, let's just all sleep on it.
Keith_Krach

Keith Krach

Right.

Kim Hammonds

And then let's get together tomorrow. And then let's talk about because then you get the, I call it the EQIQ, kind of
Keith_Krach

Keith Krach

Absolutely.

Kim Hammonds

Okay, we've done the analysis, but let's just make sure it's like nobody wakes up in the middle of the night thinking, we haven't thought about something or, and it's not to overanalyze it but just to take a pause if it's a big decision.
Keith_Krach

Keith Krach

By the way, that is great advice to, sleep on it, and literally, and also, sometimes metaphorically, but it's kind of like, yeah, let it germinate a little bit. So, think it through, because the worst thing you can do is make a decision that moment when like, emotionally, this is a hot one, fight or flight and take a moment, sit back.
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