When They Diss What We Know
My intuition has always been my superpower. As a consultant, it was right on and oh so good a seeing corners and shifts that gave my clients market advantage.
It wasn’t as if all my clients immediately understood the power. I withstood a lot of snide comments about making emotional recommendations, not understanding logic and facts (which were status quo BS in most cases.) Yet in most cases, they figured out pretty quickly that my “emotional hunches” were actually right on. Those who learned realized the power.Those who didn’t, well, they attacked and attacked. I stayed and fought and endured the abuse. I thought it was because my investors put me in the clients and expected me to fight for the right.
That said, I did come to understand my intuitive power, and how to use it to win their game. You can too.
Women Just Know
Ever known something in your bones before anyone else had a glimmer?
Women just know. You walk into a meeting and three minutes later you just know someone isn’t telling you something. Or the whole team is missing something. Your intuition is screaming. You haven't seen the data yet. You haven't asked a question yet. You just know.
When you decide to bring it up, ask the question, they diss you. “Let's not jump to conclusions.” You’re overreacting. Being dramatic. Paranoid. Emotional. Uh huh.
Six months later they all know you were right. Of course you were.
By then it doesn’t matter, because the guy who said it three weeks later got the credit. You’re not surprised, it’s not your first rodeo.
Why do we know? Why don’t they?
Well, the reality is nobody taught us the truth about our knowing. In fact they dissed what they don’t have and can’t understand.
Your knowing isn't drama or some overactive emotional gland. It's intuition.
Not the kind they sell on Instagram next to crystal collections and moon phase calendars. Real intuition. The kind women have been quietly and competently using for centuries. While they made their jokes.
The Diss in Action
We’ve all heard it.
You’re having an emotional response. You’re not being data-driven. Not rigorous. Not rational. Not how grown-ups make decisions.
Our intuition has been dissed as mystical fluff since, well, forever. We sense things because we are TOO sensitive. We read between lines because we are TOO paranoid. We connect dots because we imagine TOO much.
We learn to diminish it to stay safe. Open our observations with this might be nothing, but… Turn statements into questions. Sit on the knowing for weeks waiting for proof we shouldn’t have to find.
We learn to doubt our own knowing. Because they told us to. Diminished us because they don’t have the skill, so they can’t understand it or believe it.
It is real.
Intuition is Baked into Our Design
Men and women process information very differently.
Men’s minds work in compartmental boxes. They are designed to focus, isolate, simplify, and move. They take the most obvious piece of information on the table and they run with it. Fast. Efficient. It’s a beautiful thing when the variables are clean, the margins are strong and the situation is straightforward. Like war. In business, it almost never is.
Our minds don’t work in compartments. We interconnect everything. EVERY SINGLE THING.
We weave every piece of information with every other piece. Obvious and oh so subtle information. The tone in his voice, the hesitation before she answered, the body language of the person two seats down. Subtle communications. That all blends with the logical factual insights; why the timeline doesn't quite line up with what was said last week, the mismatch of product to that key requirement customers say they really want.
We use all of it. Process it, connect it into a massive web of information for our thinking and insights.
It doesn’t always show up quickly, or in the middle of the conversations. We process below the surface, while we are still asking the polite follow-up question. Sometimes it surfaces at the office, sometimes at 2 am.
We just know.
This information doesn’t make sense. That approach isn’t going to work. Don’t trust him, something is off.
It’s not your imagination. It’s your mind doing exactly what it is designed to do. Processing volumes of disparate information faster than conscious thought can register.
It’s a fascinating skill that is dissed instead of embraced.
The bottom line? When you just know, you are not making it up. You are picking up patterns the compartmentalized mind in the chair next to you literally can’t recognize.
What We Don’t Understand….
Women’s intuition is a powerful business weapon. Yet I almost didn’t use it. My intuition has been uncanny since I was a kid. My mom told me to stop using it because I freaked people out. So I stopped.
I oh so regret the times I didn't listen to it in my personal life. My own business too. I ignored the warnings about men, clients, supposed trusted associates.
Luckily I did use it for my clients. For some reason I didn’t realize the way I saw technology and markets differently from others was the same intuition mom told me was scary. Then a client told me one day that my insights were “freaky.” That’s when I connected it. WOW.
I learned to use it without letting people know how the strategies were formed. I’d get the idea, see the vision, and then go find the facts to prove it. Dig into data in ways they hadn’t. Offer it as a fresh perspective. I’d literally HIDE MY MIND so they didn’t freak out. It worked. For decades.
Ignore the Diss
You and I are designed with different information processing software. I call it the operating system of our minds.
We are designed to read that room, sense something is off, just know that your competitor is going to zig when they all expect zag.
We use it all the time at home. Knowing which kid is upset, when they need attention or need to be alone. We manage a diversity of information and actions that somehow just work.
Such is the power of our completely interconnected and highly intuitive minds. Which means we can use it in business as well as where we;ve been trained to use it at home.
We just have to decide to Ignore the Diss.
The next time someone dings you for it, smile knowingly and trust yourself.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The differences in our minds are fascinating. Oh so powerful for women, when we use them to win the game.
I think it’s time we learned the truth about our power. What we are, the power we have and how to use it.
I’ll be sharing way more about that as we go along.
In the meantime, here’s a peer-reviewed study in Frontiers in Psychology (link below) that lays out the diffs between men and women’s brains.
Decades of research. Not fairy tales.
Cognition. Recognition.
We deserve that now more than ever.
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Isenman, L. & Sinclair, M. (2025). Women, intuition, and management — the Yin and Yang of nonconscious thought. Frontiers in Psychology 16:1572888. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1572888/full