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Eugene Sadler-Smith is a Professor of Management Development and Organizational Behaviour, at the University of Surrey's School of Management. Before becoming an academic, he worked in the human resources development department of a large energy company.
His research interests are centered upon the role of intuitive judgment in management decision making and management development. His research has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals such as the Academy of Management Executive , Academy of Management Learning and Education , British Journal of Psychology , Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology , Journal of Organizational Behavior , Management Learning and Organisation Studies . He has researched and published widely in the field of learning and development (L&D) and is author of several books, including Inside Intuition (Routledge, 2008) and The Intuitive Mind (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). His intuition research has featured on BBC Radio 4 and in The Times .
You've published a number of articles/books on the subject of intuition. What is it that led you to research so extensively in this area?
I was originally interested in learning styles and cognitive (thinking) styles, but there were so many different ideas about "styles" out there that I decided, intuitively, to focus on intuition. It seemed to be something that managers acknowledged and used - even if they didn't always admit to doing so. I also felt that there was a gaping hole in management learning and development as far as intuition was concerned - it didn't seem to figure at all, at least overtly, in management or leadership training and development courses or educational programmes.
In your recent presentation at the 2010 HRD Conference, entitled: Tuning into Intuition , you discussed the two minds model that the human mind has evolved into using. Could you take us through this in a little more detail?
The two minds model is widely used in psychology (where it goes under the name of dual-process theory) - and it means precisely what it says: we have one brain but "two minds", an analytical mind and an intuitive mind. They co-evolved in the human species in order to fulfill particular functions, and without both of them we would be unable to function effectively in the real world. The analytical mind...