There are moments in my leadership when my mind hesitates but my body has already answered.
Not with certainty.  Not with drama.
But in a way I register even if I don’t trust it… just yet.

In conversations with senior leaders over recent months, I’ve noticed how often these subtle signals show up in their stories too.
A tightening.  A lift.  A heaviness.  A quiet clarity.
These aren’t small or incidental.
They’re signals from our internal system that helps us navigate the external one. And in the complexity we’re navigating, they’re often the earliest and most honest data we have.

Which raises the question:
What happens when we stop dismissing the wisdom that lives beneath thought, and start listening to what we know in our bones?

The Deep Logic of the Body

Modern leadership privileges evidence, data, and frameworks. They matter. They guide. But they’re only one layer of intelligence.   
Beneath them sits an older system: embodied knowing – the grounded, quietly confident wisdom that comes from lived experience rather than borrowed expertise.

Psychologists call this interoception: our ability to sense the internal messages of our body. It’s not intuition in a mystical sense; it’s a biologically informed system that helps us recognise safety, misalignment, truth, and possibility.
It’s the part of you that responds before the story in your head forms.
The part that steadies when something is right, even if you don’t yet have the language for it.

Many leaders share with me they’ve overridden these signals for years, and when they return to them, it feels less like learning and more like remembering something they had set aside.

Why This Matters Now

The high-performing leaders I work with describe a familiar experience: they can map the risks, consult the experts, and analyse the options – yet something still feels ‘unresolved’.

You know this feeling: being slightly off-centre, stretched thin, or not quite yourself.
And equally, you know the relief of honouring a signal you feel, even before you can label or justify it.

That “something” is often the body speaking first.
And when we ignore it, we lose access to one of the most reliable instruments we have for navigating uncertainty. Because when complexity rises faster than clarity, bone-deep knowing becomes a critical source of truth.

The research supports this. Stronger interoceptive awareness is linked to clearer decision-making under ambiguity (Dunn et al., 2010), more effective emotion regulation (Fustos et al., 2013), and higher relational accuracy (Arnold et al., 2019).

The truth is, when we stay connected to their internal signals, our external leadership improves.

The Quiet Confidence of the Obvious

So why don’t we listen?
One of the patterns I see again and again is this:
What comes naturally to you rarely feels valuable, because it’s so deeply embodied we barely notice it.

And yet these quiet capacities often make the biggest difference:

• sensing tension before it enters the room
• noticing relational shifts others miss
• knowing when to pause, even when the agenda says “push on”
• recognising misalignment early, through felt experience rather than analysis

These strengths rarely feel extraordinary from the inside. But what feels ordinary to you may be what stabilises the people and system around you.

That’s the paradox of bone-deep knowing: it doesn’t announce itself. It shows up as something familiar and because of that familiarity, it’s easy to underestimate.

When the Body Speaks First

If you think back to a decision you regret, chances are there was a moment beforehand when your body had already signalled discomfort.  Likewise, decisions you’re proud of often carried a sense of rightness long before the logic caught up.

These aren’t coincidences.
They reflect the natural intelligence of a nervous system shaped by thousands of experiences, relationships, and contextual cues, far beyond what conscious thought can track.

We already know more than we think. And we have known it for a long time.

Reconnecting with this guidance doesn’t mean choosing instinct over analysis, it’s about allowing them to work together.  A simple doorway back is to notice the moment before thought: the breath that shifts, the shoulder that tightens, the rise or drop in energy.
Then ask:

• Where in my body does truth live?
• What have I been overriding?
• What would change if I trusted what I already know?

These small recognitions build what I call a trust trail – a lived history of listening to yourself and seeing the world respond. This is how we ground internally – by coming back into relationship with Self.

A Different Kind of Certainty

When leaders reconnect with what they know in their bones, they often describe to me a quiet, steady confidence – not bravado, not force – but a feeling of standing on solid inner ground.

I see this as a return to deep human intelligence: the layered, embodied wisdom shaped by experience, awareness, and context. It may not begin with us, but it becomes ours to lead from and with.

And in complex environments, this isn’t optional. It’s essential.
It is the essence of leading, exceptionally.

So if you’re ready…

Reflect →
What inner signal have you noticed recently, and what did it ask of you?

Explore →
The Flicker helps you listen for what has long been present. Begin with:
“What feels significant here?”

Activate →
If you’re ready to lead from the grounded intelligence that has always been part of you, my Exceptional You mentoring journey creates the space for that shift.  
And if you’d like to explore these ideas with a team, group or conference audience, my Hacking Human Keynote Series cracks open the invisible scripts that limit performance – and shows how to flip them. If that’s something you’d like to explore for 2026, let’s talk.

With truth and love