Entry #01 – Going with your gut

About a year or so ago I was really unsure about my career path. I was working part-time in football and full-time in the charity sector. Unsure of my next step, I discussed with those closest to me and I was told on one occasion to “always go with my gut”. Whilst I have never considered myself to be fickle, leaning more on my instincts on that occasion (and many since) has given me a strong sense of conviction when making decisions.

A friend told me recently that he was intrigued “to hear more about [a scout’s] process”. How we assess talent and more specifically how we come to decide whether or not someone is “good”. I know this process is quite unique to each individual but I realised that I didn’t really have one that I could articulate or break down for him. I know what I feel when I am really encouraged by a performance or a player, I know that there are particular actions or details that trigger certain feelings for me, but it is rare that I work against a checklist on the touchline of a grassroots game. I told him that I just “know” and that feeling of certainty comes from within. I reflected upon this and decided it might be worth exploring where that feeling stems from and the possible dangers of relying on said feeling too heavily.

I used to believe that a gut feeling was unexplainable. This article by Markham Heid explains that although the feelings are not tangible, they are very much real. He references an intuition researcher in the piece named Michael Pratt, PhD, who states that “people are able to see and recognise patterns that can help them make decisions or form judgments, and a lot of this recognition is outside of conscious awareness.” He also states that the brain is “constantly sensing, observing and interpreting” so it makes perfect sense to me that we can form judgements about players or notice minute details in their games that give us a confidence or certainty that we can’t quite explain.

It is common that my most experienced colleagues and fellow professionals tend to have the most conviction. Pratt references this also as he says that in order for ones intuition or gut feeling to be reliable you need “domain-relevant experience”. For scouts, it speaks volumes about how important watching football is. Watching the level you are scouting players for regularly will develop your understanding of common traits for players at that level. This will help you find indicators of talent in players playing in another environment. A big indicator for me when watching attacking players for example is the stride pattern and the size of the touch between each dribble.

Whilst going with your gut has its benefits, I do think there are two significant traps we can fall into quite easily. The first one is that there is a danger to go with your first assessment simply because it is your first. The feeling that your first instinct is the only answer removes the ability to challenge yourself. A lot of the time when people ponder over decisions we perceive it as being unsure or “on the fence” when it is simply evaluation.

The other trap is the likely increase in bias. If you only rely on what you have always known and you know what you like, then you will come to the same decisions the majority of the time. Believing in your instincts and experience is incredibly important but so is being objective.