Facts or data do not always point in a clear direction. It’s then that teams and organizations turn to their leader to make sense of it and come to a conclusion.

Judgement is the core of great leadership. But what is it exactly?

Judgement is sometimes defined as “gut feeling”. You arrive at an insight by combining deep experience and analysis at an unconscious level. But is it possible to study judgement objectively and get better at it?

Sir Andrew Likierman, businessman and former dean of the London Business School, spoke to CEOs and startups, scientists, law partners, generals, doctors, priests and diplomats. He looked at existing studies on how people see patterns that others don’t.

This is what he found:

Leaders with good judgement tend to be good listeners, and read a lot. They seek to really understand what others are saying so they can go beyond their own biases. They look for parallels and analogies between ideas to get a wider view.

Unlike children, adults become filtering machines and close themselves off to information. But good judgement requires turning information into knowledge, and not just seeing and hearing what we want to see and hear. A good leader does not let success blind themselves to this weakness.

Leaders suffer from information overload. When Likierman was running a large public company, he’d be given vast quantities of material to sift through before a big meeting. It’s no surprise that in great institutions like the Bank of England and Amazon, briefings are limited to six pages.

Leaders understand that there’s a danger of seeing all information as the same quality. With the internet we’re exposed to endless articles and commentary, and reading cuts out the nonverbal clues we usually use to assess quality.

People with good judgement are very careful about sources, delve deeper into data that doesn’t make sense, and seek to get information or points of view from people they don’t usually agree with. Triangulating that with experience leads to balanced judgement.