Our reader poll today asks: How much do you trust your gut when a big, new opportunity presents itself?

• Tremendously — my gut is almost always right 8.34%
• Significantly — I’ll trust my gut but sometimes hesitate and do deeper analysis 41.36%
• Somewhat — my gut gets me to lean in a direction but I need to validate the idea 43.83%
• Not much — I shy away from going with gut reactions and rely on analysis 4.93%
• Never — I avoid trusting my gut in all situations 1.54%

Trust but analyze. A small portion of you trust your gut with very little hesitation (8%). For that group, take some time to assess how trustworthy your gut is. When you make a gut decision, document it and revisit it in the future. See if things turn out how your gut thought they would. For those of you who lean more analytical (85%), validating your hunches can be a worthwhile exercise. It can identify risks and possible consequences you may not have considered initially. The risk here is letting the analysis take over and slow down your decision making. Before you do an analysis, ask yourself “will the results of this analysis change the answer?” and if they won’t, then the analysis is not necessary. Maintain your bias toward action. For those who don’t trust your gut very much or at all, recognize you could be excessively slowing down your decision making processes. See if all the analysis you’re doing makes a difference using the previously-mentioned question. If it doesn’t, take some risk, ditch the marginal analysis, and make a decision.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.