One must, Greenleaf writes, after some study and experience, hypothesize but leave the hypothesis under a shadow of doubt. . . And so is love. The love that a servant leader gives remains fundamentally inexpressible. Here the specific role of the servant leader in seeking a more humane world becomes clear. Greenleaf is quick to assure his readers that such a statement does not negate his previous argument that love remains indefinable.
Intuition is a feel for patterns, the ability to generalize based on what has happened previously.
Another way of putting this point is that the servant leader must lead with a prophetic sensibility. For while knowledge of past patterns is important, Greenleaf says, a vision of the future is equally if not more crucial to ethical leadership. She will use her imagination to communicate her prophetic vision to those around her. She will have to read and think between the lines of conventional speech to discern what is really going on. And she will need to use her artist s eye to envision a world that, like a painting or a poem, offers a tonality of hope and possibility amidst the actualities of human existence.