How To Get Past Your Inner Critic To Lead Confidently
When you silence your inner critic and frame a situation objectively, it removes blame for yourself and others. This allows you to focus on what needs to happen and lead others confidently forwards.
Yue’s Coaching Corner
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Client: This week, I had a few blow-ups at work. There were two other workstreams that others were leading. I thought they were doing well. But it turns out that senior leadership wanted me to lead one of the workstreams. And the other workstream lead is upset at me because he thinks he’s doing my job. There were also a few decisions that needed to be made that I wasn’t aware of, and now I’m pulled in last minute to address them. It feels like I’m constantly getting into escalations — what am I doing wrong?
As you climb the corporate ladder and reach more senior levels, the complexity and scope of the work increase. You’ll have delegated multiple projects to your team and cross-functional peers. You’ll be dotted line leading projects across multiple functions. You become a go-to person for senior executives when they wake up with a question or concern.
Some days you feel like you’ve got everything organized and humming smoothly. Others will feel more like the scenario above — a sudden pile up of confusion, escalation, and stress. Many will feel out of left field (because if you knew it was coming, you would’ve worked to prevent it). As a leader, it is common to get pulled into fire-fighting mode. And in these cases where everyone else is stressed and running high on emotions, you must work to remain calm and confident.
Step 1: Silence your inner critic.
Our biggest enemies are often ourselves. When something goes wrong, our inner critic comes out. We put all the blame on ourselves before anyone else says anything. For the client above, it sounded like this:
“How come you didn’t know this waas your decision to drive? You’re always missing important things.”
“You should’ve seen this coming with your peers and helped them before they got overwhelmed and the situation got escalated. You’re a failure at your job.”
“You should have know what your senior leadership wanted. What if they form a negative impression of you…forever?”
This is not the truth or reality. It is your inner critic trying to protect you from further harm by holding you back from taking action. It doesn't know that you didn’t cause the stressful situation (aka the most dangerous thing ever that might kill you). The two telltale signs of your inner critic are:
“Should” is used…a lot: “I should have known,” or “I should not have done that.”
Use of absolutes: “You always do that,” or “You never get x right.”
Unfortunately, this type of self-criticism puts you exactly where you don’t want to be as a leader — dwelling on the past and not taking action. Instead, tell your inner critic thank you for trying to protect you, and find your inner courage and curiosity.
Step 2: Reframe Objectively
After you silence your inner critic, take a moment to reframe the situation objectively. Describe the situation at hand. It helps to put yourself in the third person as if you’re a narrator describing the situation. Channel your inner David Attenborough if it helps. Then include the future actions that are needed. Don’t dwell on what went wrong in the past. Remove any absolute descriptors, blame for yourself or others, and any expectations around “what should’ve happened.”
Here’s what a less critical framing of the situation might sound like:
The role definition is unclear and lacks alignment across leadership and xfn for these two workstreams. We need to clarify and align together.
My peer is overwhelmed with the amount of work on his plate. Let me see how I can support him.
We recently surfaced three new open questions that are high priority to resolve. Let me bring the working team together to see how we can best address them in a reasonable timeline.
This narration of the situation is confident and action-oriented. There is a clear problem description. There is a perspective on what needs to happen next. It’s not about what you did wrong or whether it was fair that you were put into a certain situation. When you can remove the voice of the inner critic and focus objectively on the task at hand, you lead yourself and others out of the past and into action.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
I reframe my inner critique by reframing the negative statements with questions back.
I struggle with this type of thing and this article was just the right amount of actionable advice. Thank you!