WHAT TO DO ABOUT NEGATIVE SELF-TALK
We’ve seen the power and importance of self-leadership for authentic gravitas. Researchers have argued that at the core of how individuals lead themselves is their internal dialogue (self-talk).2 In order to build gravitas, we spend much time considering what we say to others. What also matters is what we say to ourselves. What Jackson needed to do first was address his inner dialogue.
Inner speech has been noted as a critical part of being human.3 We all have self-talk. The questions to ask are, What am I saying to myself? and What impact is it having? Most theorists and researchers use dichotomies to categorize self-talk: as constructive (positive) or destructive (negative), or as instructional or motivational. Constructive self-talk is considered to be thoughtful, substantive, motivational, insightful, and self-reflective.4 Does positive self-talk help us in the moment? Extensive research has shown a positive effect on performance.5 Does it help us in the long run? Constructive self-talk has been found to be associated with reduced job strain and an increased ability to lead others.6
My coaching clients repeatedly disclose that they feel negative self-talk is one of their primary barriers to having greater gravitas. One client, Catherine, said, “It’s like there’s a little gremlin sitting on my shoulder, saying to me, You can’t; you’re not enough. Who do you think you are? The gremlin whispers at the most annoying times, usually the exact moments when it’s important for me to have gravitas, and it pulls the rug out from under me.” She was frustrated with her “gremlin” and wanted to know how to “push it off my shoulder for good!”
Destructive self-talk is a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of a challenging situation and to continue thinking about it long after the situation is over. Researchers argue that this type of self-talk does not embrace change or challenge; rather, it shies away and focuses on the obstacles.7
If we find that we, at times (possibly more often than we’d like), feel and act as victims of our own negative self-talk, are we able to change it? Yes. Researchers found that when leaders were trained in effective self-leadership and self-talk, they experienced better mental performance, job satisfaction, positive affect, and reduced nervousness.8 If they could change their self-talk to make it more constructive, so can we.
Here are five practical ways to deal with that annoying, negative self-talk.
1. Take away the gremlin’s power. While constructive self-talk has a positive impact on performance, the majority of research suggests that negative self-talk does not impede, impair, or lessen performance. In a study of 189 senior executives in a program designed for professionals with fifteen or more years of management experience and leadership responsibilities for five hundred or more people, researchers found that destructive self-talk was only related to one outcome (decreased leader creativity). It was unrelated to job strain or leadership of others. The extent to which these leaders reported destructive self-talk was not associated with their ability as a leader or how they experienced the job.9 In a sports context, researchers found negative self-talk was not associated with impaired performance.10 Other researchers conducting a wide review of the literature found that negative self-talk is not associated with reduced performance.11 Take the rug out from under the gremlin. When you hear the negative self-talk starting, remember that while it is no doubt annoying and upsetting (it feels bad), it’s not going to reduce your actual ability to give and perform at your best. It has less power than you think it does.
2. Talk back to the gremlin. You know it’s coming. Many coaching clients disclose that it’s rarely a surprise when their negative self-talk pipes up. They expect it, and that’s part of the pain—they’re disappointed in themselves for having this negative self-talk. Because, let’s face it, we look around and can’t really see anyone else struggling with it. Other than the few close friends or colleagues who may confess that they also experience negative self-talk, everyone else’s shoulders look free of gremlins. And this can be a vicious circle—feeling bad about yourself for having negative self-talk fuels the gremlin. So we try to shut it down or ignore it. Susan David, psychologist at Harvard Medical School, and Christina Congleton, who researches stress and the brain at the University of Denver, note that much research shows that attempts to minimize or ignore thoughts and emotions serve only to amplify them. They argue for what they call “emotional agility,” which requires recognizing the patterns, labeling your thoughts and emotions, accepting them, and acting on your values (that is, resolving to be guided by your principles).12 When it comes to your gremlin, decide in advance, ideally in a non–emotionally charged environment where you don’t feel the pressure to “perform” (like your thought leadership window), what you believe to be true about yourself. Construct clear sentences that you would throw back to the gremlin so you don’t have the experience of thinking of a great comeback only after it’s too late to use it. In this case, you know the encounter with the gremlin is coming, so you can be prepared with your great comeback line. And it helps that you know the line happens to be accurate.
3. Acknowledge any truth, and act. Self-leadership can be an answer to negative self-talk. Rarely are the negative internal whispers all accurate, but there may be some aspect of truth fueling them. Examples could be, “I’m not knowledgeable in this area,” “I don’t have enough experience of this,” or “I’m not skilled enough in this.” If you can identify any foundations of truth, you can choose to address it. You are not fixed in your knowledge, experience, and skills; you can continue to learn and grow. The groundbreaking work of Stanford University professor Carol Dweck and her colleagues on growth mind-set versus fixed mind-set has highlighted the power on performance and resilience of believing (or being taught) that you are able to develop abilities.13, 14 You can address those negative whispers if you can honestly say, “I’ve made a plan, am being proactive, and am gaining more knowledge every week,” “I’m actively taking steps to increase my experience,” “I’m doing x and y to gain more skills,” or simply, “I have the ability to grow in this area. I’m going to start.” We can reframe and change negative self-talk to be constructive, knowing the new self-talk is accurate and based on facts (not just a superficial or groundless pep talk). If you’re working on the area highlighted in your negative self-talk, you can reduce the power of it.
4. Remember, only mushrooms grow in the dark. Or so my friend Brendan used to tell me. It took me a long time to work out what on earth he was talking about, but eventually I saw the wisdom in his proclamations about fungi. The negative self-talk can become too loud if we’re not letting anyone else in on what it’s saying. Sense-checking the internal whispers with a trusted friend or adviser is a powerful means of addressing negative self-talk. They will help us explore whether there’s any foundation to its claims and give us a different set of ideas for how to move forward. If left unchecked, the gremlin, like the mushroom, can and probably will grow in the dark, stopping us from growing personally and professionally. Proactivity and constructive self-talk are more likely to grow in the open light of conversation with trusted colleagues.
5. Look at others’ intentions. As a young doctoral candidate, I had the incredible opportunity to speak with many eminent professors of psychology and organizational behavior. While at Harvard as a Visiting Fellow, I had the privilege of working with the late Professor J. Richard Hackman, who read my work, encouraged me, and constructively challenged me. His input was difficult—it made my work harder—but his intention was to ensure that I offered the very best work possible. Often he would pop into the office I shared with another psychologist, ask some questions, and give me nuggets of valuable advice. After a few minutes, he’d walk away and I would realize two things: I suddenly had a lot more work to do, and the cookies that had been on my desk were now missing! I often compare these encounters with my experience of another professor in a similar position. On the surface, they looked similar, but in truth they wer
e chalk and cheese. While visiting another top-tier university, I met with a professor of leadership. When he asked what I would like to do in the future, I shared a personal aspiration about wanting to be a part of making a significant difference in one major challenge facing our world. I was in my mid-twenties at the time and a PhD candidate, with energy and excitement for what I could be part of. Laughing loudly, he replied, “Sorry, but you’re a drop in the ocean” (except he didn’t use the word drop but rather another four-letter word starting with “p” and ending in “iss”). “Who do you think you are?” I left that office with my shoulders down that day. Thankfully (probably largely due to my parents, who instilled in me the belief that with hard work, I could do anything, as well as my own belief that when working together with a shared purpose, people can make a positive difference in even the most challenging of circumstances), about three minutes into my walk away from his building, I decided, Who was he to tell me what I—working with others—couldn’t do? He could take his advice and get lost. While Professor Hackman embodied authentic gravitas, the other professor, who shall remain unnamed, demonstrated the toxicity of adverse gravitas. I learned something from both of them. I am a better psychologist today than I would have been without the input of Professor Hackman. And I am a better teacher today than I would have been without my experience with the other professor and my subsequent commitment to never laugh at my students or tell them, with self-importance, what they can’t do with their futures.
What’s important in deciding who we open up to is whether we trust that they have our back—that they have our best interests at heart, will keep our disclosures confidential, and will simultaneously be both honest and constructive. These prerequisites are important because the voices we choose to listen to are likely to shape our own self-talk. When we intentionally seek out these trusted confidantes, we build strength and resilience. We can’t stop other people from saying things and we can’t stop what we hear, but we can choose whose voices we value.
6. Count your blessings. It sounds cheesy, but extensive studies suggest that practicing gratitude has powerful positive effects. This exercise can increase our well-being and resilience to be able to tackle our gremlins. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Miami asked participants to engage in exercises to “count their blessings” (weekly for ten weeks or on a daily basis for two to three weeks).15 During that period, those in the gratitude group reported higher positive affect and physical well-being than those in the control group (who focused on daily hassles, downward social comparisons, or routine life events). Don’t let the gremlins keep pointing you to only what you lack.
Take away the gremlin’s power and talk back. For Jackson, tackling the growing gremlin on his shoulder was a positive first step. Next we looked at how he could address his growing anxiety, which was creeping regularly into business meetings.
“AN ORGAN HAS BURST”: MANAGING NERVES AND ANXIETY
I was a budding young psychologist, on top of the world. At twenty-two, having recently completed my master’s in psychology at the LSE, I had temporarily moved back to Australia and taken up my first full-time role in an organizational psychology consultancy. I was excited to wear suits, commute into town, and have a cubicle (now my favorite days are the ones when I can work in jeans, avoid rush hour, and work wherever I like!). I was pretty much excited all the time. I had a job in my field; I had “made it.” One of my first projects was to co-create a program that assisted managers in designing good interview questions. Rejoicing that I was valuable enough to be paid to travel, I jumped when asked to go to Melbourne with a senior consultant to present the product to a new client. Lauren would do the general business part of the talk, and I would talk through how the product worked in practice. Simple enough. Once at the client meeting, Lauren presented her part and I remained outside the room for a couple of minutes to organize a few last items. Walking back, I looked down the corridor from reception. I saw Lauren standing there, presenting, with about thirty people staring at her intently. It was at this point that I realized I didn’t feel very well. Sitting down on the couch in reception, I quickly came to terms with the fact that something serious was happening to me. The receptionist asked, “Are you okay, honey?” probably surprised to find a young woman lying on their couch with her shoes off and feet on their reception coffee table! I replied (honestly, word-for-word truth), “An organ has burst! Call an ambulance! Here’s my mother’s phone number in case I die . . .” Before even stepping foot in the room, I was taken away from my first big client meeting in an ambulance and admitted to the hospital. In the ambulance, I asked the paramedic, “Which organ is it?” so certain I was that one had spontaneously combusted. She looked at me somewhat perplexed. “You hyperventilated. It’s what happens to teenagers all the time when they get too excited.” Complete humiliation. But I’m a grown-up consultant, I sadly thought as I was driven to the hospital. Back in the office days later, my colleagues asked, “Are you okay, Rebecca? I heard you went to the hospital!” “I’m fine. Thanks for asking. It was close,” I joked, “but I’m all right.”
You have probably heard it reported that many of us rank public speaking as our number one fear, even over death. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld joked, “This means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than giving the eulogy!”
Although fear of public speaking largely arises when giving speeches and presentations, we have smaller meetings at work that can be just as, if not more, important and therefore nerve-racking. So even if you are not afraid of public speaking, the challenge is that your nerves can still get the better of you on occasions that are especially important to you, when you want your brain to work at its best. Whether it’s an important one-on-one meeting, a presentation to a medium-size group, or a speech to a large crowd, how we handle pressure and nervousness can shape our impact and our gravitas. It is not merely about feeling better in the moment. As we discussed earlier, others subconsciously interpret the nervousness evidenced in our body language as a lack of confidence in our message, and then they wonder why we are nervous and question our arguments. We can send messages that lead the people around us to doubt us before we even get going.
So how can we handle pressure in those significant moments and ensure that our nerves don’t undermine our gravitas?
We can start by managing our internal dynamics with simple steps to manage the external environment. One useful strategy I adopt with clients is taking them to the place where they’ll be presenting or meeting, particularly if they have not been there before, and doing a run-through. For one executive who was giving a talk to peers and potential clients at an industry conference, we booked the venue room for three hours the day before he was due to speak. He delivered his talk a couple of times, in addition to sitting in various audience seats to get an idea of their view. He ended up winning a huge deal from one audience member and attributed his powerful message to his comfort with the scene and stage. If you cannot physically go, ask the receptionist or organizing team beforehand to describe the room or setting to you in detail, so you will not have any surprises on the day.
Give Your Brain a Break
In terms of our mental management, it is important to know one useful insight about the brain. Neuroscience research suggests we have two distinct forms of self-awareness: narrative focus (where we are engaged in reflections, planning, strategizing, forward thinking, aspirations for the future—anything related to what we’re going to say or do next, be it the drive home or goals for the week ahead) and experiential focus (centered on our present experience). We habitually integrate these two—wandering between awareness of ourselves and our senses in the present moment and the narrative around our past reflections and of our future. Findings from a research team led by Norman Farb from the University of Toronto suggest we can learn to dissociate these two forms of self-awareness.16 Doing so means we’r
e able to truly focus on the immediate experience of the moment and not think about the future. This is useful because the type of mental stress we’re talking about stems from our narrative: how might this meeting go, what may—or may not—happen as a result of it, what will happen if I mess up, what will people think, etc.
A simple activity I recommend to clients is designed to help them generate a “current experience” moment. It sounds simplistic, but it helps. Even doing this briefly can have a positive effect. Breathe in for four slow counts and then out for six to eight slow counts. However, when you are breathing out, count backward from a random high number—for example, “One, two, three, four” on the breath in; then “237, 236, 235, 234, 233, 232, 231, 230” on the breath out. Repeat this at least five times, or more if you need to. The reality is that when our parents told us we should “take a deep breath” when we were nervous or stressed growing up, they lied! Or at least, they just gave us half the answer. Breathing in too much without a full exhale will cause you to hyperventilate (as I sadly found out the hard way!). Breathing out for six to eight counts from a random high number will mean that not only do you not hyperventilate (always useful), but that you must focus your mental attention on the current moment to count backward and exhale longer than it took to inhale. Just for those few seconds, your brain doesn’t switch to forward thinking. The tiny break your brain receives gives you surprisingly great relief. Although your mind comes back to the narrative focus the moment you stop, your body has enjoyed the small respite. This can have the wonderful side effect of subtly and subconsciously sending the message to others through your body language that you are calm, potentially giving them greater confidence in your message. Your brain may be yelling, “I’m nervous, I’m stressed, I can’t handle this!” but the goal is to get your body saying, “No, I’m okay, I’ve got this.”17
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