“There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then, a young stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I got to live with that.”
—RED (SPEAKING TO PAROLE BOARD AT THE
PRISON WHERE HE SERVED A FORTY-YEAR
SENTENCE), SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
My wife once had a several-months-long conversation with herself about a bowl. She owns an art gallery on a street known for fine antiques stores and other galleries. On the way into work one day she stopped by one of her favorite stores to look around and noticed a beautiful green bowl on a shelf with some other accessories. The bowl seemed to call out to her. The depth of the color and the beauty of its workmanship seemed almost otherworldly. The store owner said he thought the bowl was probably from China. Anne could not take her eyes off it, and every instinct in her said to buy this bowl. She then looked at the price—$1,000!
“Wow, that’s a lot for a bowl that is just going to catch dust on a shelf,” she said to herself. “Also, there’s no way I can hide that much money from Tim in our budget. I’d better not.” She went on to work but could not stop thinking about the green Chinese bowl. She returned to the store the next day, and said to herself, “I really should buy this,” but then she decided, “No, I’d better wait.”
Three weeks later, Anne went back to the store, and the bowl was marked down to $600. The bowl possessed an eerie but beautiful patina. A glow emanated from somewhere deep within its contours. Anne had never felt drawn to an object like this, and her mind returned to the bowl countless times during the day. She wrestled within her soul. One side spoke to her saying, “Buy the bowl.” The other side said, “Six hundred dollars is still too much money.”
The “Buy the bowl” side finally won out, and she went to the store the next day. It was gone! The store owner said a man came in right after her the day before and bought the bowl.
Several months later, Anne again stopped by the antiques store. The owner said, “Anne, you won’t believe this. The guy who bought the Chinese bowl took it to the antiquities department of some university for evaluation. It’s more than three thousand years old, and they conservatively estimate it is worth $300,000! University archeologists speculated that it was a burial urn for some emperor.”
I told Anne that if she ever has a similar experience to please listen to herself sooner and buy the bowl! Anne’s only consolation is that now the bowl is in a museum and can be enjoyed for what it is. We would have probably used it to hold paper clips on Anne’s desk.
ARE YOU HEARING VOICES?
When I speak to groups of leaders I often ask them if they talk to themselves. There is usually a nervous ripple of laughter, and a few brave souls raise their hands. We may not acknowledge it or even be aware of it, but the truth is we all talk to ourselves.
Self-talk is the often haphazard and sometimes directed flow of thoughts, ideas, and feelings that course through our core. The conversation is inside me, not between another person and me. Self-talk is our intrapersonal, not interpersonal, communication. This is analogous to our use of an intranet to share internal documents inside a company, while the Internet allows us to communicate outside the walls of our organization. Each of us has a constant flow of self-talk going on inside us most of the time. Psalm 16 says, “Even at night my [core] instructs me.”
We may not acknowledge it or even be aware
of it, but the truth is we all talk to ourselves.
Sometimes our self-talk is dialogue; sometimes it is even a debate. Sometimes we question ourselves, “Should I do this or not,” as in the case of Anne trying to decide whether or not to buy the bowl. In these situations, we often experience what psychologists call cognitive dissonance (basically, internal emotional discord). Part of me wants to do something, and the other part of me puts on the brakes. Our self-talk expresses the battle that rages between the conflicting sides.
Some self-talk is affirming, as in, “I felt good about how I led the meeting today.” At other times we are giving ourselves a stern lecture, like, “Don’t you ever do that again.” This critical style of self-talk often resembles the voice of a parent or grandparent who may have been a bit crotchety. Sometimes we speak to ourselves in the first person, such as when we chide ourselves: “I’m so stupid. I can’t believe I did that.” We might yell at ourselves, or our self-talk can be a quiet whisper that only the most careful, intentional effort can discern.
We talk to ourselves—that is clear. The question is, “Are we listening?” Under the right conditions, we can actually listen to this inner dialogue, regardless of the decibel level. In fact, I believe we must learn to listen in. Paying attention to our inner voice can be extraordinarily helpful, and a failure to do so may put our ability to lead in grave peril. The key is not just hearing but, when necessary, learning to forcefully change the message of our inner voice to be a strong leader.
WHAT DOES SELF-TALK TELL US ANYWAY?
Self-talk reveals the narrative of who you are as a person. Author Patrick Rothfuss said, “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”1 Although self-talk may seem random, we are constantly building and revising our own narrative inside our core. In my experience, most people are quite passive about their narrative. Their narrative is formed in pinball fashion, where they bounce from one person and experience to the next. They give little effort to self-authoring a story about where they want their lives to go and the legacy they want to live. Their narrative is formed through the collective wisdom of Entertainment Tonight and People magazine.
By contrast effective leaders are thoughtful about who they are and where their lives are going—the narrative they are creating. For example, they are often contemplative about their values—those pivotal priorities that guide their lives and actions as leaders. We have a good sense about these leaders—we call them “highly principled” and we follow with abandon. They inevitably make an impact.
LISTEN TO YOUR CORE
There are three particularly important aspects of our self-talk. First, self-talk originates in our core—yes, our cores talk! Self-talk is the pipeline to our core, and it flows in two directions. We can hear our core speak to us, and we can speak to ourselves. For many of us, our core is strange and inaccessible. The thought that a person is actually talking deep down inside of us is a bit spooky.
Second, what we say to ourselves has a profound impact on our behavior because it feeds our beliefs. Our self-talk not only reveals our existing beliefs, but also, we can speak to our core to thoughtfully form or change our beliefs. If we repeatedly tell ourselves that we are stupid, we will believe it. Imagine the feelings and actions that flow from that belief. I do not know about you, but I want to know what those beliefs governing my behavior are. If we learn to monitor our self-talk, we can control our beliefs and the resulting behaviors.
Third, self-talk can be full of surprises, because it taps into the hidden area of the awareness circle, the model shown in Chapter 4. Listening to self-talk is one key way we get inside the hidden area. In a conversation with the CEO of a company, I asked him why he was so down on a particular manager. He recoiled from my question and said, “What do you mean down on?” I told him that every time I heard the manager’s name mentioned in the CEO’s presence, he frowned. A couple of weeks later we talked again, and he said, “I found out what the problem is. In the first week after he joined us, ‘Joe’ said something about our company’s reputation in the marketplace that I took very personally. I’ve never gotten over it. Last Saturday morning I was doing some preparation for the week ahead and actually heard myself say, ‘That guy can’t be trusted.’ He’s really a stellar performer. I didn’t think I doubted Joe’s loyalty, but that first impression created a doubt in my mind that stuck for three years. I need to change what I believe about him. He is a good guy whom I love having on the team. I hope the frown is gone.”
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Listening to our self-talk requires that we get in position to hear. Self-talk is easily crowded out by the noise in our lives. Electronic distractions need to be turned off and set aside. You cannot usually hear your self-talk while answering an e-mail or watching the news. Listening requires undivided attention.
One of my favorite forms of exercise is biking in the North Georgia mountains. Because there is so little traffic where I ride, I hear my inner voice more clearly than usual. I am always surprised at how much verbal traffic is going on in my head. I try to pay attention and very often get new ideas about how to handle a particular interaction or what to write.
One way I hear my self-talk is by sitting in a very quiet place and thinking about my day ahead. I try to spend a few minutes with a calendar and journal in front of me. I reflect on what I think and feel about the people and events on my calendar. When I listen carefully, I discover beliefs about people that will guide my behavior toward them.
One practice I have found to be helpful during this morning period of reflection is to “move toward the resistance.” If I do not want to do something or think about something, it is probably a subject I should actually spend some time considering—move toward the resistance and figure out what the resistance means. Not long ago, as I looked at a person’s name on that day’s calendar, I heard myself say, “Cancel the meeting with him.” As I took a few minutes and asked myself why, I realized that the person with whom I had a meeting that day often has a hidden agenda and wants me to agree with him about the faults of another colleague. I actually do not like meeting with him and find that it is difficult to have a clean, unencumbered conversation with this person. I did not cancel the meeting but decided in advance that we would stay on task. That one small awareness was helpful in guiding my behavior during our meeting.
SPEAKING TO OUR CORE
Listening to our self-talk is vital, but remember that the communication also needs to go the other way. I worked with a leader in the fashion industry who was renowned for draining all the energy in meetings. Some committee or group would ask her to attend and report on her initiative that had an impact on their work in some significant way. What she failed to see was that the groups who invited her to their meetings wanted a dialogue. Instead of a five-minute update, she inevitably gave a forty-five-minute lecture on her project and its merits. Repeatedly, I heard frustration around the organization about her boring monologues.
I sat down with her one morning and talked about what I was hearing. She responded by pointing out that “Others said they wanted a report, and I am simply responding to their request.” I said, “Rather than seeing this as a report, why don’t you think of this as an opportunity to engage them and to build support for your initiative. They’re telling you they want to hear from you, but what they really want is to interact with you. Let them do most of the talking.” My feedback challenged a firmly held conviction in her belief file.
She said, “This is a pretty ingrained practice for me. How do I change it?”
“Talk to yourself.”
She responded, “What?”
“Before you meet with a group the next time, tell yourself that what you’re really after is to get them on your side. Tell yourself that the only way you’re going to get them on your side is to get them involved. Tell them that you would be happy to answer their questions, but that you really want to hear from them, where they are having hiccups with the process, etcetera.”
“Okay, I’ll try that,” she said.
The next meeting was a huge success. The group did most of the talking and became a champion of her initiative. She got the point. She changed her belief about the purpose of her meetings, and her behavior changed—as did the results.
Apart from having a conversation with herself, the executive in this example would still be giving her forty-five-minute monologues, because that is what she genuinely believed people wanted. Her belief was errant, and she had to talk to herself to change that belief. We must learn to proactively talk to ourselves.
SELF-DECEPTION IS INDEED DECEIVING
Self-deception is explored more fully in the next chapter, but here is the basic idea. It is not news that we sometimes lie to ourselves. Yes, and often our core protests—there goes that cognitive dissonance again. Lying to ourselves can easily result in errant beliefs. For example, if a leader says to herself, “I don’t have to follow the normal rules,” and fails to capture and alter this misguided belief, she will be in grave peril. Errant behavior flows from errant beliefs.
Errant behavior flows from errant beliefs.
I worked with a client organization that was, how can I say this nicely, frugal. Actually, by most people’s standards, the leaders were downright cheap. They asked me and two or three of my team members to participate in a meeting at a particular hotel near an airport three to four times a year. I did not like the hotel. It seemed unsafe and had a reputation for unsavory characters. The hotel staff was unprofessional. Despite my misgivings for the team and me, I kept my opinions to myself, and we continued working at the hotel. I told myself to be a good team player and serve the client.
One morning I arrived for an early meeting, and the front desk clerk gave me a key to the meeting room so I could get set up. I inserted the magnetic key card into the lock and opened the door. Just enough light came in through the open door to make me realize that the room was occupied by another guest. I am still amazed at how quickly this happened, but all of a sudden a man who looked like a character straight out of Breaking Bad sat up in bed and pointed a huge handgun at me. I apologized for the mistake and quickly closed the door. I then went back to the desk clerk and quietly asked for a new room (actually I wasn’t that quiet).
That afternoon, driving home, from out of nowhere I literally screamed, “I will never under any circumstance go back to that hotel!” The strength of my feeling shocked me. It was just plain stupid to have meetings there. My core had been quietly telling me for a long time to request that we meet in a better hotel—“You are putting yourself and your team at great risk,” my core had told me—but I had ignored the message under the pretense of false humility. I lied to myself that we were “trying to serve our customer.” Self-deception had gotten the best of me. Later that week, the client and I had a candid conversation, and we changed hotels for future meetings.
Listening to our core is a critical discipline for a leader who makes an impact. This prevents us from taking the path where, like Red in the opening quote of this chapter, we lament the loss of the legacy that could have been. In the next chapter, we will look at some fairly predictable ways we can lie to ourselves to achieve likewise fairly predictable results.
GO DEEPER
Spend twenty to thirty minutes in a quiet place listening to your self-talk—eliminate the noise around you. Write down what you’re hearing and answer the questions below. Do not worry about the somewhat random style of your inner communication.
1. What are the messages you hear from your core?
2. What does your self-talk tell you about the life narrative that you are creating?
3. What are your most significant apprehensions about your effectiveness as a leader?
4. What do you need to say to your core about those apprehensions?
5. Do you notice any self-talk that may not be objectively true?
6. Does your self-talk reveal anything that puts you at risk personally and as a leader?
7. Do you find yourself resisting reflection on some topic? Do you push toward that subject and ask yourself why you find that topic difficult?
Make it a regular practice to listen to your self-talk throughout the day. The next subject is the type of self-talk that really gets leaders in trouble. We must pay great attention to our potential self-deception.