Talk to your saboteurs

What if the only thing standing between you and the growth, joy, and success you desire is… You?

Everyone has inner parts of themselves that sabotage, distract, and create self-doubt. I’m not sure who originally coined this, but these parts of us are often termed “saboteurs” or “inner critics.”

Once you learn what yours are, and what they look or sound like, you’ll start to recognize when you’re standing in the way of achieving your own desired goals.

I’m an avoider. I don’t like conflict or awkwardness, and when faced with a choice between doing the hard thing that needs doing and simply not doing it, pretty often I choose not doing it.

Avoidance for the sake of comfort or situational stability is one of my saboteurs. My saboteur is part of me, so it has access to all of my experience and intelligence to come up with rational and plausible reasons for avoiding what I need to do. It can be quite persuasive.

When I need to give someone hard and direct feedback, my avoidance saboteur might convince me that the individual had a not-so-great week and doesn’t need another bit of bad news, or that really the issue at hand isn’t that important compared to other, bigger problems in the team.

In reality, we know that direct and timely feedback is key to career development, and that withholding it for the sake of comfort does more harm than good in the long run.

Knowing that this little voice is a trying to sabotage my goal of being the best manager I can be, and providing the best support I can for my team, I can think about the decision from a different angle. What is more important here, comfort in this moment, or sustained growth for this person, whose success I’m deeply invested in?

When you think about it that way, it’s not even a choice at all!

Vanquish your saboteurs

There are two sure-fire ways to conquer your saboteurs. One, of course, is to get a coach. Coaches are trained to recognize when your saboteurs are talking through you, when you say things that reveal your limiting beliefs about yourself. A coach can help you see past that, consider a different perspective on the risk, and take the action you need to take.

The second is to learn to recognize your saboteurs on your own. This is a bit harder because you have to remember to look in the first place, but there are some tools available to help you.

I really like this quick assessment from Positive Intelligence, Discover Your Saboteurs. After answering these questions (there are 50, it takes maybe 10 minutes), you will receive a report outlining the relative strength of each of the several Positive Intelligence saboteurs.

As you can see, I’m a big time avoider:

You’ll get access to a more in-depth report that describes each saboteur in detail, which will help you to identify it when it’s rearing its head.

Note that your saboteurs don’t always speak. Sometimes your saboteur is just a pattern of behavior that pulls you away from the action or point of view that you need in that moment. Learning to recognize how your saboteurs show up for you will help you make better decisions for yourself.

How about you? Have you discovered your saboteurs? If you have, I’d love to hear about it!

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