Learning How Not to Be Your Own Worst Enemy
Amy Logan, executive coach at CoachAmyLogan.com
Our communication behavior can start fires of conflict, resentment, relationship fractures and reputation damage. Learning how not to be our own worst enemy, therefore, is a skill; an invaluable, protective one.
Our reactivity, impulsiveness and tongues can get us in trouble, in our professional and personal lives. Once the words escape our mouths or we otherwise communicate them in writing, the horse has left the barn. We are now at the mercy of how other people experience and interpret our communication and react. That’s not a comfortable, good place to be, it’s an incredible risk. We then have no choice but have to endure the consequences, sometimes painful.
If we have a habit of troubling communication that hurts our professional relationships and well-being: personally, financially and emotionally, what can we do differently, do better?
“We need awareness of the impact and costs of our words,” says Amy Logan, an executive coach who specializes in working with venture-backed startup founders and their teams at her company, Coach Amy Logan.
“Most people aren't fully connected to the pain they cause others, or even themselves, with their behavior,” she says.
That low-level or full lack of self-awareness and social-awareness is a challenge most people have to examine and overcome in some or all parts of their lives. At times or with certain parts of our thinking and behavior, that can be extremely challenging. We might, or might not want to learn, practice and improve. We might, or might not know exactly how to learn, practice and improve. But what if we want to do so?
“Get a thorough, oral-interview-based 360 feedback assessment that includes people from both your personal and professional lives,” Logan recommends. “Have the interviewer inquire about the costs -- and potential costs if it doesn't stop -- of your behavior. This should motivate you to change.”
Being able to ‘see’ those costs, which yes, can be plural, is difficult, especially if we don’t want to be honest with ourselves about them, regardless of that avoidance increasing the probability that we will continue to suffer them, or eventually will, and having to endure likely discomfort or worse, pain.
“Receiving 360 feedback that includes the impact, costs and consequences of our behavior is the most effective way I know for helping someone really see and get those costs,” Logan says. “It’s unvarnished feedback about the pain we cause others, and also often, ourselves. When the feedback partner sticks to sharing facts about the counterproductive behavior and its impact, it’s hard to wriggle out of, especially if several feedback partners are saying essentially the same thing.”
This is likely to create an emotional reaction that people are not ready for or want to hear or read. It’s hard learning unpleasant truths about ourselves.
“People are sometimes defensive at first but the feedback works on them in the coming days and weeks and they usually begin to accept and change the behavior,” Logan has discovered. “Working with an effective coach that one trusts, who isn’t judgmental or critical, is really fundamental to this process working well. We need psychological safety to be able to be vulnerable enough to see and own the painful truth about ourselves.”
It’s vital to make the sustained, focused effort to do that learning, to not only respect, protect and benefit those around us but to protect ourselves and help us achieve in a way that is on a higher plane of character and professionalism.
“Dig deeply and uncover why you communicate so counterproductively,” Logan says, adding, “Work with a therapist or a coach to get to the root cause. Perhaps you are judgmental and critical of others. Where did you learn that as a way of thinking and communicating? Figure out what your limiting beliefs are about others, yourself and the world that are impacting your communication style.”
Not knowing what specific type of coach to research, communicate with, feel a comfort level with, trust, hire and work with can be confusing and frustrating. Trusting our emotional and psychological self, our ego and vulnerability with someone is not something we naturally do easy. There is an approach that can prove helpful, Logan says.
“They should state their specific needs and requirements up front to the prospective coaches they interview and ask them if they prioritize a psychologically safe space,” she advises. “Ask them how they do that and listen to your gut. Ask for referrals to clients that have used their 360 services and find out if the coach really does create and maintain a safe space.”
Logan is not a proponent about going into such professional assistance and development with a focus on protecting one’s ego however, even if it is a natural, primitive part of our humanness.
“I don’t really recommend the approach of protecting one’s ego or saving face — I think you end up with a superficial result,” she says. “Ideally, to get long-term transformation, your coach holds you in a non-judgmental, caring space so you can be vulnerable and open safely. Your coach sees and shares your magnificent potential with you. And you trust them enough that you can let your guard down and be authentic, flaws and all.”
In short, she says, “The quality of the relationship with the coach is the most crucial piece here.”
Our belief system is our mental programming and as that goes, so goes our behavior, which is why it is invaluable and critical both to examine that belief system regularly, understand it clearly, test it and make successful adjustments to our mental ‘software.’
Putting beliefs on trial can help determine if they are really truthful, with evidence and thus, worth maintaining. Ask yourself the hard, intense questions about them. Make the beliefs prove themselves valid. This process, if implemented, will prevent a lot of communication behavior that leads to us becoming, if not our own worst enemy, then certainly an enemy to ourselves, and others nonetheless.
“Challenge those beliefs and see if you don't actually believe something more productive after all, but have been at the mercy of a long-term knee-jerk habit,” Logan states. “Learn in what situations you get triggered to communicate counterproductively. Observe when you start to go down that path. Pause yourself. Is there a self-worth fear of yours that just got activated? Reframe and re-center before continuing the conversation.”
“Ask yourself, she says, “if a particular belief is really true. Is it a hard fact? What evidence is there to support it? Where did you learn this belief? While growing up?”
Questions, question and more questions. It was Tony Robbins, the personal development professional, who is known for saying, “Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
Logan has more quality questions.
“How do (your beliefs) interfere with, or limit your life and your joy? What else do you already believe about this topic that does serve you now, that wants to be surfaced and valued more than the old, limiting belief,” she asks. “Just because your parents didn’t say it explicitly doesn't mean you didn’t absorb the implicit norms of your family as beliefs. Those beliefs were undoubtedly part of a crucial coping mechanism at one time. But are they serving you now?”
To be more of an ally to ourselves and respected by others means the risk of becoming our worst enemy because of failed or sloppy communication behavior will be mild at best. To do this, learning about ourselves and how others view and judge us is of paramount importance. It’s also beneficial to know that when we’re communicating, whether it be verbally or with the written word, that there are guidelines to remember and follow.
“The golden rule of communication,” Logan asserts, is “Never have a conversation when either person involved is in a reaction unless it's a true emergency. We are impaired when we are in a reaction, no longer using our prefrontal cortex for executive functioning but instead activating our amygdala in fight, flight or freeze. Most likely ‘fight (mode)’ if you're saying things you regret.”
If you trust, without reserve, a colleague or friend, she suggests you can take your personal development one step forward.
“If you’re really brave, tell people in your inner circle what communication behaviors you’re trying to improve and ask for real-time feedback when you slip up,” Logan says. “You’ll improve much faster, especially if you approach it playfully, not defensively.”
