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The Conscious Entrepreneur | Leadership, Self-Awareness & Mindset
EP 110: Don’t Feed the Critic. Train the Coach: How to Rewire Negative Self-Talk and Lead Better
00:25:11
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- [00:00]
A
Most entrepreneurs would never talk to a friend the way they talk to themselves. The inner critic is loud, it's relentless, and honestly, kind of a jerk. Mike Robbins, who is a five time author, a speaker and a coach who has worked with everybody from Google to the San Francisco Giants, joins me today to talk about what happens when you fire that inner critic and hire an inner coach instead. This is about the inner life of entrepreneurs, which we always talk about on the Conscious Entrepreneur and how to turn that inner dialogue from destructive to constructive. Let's get into it. You're listening to the Conscious Entrepreneur and I'm Sarah Lockwood. This is the only podcast completely dedicated to the well being of entrepreneurs. It's where we do the inner work to become the leaders our businesses truly need. A thriving business starts with a thriving you. Let's get into it. Today we're here with Mike Robbins. Mike is an expert in recognition, appreciation and emotional intelligence. And today we are going to turn the conversation into what's happening in the entrepreneur's inner game. Like what is happening with our self talk. And Mike, I would love for you to talk with us a little bit about a place to start which I think is just even defining the difference between recognition and appreciation.
- [01:23]
B
Well, Sarah, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here with you and everybody who's listening and watching. Yeah, I mean, look, I do think our inner game, so to speak, if you will, is so important and often we don't spend as much time focused on it, especially as entrepreneurs, because there's so much to do and there's so much happening and there's so many things we have to take care of. But this piece around the difference between recognition and appreciation, which has been a foundational part of my work for the last almost 25 years, is that recognition is about performance, it's about outcome, it's about what we do. Appreciation is more about value and care. It's more about who we are. So we recognize performance in ourselves and others. We appreciate people, both other people, but also ourselves, which we often don't appreciate ourselves nearly as much as we could and probably should, which is a big thing that we can do sort of to manage that inner game, if you will, especially with all the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
- [02:22]
A
That's right. How do you think we make that inner game a less unkind place? I think that a lot of entrepreneurs really do spend a lot of time in our minds and in our really loud, harsh, critical places. And why do you think that we are so conditioned to spend so much time there as opposed to seeing we do it for other people, we do it for our children. We say you, I know you didn't get the score you wanted to get on your math test, but you studied so hard and you worked so hard and I loved seeing that. Right? We've, as parents, we've learned how to have those coaching conversations with our kids. But gosh, we don't turn that, that really healthy self talk towards ourselves.
- [03:08]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think, look, I mean, I think just as human beings, entrepreneur or not, you know, we all have a negativity bias in our nervous system, right? For survival. And it's a beautiful thing, right? Because if that, if that didn't exist, we would fall down the stairs all the time, we would burn our hands on stoves, we would get hit by cars, we like all kinds of bad things would happen if we didn't have that. However, we, we've over indexed on that and it's become habitual and it becomes this vigilance. And again, it can be based on both our, our physiology, our biology, kind of how we're wired as humans. But, but with entrepreneurship, a lot of times it is scary. You know, we're trying something new, we're taking a risk, we're putting ourselves and potentially our families at risk financially to do something. We have people counting on us. So there's that sense of like, I have to wake up early and stay up late, I have to worry all the time. And then that gets perpetuated. In our society, we again think about parenting as much as you were saying earlier, we are often good at like trying to, you know, give our kids pep talks, but we're also indoctrinated into, we're supposed to worry about our children. That's how you show love. So it's this, we get a lot of weird mixed messages. And so with all of that, I think it's important for us to have compassion even for our self criticism. If we want to start to have more compassion for ourselves, it starts with us having compassion for the fact that we're not that compassionate for ourselves, if that makes sense.
- [04:36]
A
Even recognizing hearing it, you know, because it's constant but we're not aware of it. So having that awareness of the things you're saying to yourself, having the awareness to say, hey, you're being really hard on yourself right now. And maybe that's because you have really high standards, which is great, but you worked really hard on this. You can do better next time you learn an important lesson. You know, you showed up and you kept trying. You know, these are. These are kinds of the things that the performative part of our lives of, like, I'm only happy when I get this result, or my board only appreciates me when I'm doing what they want me to do. Or, you know, I. I only am worthy when I get this score on the scoreboard, whatever that KPI is that is so unhealthy as humans. I mean, maybe it's part of the. Part of what we sign up for as entrepreneurs to some extent, but we're responsible for ourselves as whole people.
- [05:42]
B
Totally. I mean, and the way I learned about this myself, Sarah, you know, my. My background, I grew up here in California, where I still live, and I played baseball all growing up. I actually got drafted out of high school by the New York Yankees. I didn't end up signing a contract with the Yankees because I got an opportunity to play baseball in college at Stanford, about an hour from where I grew up in Oakland. Then, yeah, it was fun. And then got drafted out of Stanford by the Kansas City Royals. And I did sign a pro contract at that time. And the way it works in professional baseball in North America is you go into the minor leagues, whether it's with the Yankees or the Royals or the Cubs or the Dodgers or any of the teams in the major leagues, and I was trying to work my way up to the big leagues. I was a pitcher. Unfortunately for me, I went out my third season still in the minor leagues, threw one pitch toward ligaments in my elbow, blew my arm out. And so here I was at 23 after starting, playing baseball at seven and two years, three surgeries later, my baseball career was over. And it was painful physically initially, and then very painful mentally, emotionally. But the big realization that I had when it was finally over, and as disappointed as I was, as sad as I was, I didn't know what I was going to do next. But when I reflected back on the whole experience and I asked myself, did I have any regrets? I didn't regret a lot of the stuff that I thought I would have, like the bad games or the times I blew it or the things I got all stressed about when I was playing. The only regret that I had, Sarah, the only regret was that I didn't fully appreciate it while it was happening. I was too busy trying to make it. And I spent most of my time thinking that I wasn't good enough, comparing myself to everyone around me and literally, like, not only beating myself up, but holding my breath, hoping that I didn't screw it up. And then when it was all over, I was like, oops, I think I missed the point. Like, I was actually really good at that. Why didn't I enjoy that? Why didn't I acknowledge myself more for it? I was so focused on. On all the places where I thought I needed to get better. And so I say this to everyone listening and watching, like, wherever you are in your business right now, wherever you are in your life. I was having lunch with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and we were talking, both entrepreneurs, we were talking about this balance between what he was calling the gap and the gain. And, you know, we're so focused on the gap. Like, where do we need to get to personally, where does the business need to get to? You know, but we forget to turn around and look at the gain. Like all the progress that we've made and not just the practical outcome progress, which there is, but also just think of how much we've grown and how much we've learned and how much more maybe aware or wise or whatever we are today than we were a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. But we don't often acknowledge that as well as we could.
- [08:23]
A
Yeah. And I think that, you know, figuring out ways to be more conscious of what we are saying to ourselves and reframing it in more positive ways, more compassionate ways, acknowledging how far we've come. I think in the book the Gap in the Game, they talk about if you measure yourself with the horizon, it's always moving and you'll never get there. Right. So I think it's really important, as you're saying, to kind of have that practice of recognizing maybe where you've, how far you've come, how much you've progressed, and maybe if you still don't, you know, hit that KPI or whatever external measurement you're using, you're trying to find that. That more useful story about, like, what was positive. What did you learn? Having more of the growth mindset lens on, on the, the standards or the, the scorecard, so to speak. Yeah, cultivating compassion is pretty hard. Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs on how they can, how they can have more of that for themselves and how they can have more of that in, you know, in the cultures they're creating at work or at home?
- [09:34]
B
Well, I think it's important to remember, like, self compassion. If we break self compassion down, there's three components. The first is mindfulness, like awareness, noticing, as you and I were talking about a little bit earlier, noticing if we're not Being compassionate, we're being really critical. That voice is getting loud. The second thing is kindness. Bringing that sense of kindness, like you were saying too. We're usually pretty good at doing that with children, our own children or others, you know, animals, people in need. And then the third thing is recognizing common humanity, that this notion of being critical of ourselves is not personal, even though it feels very personal. It's kind of how we're wired, both our biology, but it's also how we're socialized. So from that perspective, then thinking about what we can do to bring more self compassion into our lives, into how we operate, into how we lead and think, and also infusing it with others, we can't force other people to be compassionate with themselves. We can invite them to be and we can also model it. You know, it's like, what did Gandhi teach us? You know, be the change, so be the thing we want people to be. But a couple things that I do myself and that I coach some of the leaders, entrepreneurs as well as senior leaders in some of the big companies that I work with. Pardon me. That I suggest is one thing is to start paying attention to how are we talking about ourselves. Because our words are often just our thoughts manifested and oftentimes we say mean things about ourselves out loud. Kind of like jokingly, oh, I suck at this, I'm no good at that. But it's like we wouldn't say that about another person. So like, if we can start being mindful of what do we say about ourselves, it's a little harder to monitor all of our thoughts, but just start to notice, what does that voice sound like? Like get comfortable with, familiar with that inner critic voice. Because sometimes I think we think it's us. It's just a part of us. It's a pretty loud and intense part of us, but it's not all of who we are. So the more we can sort of be in relationship with that. Like I try to talk to myself literally and sometimes I'll hear the voice really loud and I'll say something like, thanks for sharing or okay, I'm gonna go do this anyway again. I mean, it's almost like it's a, it's a, you know, if we think of it like an Internet troll or a critic from the crowd, it's like, are we really going to give our power away to that voice all the time?
- [11:50]
A
Absolutely. It's the, it's the most scared, it's the most embarrassed, it's the most. It has all that negative emotion when you Let that guy hold the mic, right? You're missing out on all of the bigger, better, more useful messages you can be saying to yourself. Yeah, absolutely, that's very true.
- [12:08]
B
You know, and starting to. Starting to think about again, are there ways I can speak about myself, others, my work that are positive, genuinely, authentically positive, not rah rah, phony Pollyanna or not arrogant, like, I'm the greatest and I never make a mistake. I mean, that's, by the way, the conversation of I'm the best and the conversation of I'm the worst, it's the same conversation. It's the same mechanism, right? It's like, yeah, it's a real negative part of our ego. But when we shift over into that more authentic place of appreciating ourselves, valuing ourselves, that becomes really powerful. And so, again, it's like there's another technique that I learned years ago from a coach of mine, which is we can actually physically put our hands on our hearts. And when we do that, like, if anyone listening or watching, if you're not driving or you're not somewhere in public, that it would be weird if you just do that for a few moments, just like, put your hands on your heart, take a breath. Sometimes I'll close my eyes and just remind myself, like, you're safe, it's okay. I mean, some way of kind of self talk, like soothing self talk. And again, I know that sounds a little corny. And again, we have to be mindful of the environment that we're in. But it's like, you know, I love. Brene Brown says, talk to yourself as if you're talking to someone you really love. Like, what if we started relating to ourselves and talking to ourselves in the way we would talk to someone we really love, we really care about, we really respect, we really admire, because we could. We're not going to lose our edge. We're not going to become arrogant and rest on our laurels. I don't think most successful entrepreneurs that I know and work with, they're very focused on that gap. They're very focused on what's next and how do I improve and how do we improve. So I think most of us need a little bit more support in acknowledging the gain, but also being kind to ourselves, whatever's going on.
- [13:57]
A
Yeah. Oh, gosh, it is so true. And I'd love to turn the conversation a little bit into how we receive feedback. Right? We've been talking a lot about our inner critic, right? It's our self evaluation. It's that looking back and chewing on. And chewing on. And chewing on the day and chewing on the meeting and chewing on the call and whatever happened. But there are a lot of occasions as entrepreneurs where we're receiving feedback from clients, prospective clients, employees, customers. You know, the list of people giving us feedback sometimes feels very long. I think it's very important for us to be able to receive feedback and not only hear the negative. Right. Because that's definitely something that we default to, but also how do we. How do we kind of put ourselves into the receiving, receiving, compassionate, useful way of hearing that information and make that our default position as opposed to, you know, some of the other contexts for receiving feedback?
- [15:06]
B
Well, look, I mean, I think we get weird about feedback on multiple fronts. Number one, even positive feedback, when someone comes and compliments us and says, you're great or you're notice, most of us get weird about that. Like, oh, no, we stop. Or you're great too. Like, we. So even the receiving of appreciation, which I talk a lot about, is challenging, is vulnerable. So getting better at that. By the way, if you get better at receiving appreciation from other people, guess what'll happen? You'll get more appreciation. And let's be honest, we could all use more. I've been studying appreciation, Sarah, for 25 years. I've literally never heard a human being say to me, you know what, Mike? I'm just too appreciated. It's just too much. I really wish people would just stop it. So on the more positive side, we can even benefit from just receiving it, taking it in, just saying thank you. On the more sort of critical side, that's challenging for a different reason, right? Because we tend to obsess about critical feedback. You know, again, it's the whole, you know, your boss gives you, you know, tells you 10 things, you're doing great and two things to work on, and you're like, oh, no, I'm in trouble. And I. You know, because our brains are wired again, that negativity bias is wired in a way we're protecting from threats. And so we see critical feedback as a potential threat. I could lose my job, or I could lose business, or the business could go down, or some people won't love me, whatever it is. So I think, again, having compassion with ourselves, that taking critical feedback is hard. I was listening to a podcast episode several years ago with Bradley Whitford, the actor. He was on with Marc Maron, and he was talking about taking feedback from a director in a scene, and he said, if I'm really honest, there's three beats that go off in my head whenever I get feedback. And I always hope I can get to the third beat. He said, the first beat is F you. Like super defensive. Like, shut up. Like, how dare you? Who are you? The second beat is oh, I suck. And the third beat, he said again, if I can get to this, I'm in good shape, is, wait, what? And I'm listening to this podcast and I started laughing because I'm like, okay, I don't act, so I don't know what that's like. But I could imagine how vulnerable it is to take feedback in the moment from a director, as an actor. But I was thinking to myself, that's often how I take feedback is either I get defensive and, or self critical. But if either of those things happen normally, understandably, it's not helpful, it's not valuable. I'm not going to get there. Yeah, if we get, if we can get past that and get to that third beat that Bradley talked about, that curiosity, that growth mindset that, wait, what now? We can consider it. That doesn't mean we have to take the feedback 100%. That doesn't mean what the person is saying is right with a capital R. It simply means we're open enough to consider it. And I'm a big believer too, of like making sure we can be open to all feedback. But some feedback is more applicable, more relevant than others. Feedback from someone who knows us, feedback from someone we've given permission to give us feedback. Feedback from someone who actually is connected to what we're doing is different than unsolicited feedback from some random person. Again, not that there's still not potentially value in it, but we don't want to be closed to it, but we want to make sure we're getting feedback from the best possible sources. And the thing that I often try to remember myself and coach people to do is go ask for feedback. Because if I go ask you, Sarah, for feedback, what could I do better? How could this be better? What could I improve upon? Or even my favorite feedback questions, or what could I start? What could I stop, what could I continue? But when I ask you those questions, I'm giving you permission to give me feedback. I go in with hopefully as much of a growth mindset as possible. I want it and I'm ready for it. If I don't ask for it and, or people are just coming giving it to me, I might be more defensive or less open to it.
- [18:38]
A
Right? Well, I think it's such a smart, a smart thing, obviously, to build More feedback and more appreciation into the conversations with we have with others, and then also to create an opportunity to have that reciprocated. And I think that your advice of doing that intentionally lets you set yourself up for success. If this is something you're starting to acknowledge that you're not doing well and you want to do better and you want to make more constructive in your business and in your personal life, actually asking for the feedback and being prepared to take it in and to, and to say to yourself, hey, I may not agree with all of this. If you can get past the, the defensive and you can get past the, you're right, I suck, I'm the worst. But get into, hey, what part of this sounds right to me? What part of this could be true? What part of this could I use? Even if I don't agree with it in its entirety, that is kind of the, the opportunity to practice this, this habit, right? And make it more of a day to day part of our lives and make it more connected, constructive. So.
- [19:45]
B
Absolutely. And I, I've always think about coaching. Like being coachable is again, it's like, it's like trying on a jacket. Does it fit? Do I like it? Does it help? Does it, do I look good? You know, I mean, that's kind of a corny analogy, but it's like, if it fits, hey, I'll wear it. If it doesn't fit. I, I tried it on, I considered it and like, oh, I need a bigger one or a smaller one or a different one or a different color. But again, being engaged in the process of both being willing to coach others and also be coachable. You know, I do see a lot of entrepreneurs that I work with struggle sometimes, Sarah, with, you know, they're in a position of growing and building the business, and then as they hire more people, they're coaching people a lot. But it's like, are you getting the coaching that you need? Are you getting the support that you need, maybe from some of the folks within the team, but also from outside, you know, and this is true, by the way, even with, like, I work with a lot of senior leaders in big companies from, you know, ebay to Walmart to Coca Cola to, you know, the NBA? And what I find when I'm in these places, really smart, talented people, people who are really passionate about what they do and have worked really hard in their careers. And again, the further up they go in the organization and they get to the executive level, it gets pretty lonely up there, right? And it's finding people Both within the organization and outside of the organization, who can they really can lean on, they can be real with, and they can get feedback that they need. Because a lot of times people don't always tell you the truth when you're the boss.
- [21:13]
A
For sure. For sure. And you have to ask for it. I mean, when people work for you and even on your leadership team, you have to create a safe space where people feel comfortable giving you authentic, constructive feedback. And that only happens when you get really good at asking for it and taking it, and they see evidence of that over and over and over again. So this, the skill set of receiving. Receiving feedback and receiving it in a way where you can be compassionate with yourself, where you can put that information to use, makes it easier for you to do this over and over and build reps, where you can kind of start creating a culture where you're getting more valuable information, you're getting truth that helps you integrate that truth into your business and your personal life and make things better. Better. Right. It's. We can't be ostriches burying our heads in the sand. We can. It's. It's maybe not what's best for ourselves. Right. So this is a great practice that you're talking about. And I think balancing, you know, the drive for results with compassion and empathy for ourselves and for others is. Is incredibly valuable. Mike, you have a couple of books I want to. I want to invite you to share those with our listeners, because I do think that. But they're great resources.
- [22:28]
B
Well, thank you. I mean, I actually have five, but I think given the conversation that we're having and talking about both the inner work of entrepreneurship and leadership, but also how we connect with others authentically, I think the two of my books that are most relevant, one is Nothing Changes until youl do, which is all about self compassion and mindset and kind of how do we do that inner work as best as we can so that we can show up and have the kind of influence on others and create the kind of both change and outcomes we want. But I also wrote a book called Bring youg Whole Self to Work, which is really about authenticity and showing up with authenticity in how we appreciate people, but also how we connect and communicate. And again, so much of what we're talking about with feedback, both the receiving of feedback, but the giving of feedback. It's actually, I think of a mentor of mine, years ago, said something great to me that I never forgot. He said, mike, you know, it stands between you and the kind of relationships you really want. To have with people. I said, what's that? He said, it's usually a 10 minute sweaty palm conversation you're too afraid to have. He said, if you get good at those 10 minute sweaty palm conversations, you'll have fantastic relationships. You'll build trust, you'll resolve conflict, you'll give feedback, you'll get feedback, you'll talk about the elephant in the room. He said, but if you do, like most of us, and you avoid those conversations because they can be uncomfortable, they can get a little messy, they can be a little scary, he said, then you end up being a victim of who you work with, who you live with. But if you have those conversations sooner rather than later, you'll have fantastic relationships. And to me, given what we're talking about here, Sarah, like so much of the process of being a successful entrepreneur, yes, it's about setting up your business and the systems inside the business and being as effective and efficient as possible. But it's constantly doing inner work so that we're not staying stagnant and staying the same. We're continuing to evolve. And that's what's going to have our businesses evolve and our relationships within the team.
- [24:10]
A
Absolutely. I mean, our businesses need us to be the leader. That will help them be the biggest and the best, the most successful outcome that we're trying to build. But it does, it does require us to step up to the plate. And this skill set that we're talking about is one of the core competencies that's going to help us, you know, grow our businesses and grow ourselves. So I am grateful for the, for the advice you've shared today and the really, really kind and meaningful conversation that we've had. Our listeners can hear more@mike-robbins.com right. That's where they can find all your books and some more information about you. Thank you so much for being with us today. This is a really great conversation.
- [24:53]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [24:55]
A
Thanks for listening to the Conscious entrepreneur. Every episode here is meant to sharpen how you lead and how you live. If something landed for you, please share it. Founder to founder, I'll meet you here next week.