Have a Word With Yourself

By Adam Finch | That Training Guy

There's a phrase you'll hear quite a lot where I'm from.

"Have a word with yourself."

It's one of those wonderfully direct Wigan expressions that can mean several things, depending on how it's delivered.

Sometimes it's a bit of friendly advice.

Sometimes it's a polite way of suggesting someone's being a dick.

And sometimes it's not particularly polite at all.

But that's the beauty of it. Three or four words that can mean anything from "I think you need to reconsider that" to "What the fuck are you doing?"

But I've always thought there's something quite brilliant about it.

Because underneath the humour and the occasional insult is a genuinely useful piece of advice.

Sometimes the person you most need to challenge is yourself.

And I think that's something we could all do with remembering.

Especially those of us who spend our time leading, coaching or developing other people.

We're brilliant at spotting everyone else's problems

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to recognise what someone else needs to do differently?

Your colleague needs to communicate better.

Your manager needs to be clearer.

Your team needs to take more ownership.

Your partner needs to stop doing that really annoying thing they've been doing for the last ten years.

It's obvious, isn't it?

If everyone else just sorted their shit out, life would be so much easier.

Except there's a slight problem with that approach.

You're in the equation too.

And as inconvenient as that might be, sometimes you're part of the problem.

And while we're often very good at explaining how other people's behaviour affects us, we're not always quite so enthusiastic about examining how our own behaviour affects them.

Take the manager who complains that nobody in their team takes responsibility.

They've got an answer for everything.

They don't show enough initiative.

They always need checking up on.

They never make decisions for themselves.

Fair enough.

But then you spend ten minutes watching that manager work.

They question every decision.

They correct every little detail.

They jump in and take over whenever something isn't going exactly how they'd do it.

And then they wonder why nobody takes ownership.

At some point, you've got to have a word with yourself.

The stories we tell ourselves

I think one of the biggest barriers to self-awareness is how good we are at explaining away our own behaviour.

And I don't mean deliberately lying.

I mean the little stories we tell ourselves that make our actions seem perfectly reasonable.

"I'm too busy."

"I've got too much on."

"They should know what I expect."

"That's just how I am."

"I haven't had the opportunity."

Now, sometimes those things are absolutely true.

Workloads can be ridiculous.

Expectations can be unreasonable.

And some people genuinely find themselves in situations where they don't have the support or opportunities they need.

But sometimes?

Sometimes we're just telling ourselves a story that makes us feel a bit better.

And sometimes, if we're being really honest, we're talking absolute bollocks.

Not deliberately. Not maliciously.

We've just become so good at justifying our own behaviour that we've started believing our own excuses.

"I'm too busy to give my team regular feedback."

Really?

Or have you prioritised everything else because giving feedback feels uncomfortable?

"I haven't got time to develop myself."

Really?

Or have you convinced yourself that being busy is the same thing as being productive?

"My team never comes up with any ideas."

Really?

Or have you spent the last six months explaining why every idea they suggest won't work?

See what I mean?

The explanation we give ourselves isn't always the same as the truth.

And unless we're prepared to challenge that explanation occasionally, we can spend years repeating the same behaviours while wondering why nothing changes.

Being busy doesn't automatically mean you're doing the right things

This is one I come back to a lot.

We seem to have developed this strange relationship with being busy.

Ask someone how they are and there's a good chance you'll hear:

"Busy."

Not good.

Not great.

Not enjoying things.

Just busy.

Almost like it's a badge of honour.

Congratulations. You're absolutely knackered, your diary's full, you've answered 87 emails and you've achieved precisely bugger all of any real importance.

But at least you're busy, eh?

And I get it.

Life is busy.

Work is demanding.

There are always competing priorities.

But I think we sometimes hide behind busyness because it gives us a convenient explanation for why we're not doing the things we know we should be doing.

We haven't had that conversation.

We haven't made that decision.

We haven't invested time in developing ourselves.

We haven't stopped to think about whether the way we're working is actually effective.

Because we're busy.

And being busy sounds better than admitting we might have got our priorities wrong.

Now, I'm not suggesting everyone has unlimited control over their workload. Far from it.

Sometimes the answer genuinely is that something needs to change around you.

But even then, there's a question worth asking.

What am I doing about it?

Am I challenging unrealistic expectations?

Am I asking for support?

Am I making decisions about what matters most?

Or am I just carrying on doing exactly the same thing and hoping something magically improves?

Because if that's the plan, you might need to have a word with yourself.

Self-awareness isn't the same as self-criticism

Now, there's an important distinction here.

Having a word with yourself doesn't mean spending your life telling yourself you're rubbish.

That's not helpful.

And it's certainly not what I'm advocating.

I work with plenty of people who are already far too critical of themselves.

They focus on everything they've got wrong.

They downplay what they're good at.

They set ridiculously high expectations and then give themselves a hard time when they don't meet them.

Those people probably need a slightly different conversation with themselves.

One that involves a bit more perspective and a bit less beating themselves up.

Because self-awareness isn't about finding reasons to criticise yourself. It's about understanding yourself well enough to make better choices.

That means recognising what you're good at.

Understanding what gets in your way.

Being honest about your behaviour.

And accepting that your intentions and your impact aren't always the same thing.

You might genuinely intend to be supportive.

But if you're constantly stepping in and solving everyone's problems, you might actually be making them more dependent on you.

You might intend to be thorough.

But if you're questioning every detail, you might be slowing everyone down.

You might intend to protect your team.

But if you're avoiding honest conversations, you might be denying them the opportunity to improve.

Good intentions don't automatically guarantee good outcomes.

Sometimes we need to challenge ourselves on the difference.

Accountability starts a lot closer to home than we think

I spoke recently about clarity being the foundation of accountability.

And I stand by that.

You can't reasonably expect people to take responsibility for something if you've never made it clear what they're responsible for.

But there's another side to accountability that I think deserves just as much attention.

The willingness to look at your own contribution before pointing at everyone else's.

It's very easy to sit there thinking everyone around you needs to get their shit together.

But before you start handing out advice, it might be worth checking whether you've got your own house in order.

It's very easy to say:

"My team isn't performing."

It's harder to ask:

"Have I given them what they need to perform?"

It's easy to say:

"Nobody listens to me."

It's harder to ask:

"Am I communicating in a way that people can actually hear?"

It's easy to say:

"Things never change around here."

It's harder to ask:

"What am I doing differently to help change them?"

And here's the thing.

You might ask those questions and discover that you genuinely have done everything you reasonably can.

Sometimes the problem isn't you.

Sometimes the expectations are unrealistic, the environment is wrong or the decisions sit outside your control.

But asking the question matters.

Because it stops you automatically assuming that responsibility always belongs somewhere else.

And that's where personal accountability begins.

Three questions worth asking yourself

I don't think we need to overcomplicate this.

We love a leadership model, don't we?

Give us a problem and we'll find a framework, a four-box grid or an acronym to explain it.

But sometimes a few decent questions will do the job.

The next time something isn't going the way you'd like, try asking yourself three things.

1. What's actually happening?

Not what you think someone's intentions are.

Not what you've convinced yourself is happening.

What are the facts?

Separate what you know from the story you've built around it.

2. What's my part in it?

This is probably the most uncomfortable question.

What have you done, or not done, that might have contributed?

What assumptions have you made?

What have you avoided?

What could you have handled differently?

And if you genuinely haven't contributed to the problem, what influence do you have over what happens next?

3. What am I going to do about it?

Because this is where the conversation becomes useful.

You can spend hours understanding why something has happened.

But at some point, you've got to decide what you're going to do next.

Have the conversation.

Ask for help.

Change your approach.

Set a boundary.

Make a decision.

Or accept that something isn't within your control and stop wasting energy pretending it is.

The important bit is moving from explaining the situation to doing something constructive about it.

Sometimes you need someone else to tell you

Of course, there's a flaw in all of this.

We're not always particularly good at spotting our own blind spots.

That's why feedback matters.

It's why coaching matters.

And it's why having people around you who are prepared to challenge you matters.

Not people who agree with everything you say.

Not people who tell you you're brilliant regardless of what you do.

People who care enough to tell you when something isn't quite right.

Someone who can say:

"Have you thought about how that might have come across?"

Or:

"Do you think you might be contributing to that?"

Or even:

"Mate, have a word with yourself."

Sometimes that's exactly what we need.

And the real test isn't whether we enjoy hearing it.

It's what we do with it afterwards.

Because receiving feedback and doing absolutely nothing with it isn't development.

It's just listening.

The conversation before the conversation

Here's where I land on all of this.

We spend a lot of time talking about the conversations leaders need to have with other people.

Giving feedback.

Setting expectations.

Challenging performance.

Holding people accountable.

And all of those things matter.

But I think there's another conversation that needs to happen first.

The one where you ask yourself whether you're showing up in the way you expect other people to.

Whether you're taking the responsibility you want them to take.

Whether you're being as honest with yourself as you expect them to be with you.

Because leadership isn't just about recognising what other people need to do differently.

It's about being prepared to recognise what you might need to do differently too.

And that doesn't mean everything is your fault.

It doesn't mean you can control every situation.

And it certainly doesn't mean you should take responsibility for everyone else's behaviour.

It simply means recognising that, whatever the situation, you still have choices about how you respond.

You can't control everything that happens around you. But you can take responsibility for what you do next.

So, the next time you find yourself frustrated with your team, your manager, your colleagues or the world in general, try something.

Before deciding what everyone else needs to change, ask yourself one question.

Is there anything I need to have a word with myself about first?

You might not always like the answer.

You might even discover that the person who's been getting on your nerves, making things harder or generally being a bit of a dick...

Is you.

And that's alright.

Because recognising it means you've got an opportunity to do something differently.

Sometimes the most useful bit of leadership development isn't another course, another model or another bloody PowerPoint.

It's having a word with yourself.

Confident leaders. Stronger teams. Real results.