Learning 2 Lead Leading 2 Learn

This time of year is tough for many leaders. We are juggling everyday leadership responsibilities, fiscal and year-end accountabilities, and navigating the ever-evolving expectations and commitments associated with the holiday season.

My Recent Mind Trap

Last week, I found myself in a mind trap of failure, not-enoughness, and inadequacy. What does this look like? I get stuck in a spiral of self-criticism and comparison, perceiving my leadership, actions, and behaviors as complete and utter failures.

Understanding Cognitive Distortions

Psychologists refer to these thoughts as cognitive distortions or errors in thinking that do not reflect reality (Madeson, 2025; Yurica & DiTomasso, 2005). Common examples include:

• Catastrophizing: “I am a failure as a leader. I’ll never be perceived as a strong leader or move forward on my leadership journey.”
• Jumping to conclusions: “This project is (or I am) destined to fail.”
• Comparison: “[Insert name] is such a great leader—they never do things or make mistakes like that.”
• Dichotomous thinking: “I made a mistake, so this project is definitely destined to fail.”
• Externalizing self-worth: “My success as a leader is dependent on what others think of me.”
• Overgeneralization: “Nothing ever works out. I’ll never get another opportunity like this.”
• Labeling: “I can’t believe I just said/did that; how could I be so stupid?”
• Personalizing: “It’s all my fault that the situation did not go as planned.”
• Minimizing: “Anyone would have made the same decision or could have accomplished that.”
• Mind reading others’ interpretations: “OMG, [insert name] must think I am an idiot.”
• Perfectionism: “If this document is not flawless, I have failed.”
• “Should” statements: “I should have been able to prevent this from ever happening.”

Why Leaders Fall Into These Patterns

As an academic leader and leadership coach, I find that getting stuck in these patterns is one of the most common and self-defeating belief systems that limit our growth and impact. That being said, these thoughts are often a natural response to being human. They are our mind’s way of attempting to keep us safe and protect us from immediate risk and harm.

Our brains are wired to challenge, question, and judge our actions and behaviours. However, an overreaction is unhelpful to our leadership learning, growth, and success in non-threatening situations where an imminent risk or harm is not present (Madeson, 2025). Many leaders (me included) also hold the assumption that being “hard” on ourselves improves our performance.

The Research Says Otherwise

Research confirms the belief that being hard on ourselves improves performance could not be farther from the truth.

The more we lean into self-kindness and reduce self-judgment and over-identification with our negative belief systems and thoughts, the more our resilience, motivation, impact, performance, relationships, and well-being improve (Neff, 2023). To so many of us, this is a tough and counter-intuitive reality to swallow. The more we learn to replace self-criticism with kindness, the better leaders we become. Self-compassion helps us reframe self-criticism through kindness, mindfulness, encouragement, common humanity, and learning (Neff, 2023).

A Call Toward Self-Compassion

When you find yourself in a mind trap, pause and reflect on the following questions (adapted from Neff, 2025):

• What am I saying to myself in the current moment?
• What would I say to a close colleague or friend experiencing the same thing?
• What do I notice about the differences in these responses?
• What would it feel like to interact with myself with the same care, respect, and kindness as I would a close colleague or friend?
• What would be the impact? What would shift in and for me?
• How might this impact my beliefs, confidence, sense of self, or performance?
• What might I learn from this experience?

Using These Questions as a Coach

If you are a leader or coach, you could also use these questions to frame learning conversations with a colleague or client (simply replace the “I” with “you” for the above questions).

Conclusion: Making 2026 the Year of Self-Compassion

Self-compassion takes practice, AND the research is clear: Self-criticism, blaming, and shaming ourselves or others simply does not lead to a happy, confident, collaborative, healthy, or productive workplace.

For me, naming my tendencies toward and moments of self-criticism and practicing self-compassion will become a key leadership goal as I move into next year. Imagine the collective impact we could have if we worked together as leaders to make 2026 the year of embracing self-compassion as a leadership superpower! What one next step will you take to embrace and share the impact of turning toward self-compassion?

References

Madeson, M. (2025, February 25). Cognitive distortions: 15 examples & worksheets (PDF). PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/cognitive-distortions/

Neff, K. (2025) How would you treat a friend? Accessed at: https://self-compassion.org/exercises/exercise-1-how-would-you-treat-a-friend/

Neff, K. D. (2023). Self-compassion: Theory, method, research, and intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 74(1), 193–218.

Yurica, C. L., & DiTomasso, R. A. (2005). Cognitive distortions. In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (pp. 117–122). Springer.