Work at the office is full of triggers for your inner critic. Just a few examples: Attending a meeting without any preparation, forgetting an employee’s birthday, losing your temper, forgetting to include a key person in a communication, skipping lunch, hiring the wrong person…

Your inner critic can flourish at work. And to make it worse, your inner critic doesn’t need much. Give it just a little thing and it will bite its teeth in it.

You know that your inner critic has a prey when in your thinking “Should Haves” show up:

I should have prepared better.

I should have listened more.

I should have invited that employee.

I should ….

Of course not each “Should Have” is wrong. We have “Should Haves” as leaders like showing up as a leader day in and day out or giving feedback as soon as possible. But a lot of your “should haves” are a red flag. It’s your inner critic speaking up.

How can you tame that inner critic?

1 – Should Haves Are Great Teachers

How do you handle a “Should Have”? Do you use it as a stick to beat yourself up? There is no win for anyone with that approach. You get only uncertain and the damage done won’t be repaired by it. But what if you take a step back and obtain a lesson from it? Then there is a huge win.

2 – Be realistic

What expectations do you have of yourself as a leader? Are they realistic? Or do they fit in the category of Wonder Woman or Superman? Maybe you have an ideal leadership role model in your head that prevents you from being the best leader you can be right now.

3 – Treat yourself with respect

As leaders we treat others with respect. Why won’t we include ourselves in that? Respect yourself. Ask yourself when your inner critic is at its loudest, would you make those kind of comments to one of your co-workers? If your answer is, “No way!”, then please stop making those comments to yourself.

4 – It’s part of life

Don’t take your inner critic too seriously. The inner critic has the great capacity to blow things out of proportion, especially around 3:00 or 4:00 am. Making mistakes is part of life and it’s seldom such a big deal as our inner critic tells us.

Make your inner critic like the friend as indicated in this quote of Elbert Hubbard:

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”