I wrote Make Them Think to help people show up better in the conversations they have with others. What I didn’t anticipate was how many readers would tell me it changed the conversation they’re having with themselves.
In her Amazon review, a reader named Erin wrote:
“I picked up Make Them Think to become a better manager and coach, and it unexpectedly transformed how I coach myself. By shifting me from rehashing what went wrong to exploring what’s ideal and when I’ve succeeded before, it moved me out of self-doubt and into clarity, creativity, and confidence. It also lifted the quiet pressure I carried to have all the right answers, replacing it with the power of asking better questions of myself and others to unlock insight that actually leads to action.”
Erin named something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Most of us are coaching ourselves the same way we were taught to coach other people. And for most of us, that means we’re doing it wrong.
The coach in your head
Think about what your inner dialogue sounds like when something goes wrong. A presentation that didn’t land. A conversation that went sideways. A goal you’ve been missing for the third week in a row.
If you’re like most people, the first questions your brain reaches for sound something like this: What happened? Why did I do that? What is wrong with me?
That’s problem-focused coaching. And as we’ve talked about in this newsletter before, you cannot solve a problem when you’re focused on the problem. Here’s why: when you direct attention toward what went wrong and why, your mind spirals deeper into the details and drama of the problem: every obstacle in your way, every person who made it harder, and all the reasons you couldn’t succeed. All the while, your brain’s threat response is activating. Your defensive mode goes up, and your capacity for creative thinking and real insight goes down.
And your brain doesn’t care whether the person asking those questions is someone else, or yourself. Self-criticism activates the same threat response as external criticism. So when you spend twenty minutes mentally replaying everything that went wrong, you’re not helping yourself learn from the experience. You’re keeping yourself in exactly the state where learning is least available.
What to ask instead
The shift is the same one we’ve been practicing in coaching conversations. Instead of asking questions focused on the problem, try asking questions focused on the solution.
Instead of “What went wrong?”, try “What do I want instead?”
Instead of “Why can’t I figure this out?”, try “When was a time I handled something like this well? What was different then that I can apply here?”
Instead of “What’s wrong with me?”, try “What would I tell someone I care about if they were going through this?”
Notice what happens when you actually sit with those questions. Something shifts. The thinking opens up. That’s not just a feeling. That’s your nervous system moving out of threat mode and into discovery mode, where your best thinking actually lives.
One more move
The other thing worth trying is the same move that works in any coaching conversation: “What else?”
Your first answer to a self-directed question is almost always the automatic one. The thing you’ve already told yourself a hundred times. “I need to be more disciplined.” “I just need to work harder.” “I’ve always been bad at this.”
When you catch yourself landing on a familiar answer, ask: what else?
Not because the first answer is wrong. But because your brain hadn’t finished thinking yet. The real insight is usually one or two layers beneath the surface response, and it almost never sounds like the story you’ve been carrying around.
Try this week
The next time you catch your inner critic asking what went wrong, pause and redirect.
Ask yourself: what do I want instead? When have I done this well before, and what was different that time? What would I tell someone I care about if they were in this situation?
Then ask: what else?
See what comes up when you give yourself the kind of conversation you’d give someone else.
Jenn
Make Them Think: How to Coach for Ownership, Insight and Action is available now.
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