How leaders and managers can befriend their inner critic and get ahead at work

We’ve all got an inner critic in our heads. You know its voice: it’s the one who berates you when you make a mistake, who peers over your shoulder and critiques your work unfavorably, or who tells you you’re useless and worthless when things don’t go to plan.

Inner critics can thrive in work environments—especially fast-paced environments where there is little room for error, or where you’re responsible for people on your team.

The question is how you interact and deal with your inner critic. Obeying them without question is neither sustainable nor healthy. But silencing or completely ignoring them isn’t recommended either, as this can easily lead to reckless or even narcissistic behavior.

Fortunately, there is a third way: befriending your inner critic. This is where you treat that inner voice as a loud and raw advisor. Listen to it, learn from it, see it as one more data point—but, crucially, don’t hand it the wheel.

Mastering this relationship isn’t always easy, but the results are definitely worth the process. It creates clarity under pressure. It enables you to make better decisions, recover faster from setbacks and take smarter risks—all of which will help you become a better manager or leader.

There are many ways to get to know and befriend your inner critic so you can use it to help you get ahead at work. Below are five that are powerful and effective.

Use failure to retrain it

Failure is the inner critic’s favorite scenario. ‘I told you so’ can easily echo for days in your head when things don’t turn out as planned.

The real test is how to handle the aftermath of these painful events. You can let it make you more risk-averse, or you can extract the insight and move forward. The latter builds resilience and better judgment, which you can then use when similar work situations crop up in the future.

So instead of giving in to your inner critic’s negative statements, use any setbacks to retrain it. Used well, it becomes an engine for growth.

Explore new ground

Your inner critic runs on scripts—assumptions about identity, success and risk. But when routines and professional identities fall away, the critic loses its footing and, crucially, its power.

For example, backpacking, traveling, and working across different cultures across the world disrupted mine. But any new environment can do the same: seeing the world in a different way forces you to question assumptions you’ve never previously examined, enables you to unlearn and relearn ways of being, thinking and doing, and, crucially, embrace the unknown.

When your preconditioned views of the world are challenged, this both expands your self-concept and reduces self-judgement, meaning that the script that your inner critic is reading from is rewritten.

Discover your inner artist

Artists are a great example of showing us how to build a successful and productive relationship with our inner critic. Their inner critic often tells them that their creative output isn’t worthy of sharing with the world—for example, I know mine did when I was writing my book—but instead of letting it stop them from writing, painting or producing, artists use their inner critic as a specialised editor to make their work better and sharper.

The goal in this technique, no matter where you currently are in your career, is not to eliminate self-criticism, but to pick the right time to listen to it, so it can take your work to the next level.

Uncover the roots of your inner critic

An important question to ask yourself is what is fuelling your inner critic. Are there patterns of behaviour, thought processes and personality traits that are feeding its voice?

Using self-awareness tools such as the Enneagram can help uncover unconscious patterns, which increases self-awareness. Increased self-awareness creates space, and space creates choice. All of these serve you well in a work situation.

Realize you are not your inner critic        

The deepest shift in my relationship with my inner critic came through meditation. If this is something you’d like to explore, it involves two essential steps.

The first step is simple observation in stillness. Thoughts and emotions arise and pass away, like clouds in the sky. The critic loses its power the moment you see it as a fleeting pattern instead of a hard truth.

The second step, which then happens outside meditation, is to catch the arrival of your inner critic and see it for what it is: a voice that, though often loud, is also temporary. That recognition creates a pause, and in that moment, wisdom and insight are born.

Using these five practices, you will see that there is always space for a pause between the inner critic’s voice and your response. In these small but decisive instances, you must choose whether to act from fear or from courage. And, while it can be a friendly guide, your inner critic no longer has the power to decide. You do.

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