Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?

RIE Solutions
May 11
7 min read

*How Unhelpful Thinking Styles Sabotage Leadership and What to Do About It*

Is the secret to being a great leader all in our mind?

As a leader, the biggest obstacle to progress is not always capacity, the team, or the strategy. More often, it’s the quiet, persistent thoughts running through your own head. When left unchecked, these thoughts can distort reality, drain confidence, and quietly derail decision‑making.

Psychologists refer to these patterns as unhelpful thinking styles, also known as cognitive distortions. They can feel useful in the moment, helping us make sense of pressure or uncertainty. Over time, however, they tend to lead us astray. First identified by Aaron Beck and later expanded by David Burns, these thinking patterns have been consistently linked to stress, anxiety, burnout, and reduced problem solving ability.

For leaders, unhelpful thinking styles often act as a “hidden saboteur”. They shape how we interpret challenges, respond to others, and judge ourselves, often without us even realising it.

What do these unhelpful thinking styles look like?

Let’s break down the most common unhelpful thinking styles, how they show up and how you can manage them.

1. All‑or‑Nothing Thinking

Seeing things in extremes. Success or failure. Good or bad. Right or wrong, with nothing in between.

How it affects leaders:A leader may assume an initiative is a total failure because one metric underperformed, or label themselves as incompetent after a single misstep. This often fuels perfectionism and reactive decision making.

How to mitigate:Notice all or nothing language and deliberately replace it with a more realistic, nuanced view. Ask yourself what sits in the middle.

2. Catastrophising

Expecting the worst case scenario to unfold, often with little or no evidence.

How it affects leadersEveryday challenges can start to feel like disasters. This can make leaders overly risk averse, controlling, or prone to stress driven decisions.

How to mitigateSlow the thinking down. Ask fact based questions such as, “What evidence do I actually have for this?” Reframe the situation and use stress reduction techniques to dial down the perceived threat.

3. Mental Filtering

Focusing on one negative detail while ignoring positive outcomes. Can lead to tunnel vision.

How it affects leadersEven high performing leaders may fixate on a single piece of criticism while dismissing wider success. Over time, this erodes confidence and skews judgement.

How to mitigateStep back and look at the whole picture. List all available evidence, positive, neutral, and negative, before drawing conclusions.

4. Jumping to Conclusions

This includes mind reading and fortune telling. Assuming you know what others think or predicting negative outcomes without evidence.

How it affects leadersLeaders may assume team members are disengaged or expect projects to fail, which can create self fulfilling prophecies.

How to mitigateTest assumptions rather than treating them as facts. Increase transparency and invite conversation to reduce distortion driven conflict.

5. Discounting the Positive

Dismissing success as luck, timing, or someone else’s generosity.

How it affects leadersThis prevents leaders from internalising success, building self belief, or modelling confidence for their teams.

How to mitigatePause to acknowledge achievements. Celebrate wins and deliberately recognise your own contribution and capability.

6. Overgeneralisation

Drawing broad conclusions from a single event, such as “This didn’t work once, so it will never work.”

How it affects leadersThis can stifle learning, innovation, and resilience, all of which are essential leadership capabilities.

How to mitigateUse structured reflection to examine context. Separate one off events from true patterns before forming conclusions.

Other common unhelpful thinking styles include:

Personalisation “It’s my fault.” Taking responsibility for external events that are not entirely within your control.
Shoulding and musting: “I should get things right” “She should know better than that”. These statements often create unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others.
Labelling: “I’m such an idiot!” “They are so inconsiderate”. This is overgeneralising people rather than behaviours.
Emotional reasoning: “I feel overwhelmed, so this must be a terrible place to work.” Feelings are treated as facts.
Magnification and minimisation: “They don’t really mean it, they were just being polite” You enlarge (magnify) the positive attributes of other people and shrink (minimise) your own attributes.

Do you recognise any of these unhelpful thinking styles in your own leadership? Are there others that show up for you that are not listed here?

The downside of unhelpful thinking styles for leaders: the bad news

Unhelpful thinking styles are not just an internal irritation. Left unchecked, they can have a real and measurable impact on leaders and the organisations they serve.

1. Cognitive distortions are directly linked to leadership burnout

Research from the Centre for Creative Leadership shows that leaders with higher levels of cognitive distortions experience greater burnout, lower job satisfaction, and reduced role clarity. Over time, this can leave capable leaders feeling exhausted, stuck, or disconnected from their purpose.

2. Thought patterns shape emotional and behavioural responses

Work by Williams and Garland highlights how distorted thinking patterns influence emotional and even physical responses. These reactions can create a self reinforcing loop, where unhelpful thoughts drive stress responses, which then affect behaviour, performance, and relationships at work.

3. Distorted thinking impairs problem solving and decision making

Studies consistently show that negative or biased thinking reduces problem solving ability, creativity, and decision making speed. For leaders operating in complex environments, this can quietly undermine effectiveness just when clarity and perspective are most needed.

The good news? These thinking styles are learned patterns, which means they can also be unlearned. And that is where real change begins.

How the Sphere of Influence Model Helps Leaders Think Better

Even with a strong awareness of unhelpful thinking styles, leaders can still feel overwhelmed by things outside their control. The economy. Regulation. Competitors. Politics. The wider environment.

This is where the Sphere of Influence Model becomes particularly helpful. It gives leaders a simple way to redirect attention, energy, and thinking back to where it can make the greatest difference.

The model divides the world into three distinct areas.

1. Circle of Concern: What I can’t control or influence

Important, but outside your direct control. This includes market forces, regulatory change, other people’s decisions, and unexpected external events.

Spending too much time here often increases anxiety and rumination without improving outcomes. While awareness is important, staying focused in this circle drains energy and fuels unhelpful thinking. Shifting attention away from it can significantly reduce stress and mental overload.

Operations insight Awareness matters but dwelling here drains capacity. Effective leaders notice these factors, then deliberately refocus on what they can influence or control.

2. Circle of Influence: What I can influence

This is where you can shape outcomes, even if you do not own them outright. It includes the people you lead, the culture you shape, the relationships you build, and the processes you guide.

Leaders grow their influence through trust, consistency, and investment in people. Influence is built through credibility, transparency, and strong interpersonal skills rather than control.

This is where thoughtful leadership starts to create meaningful, lasting impact.

Operations insight Strong influence comes from clarity, good systems, and relationships. This is where operations leaders quietly transform firms.

3. Circle of Control – What I can control

This is where your energy has the greatest impact. It includes your actions, decisions, communication, boundaries, and behaviours.

Focusing here increases both wellbeing and effectiveness. It grounds leadership in agency rather than anxiety.

Operations insight This is where leadership credibility is built. Consistency creates trust, calm, and momentum across the firm.

Using this model can help:

Decrease unproductive worry
Support evidence‑based decision‑making
Reduce rumination
Enhance emotional regulation
Encourage proactive leadership rather than reactive fear-driven responses

Practical Ways To Interrupt Unhelpful Thinking

The first thing to remember is this: unhelpful thinking styles are human. They are not a personal failing, and they are not a sign that you are a bad leader. They are learned patterns, which means they can be noticed, softened, and changed.

Here are some practical ways to interrupt unhelpful thinking and create more space for clarity and choice.

1. Name the emotion

When you label what you are feeling, such as “I’m anxious” or “I’m frustrated”, the intensity often reduces. This simple act helps shift you out of emotional overwhelm and into a more reflective, rational mindset.

It improves both emotional regulation and decision making.

2. Slow, controlled breathing

A few rounds of slow, deliberate breathing sends a signal to your nervous system that it is safe to calm down.

Even 60 seconds of steady inhaling and exhaling can lower stress levels and interrupt chaotic or spiralling thoughts.

3. Fact check your thoughts

Gently question what your mind is telling you. Ask:

“What evidence do I have for this thought?”
“What else could be true?”

This directly challenges catastrophising and other distorted thinking patterns.

4. Shift attention to what you can control

Refocus your energy on what sits within your sphere of control, rather than external factors that trigger stress or frustration.

This builds emotional stability, restores a sense of agency, and reduces rumination.

5. Reframe the situation

Instead of thinking, “This is a disaster”, try reframing it as, “This is a challenge I can work through.”

Reframing doesn’t deny difficulty. It simply reduces the emotional charge and opens the door to more constructive action.

6. Take a short pause

Even a 30 second pause before responding gives your brain time to engage more fully. It lowers the likelihood of reactive decisions and creates space for wiser responses.

7. Use grounding techniques

Try the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding exercise:

5 things you can see
4 things you can feel
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste

This helps anchor you in the present moment and interrupt thinking spirals.

8. Check your assumptions

If you catch yourself mind reading, for example, “They must think I’m incompetent”, pause and test the assumption rather than reacting to it.

This reduces unnecessary worry.

A More Compassionate Way Forward

Great leadership is not about eliminating difficult thoughts. It is about noticing them with curiosity, responding with compassion, and choosing where to place your attention and energy.

When you learn to work with your thinking rather than against it, you create space for clearer decisions, calmer leadership, and more sustainable impact.

You are not your thoughts. You are the leader who notices them, shapes them, and chooses what comes next.

And that is where real leadership strength begins.