The Saboteurs - The inner critics running your team
Article 2 — The Co-Active for Sport Leaders series
When I think back to my younger years, I don't remember the saboteur much.
I was moving too fast to notice it. A hundred miles an hour, chasing everything, building, competing, doing. If there was a critical voice running in the background, I wasn't aware of it. Looking back now, I can see traces of it in some of my choices, some of my reactions, some of the things I avoided without quite knowing why. But it wasn't live. It wasn't conscious. It was just the noise underneath a very full life.
Something shifted as I got older.
As I started to develop a deeper sense of who I actually was, as I moved further from the instinctive survival mode of early life, the saboteur got louder. I think that's because self-awareness and self-criticism arrive together. You can't start doing the inner work without also waking up the voice that has opinions about everything you find there.
Then I went through Co-Active training.
The Co-Active certification is not a passive learning experience. It is hundreds of hours of practice. Coaches coaching coaches. Which means you are not just learning the concepts. You are living them. You sit in the chair. You do the work. You can't hide behind the theory because someone is always sitting across from you, and they are paying attention.
At the end of the program, there is a moment where they ask you what you will bring to the world as a coach.
I said: the love of all saboteurs.
Not acceptance. Love.
I wasn't being poetic. I meant it. Because acceptance and love are not the same thing. You can accept a difficult neighbor and still dread running into them. Love is something else entirely. Love says this is part of me, and it has something to teach me.
Somewhere in those hundreds of sessions, something changed in how I related to that inner voice. It stopped being an enemy to defeat and started being a messenger with something important to say. It comes in, it tells me something, and then it leaves. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes it sticks around longer than I would like. But that shift, from fighting the saboteur to loving it, is one of the most important things Co-Active gave me.
It is a practice I return to again and again. Some days I am better at it than others. But that is the work. And it is what I want to explore with you today.
A quick note on language
I am a Co-Active trained life and executive coach. That is my methodology, my lens, my training. The people I am writing for are sport leaders, head coaches, assistant coaches, the people standing on the sideline and in the locker room. Those are two different worlds. But what I have discovered, and what this series is really about, is that they have something profound to offer each other.
So when you see "coaching" here, I will do my best to make clear which one I mean. Co-Active coaching is the framework. Sport coaching/leadership is the context. And the space where they meet is where this series lives.
So what is the saboteur?
The saboteur is an internal voice that works against your own best interests. It operates in the background, often undetected, shaping how you interpret events, how you speak to yourself, and what actions you take or avoid. It is not a character flaw. It is not weakness. It is a survival mechanism that outlived its usefulness.
Here is where it gets interesting.
The saboteur was not born yesterday. Research across psychology, attachment theory, and neuroscience tells us the same story: this voice was formed early. As a child, you learned that certain behaviors kept you safe, accepted, and loved. You internalized the voices around you, your parents, your teachers, your coaches, your environment, and turned them inward. The saboteur became the guardian of those learned strategies.
The problem is it never got the memo that you grew up.
So it is still running the same patterns. Still sounding the same alarms. Still protecting you from threats that no longer exist, or never really existed the way it thought they did. And because it was built so early, it doesn't feel like a learned voice. It feels like the truth.
That is what makes it so persistent.
The Judge: the master saboteur
The Judge is universal. Everyone has it. It is the voice that replays your mistakes, warns you obsessively about what could go wrong, wakes you up at three in the morning with a list of everything you should have done differently, and finds fault in people, in circumstances, and most relentlessly, in you.
It doesn't feel like criticism. It feels like clarity.
That is the Judge's greatest trick. It doesn't announce itself as self-sabotage. It sounds like high standards. It sounds like accountability. It sounds like the voice of someone who simply cares deeply and refuses to settle.
And the Judge doesn't only point inward. It points in three directions at once. At yourself. At others. At circumstances. There is always something that isn't quite right, someone who isn't quite measuring up, some situation that shouldn't be this way. The Judge is never off duty.
For sport leaders, this voice has a particularly familiar shape. The replay after a loss that runs all night. The nagging feeling that your preparation wasn't enough. The quick frustration when a player keeps making the same mistake. The sense that things should be further along than they are.
That is the Judge. And it has been there a long time.
A real example:
Let me give you a concrete example of how this works, because it will make everything that follows clearer.
I have a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Amelie. One of the things she loves most on earth is television. We, my wife and I, are thoughtful about screen time. No tablets. No phones for the kids. But she wants them. And she wants to watch TV.
Here is where the saboteur enters, both hers and potentially ours.
The easy path is to say: "No, you don't want to watch TV." Or to show disapproval when she gravitates toward it. And in that moment, something subtle happens. She doesn't just learn that TV is not allowed. She learns that her desire for it is wrong. That there is something not okay about her for wanting it.
That is how the saboteur gets built. Not through one big traumatic moment. Through a thousand small moments where a child learns that some parts of themselves are not acceptable.
But there is another way.
When we say to her: "I see you love TV. That makes complete sense. There's nothing wrong with you for wanting it. And here's why we're making a different choice as a family right now..." something different happens.
We separate her desire from her worth. We say: your want is real and valid. The boundary we are setting is separate from that. It's not about you being wrong. It's about what works for our family.
One builds a saboteur. One doesn't.
And here is why this matters for you as a sport leader: you are doing this every single day. Every time a young athlete makes a mistake, feels fear, struggles with something, the way you respond either sends a message that something is wrong with them, or honors what they are feeling while still moving forward.
That response is literally authoring their internal voice.
Your brain has something to say about this
Here is where neuroscience enters the conversation, and where one of my favorite books and TED Talks adds something powerful.
Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist who, after suffering a massive stroke at 37, spent eight years rebuilding her brain and came out the other side with a remarkable understanding of how it works. Her book Whole Brain Living, and her now famous TED Talk, offer a framework that I keep coming back to.
She describes four distinct characters that live inside all of us, two in the left hemisphere of the brain and two in the right. The left brain is where our inner narrator lives. Our analyzer. Our timeline keeper. The part that catalogs the past, worries about the future, and builds the story of who we are and whether we are measuring up.
The right brain lives differently. It is present. It is connected. It experiences without judgment. It doesn't do past regret or future anxiety. It simply notices what is here, right now.
So where does the Judge live?
In the left brain. Almost entirely.
The Judge needs time to operate. It needs the past to replay and the future to catastrophize. It needs the narrative that only the left brain can construct. The right brain has no use for that kind of sustained critical loop. It is too busy being present to generate it.
But here is what matters most. The hemispheres fight for dominance. They are always competing for control. One is always being dominant. This is not a flaw. This is how the brain works. But in our culture, in our education, in how we have been trained, the left brain has been systematically rewarded and reinforced. We are taught to be logical, analytical, future-focused, goal-oriented. We chase achievement. We plan. We analyze. We worry about what could go wrong. And so over time, the left brain gets louder and louder. The Judge gets more airtime. The right brain gets quieter.
This is not because the right brain is weaker. It is because we have trained ourselves and our entire culture to favor the left. The right brain is still there. Still fighting. Still available. You just have to choose it.
This means something important: you cannot be fully present and fully in judgment at the same time. They are neurologically incompatible states. The Judge is a time traveler. It lives everywhere except now.
That is not just a coaching insight. That is biology.
The saboteur wears many faces
The Judge may be the master saboteur, but it rarely works alone. Shirzad Chamine, a Stanford lecturer and author of the New York Times bestselling book Positive Intelligence, identified nine accomplice saboteurs that the Judge recruits to do its work. You don't need to know all nine to recognize the ones that are running your locker room.
Here are the ones that show up most often in sport environments, in coaches and in athletes alike:
The Hyper-Achiever measures worth through performance. The next win, the next milestone, the next level. Latest achievement quickly discounted, needing more. For sport leaders this one is particularly sneaky because the environment rewards it. But underneath the drive is a quiet anxiety that nothing is ever quite enough.
The Controller needs things to go a certain way. High anxiety when they don't. In coaching this shows up as the leader who struggles to delegate, who can't quite trust the process when results are slow, who finds it hard to let athletes solve problems on their own.
The Pleaser seeks acceptance through making others happy. For sport leaders this means avoiding the difficult conversation, softening the honest feedback, keeping the peace at the cost of real accountability. The athlete on the other side never gets what they actually need.
The Hyper-Rational processes everything through logic. Emotions are inefficient. Relationships are secondary to results. This one can make a leader extraordinarily effective tactically and quietly devastating relationally.
The Stickler needs things to be right. Perfect, actually. The standard is always just out of reach. For coaches, this can look like exceptional attention to detail. It can also look like a team walking on eggshells.
The Avoider keeps things pleasant and comfortable. Difficult conversations get postponed. Conflict gets smoothed over. Problems that needed addressing six months ago are still waiting.
Now here is what makes this section of the article important for you as a sport leader.
These saboteurs don't just live in you. They live in your athletes too. The hyperachiever who can't celebrate a win before worrying about the next one. The pleaser who won't speak up in a team meeting. The stickler who destroys their own confidence after one bad game.
When you start recognizing your own saboteur patterns, something shifts. You begin to see them in the room around you. And that changes how you coach.
Not because you become a therapist. But because you become someone who can see what is actually happening underneath the surface. And that is exactly what Level 3 listening, which we explored in our last article, makes possible.
Youth sport | Building the foundation
At the youth level, something different is happening than at elite or professional levels. The saboteur is forming. It is being built in real time through the responses of the adults around them.
Remember what we talked about with Amelie and the TV. The way you respond to a young athlete's desire, their fear, their mistake, their emotion, that response is literally authoring their internal voice. You are not just coaching a skill. You are authoring a narrative.
This is where your power as a youth sport leader becomes clear.
The hyperactivity and the kid who struggles to sit still. The athlete who makes a mistake in front of their peers and immediately shuts down. The one who cries when they are frustrated.
In each of these moments, something is being communicated.
When you respond with "you need to sit still" or "don't be so sensitive," without realizing it, the young athlete hears something deeper. Not just that the behavior needs to change. But that there is something not quite right about them for having the desire, the emotion, the struggle in the first place.
When you respond differently, something shifts. You are separating the struggle from the person. You are honoring what is actually happening while still moving forward. And in that space, the saboteur does not take root.
The hyperactivity and the kid who struggles to sit still.
Instead, try: "I see you. Your body has a lot of energy. That's not wrong. And here's how we channel that energy into what we're doing right now."
The athlete who makes a mistake in front of their peers.
Instead, try: "That didn't go the way you wanted. I see it. That stings a little, doesn't it? That's okay. Sit with that for a second. And when you're ready, let's go again."
The one who cries when they are frustrated.
Instead, try: "I see you're frustrated. That's real. And we keep going. You've got this."
Elite and college sport | Fear, comparison, and the saboteur
At the elite and college level, everything changes.
The stakes are real now. The scholarship. The dream. The sense that this might be your best shot. The saboteur knows all of this. And it gets louder.
Fear of failure arrives in a way it doesn't at younger ages. It is not abstract. It is visceral. One bad game, a few bad performances, can shift the narrative about who you are and what you are capable of. And the Judge, that inner critic, weaponizes that fear. It whispers obsessively about what could go wrong. It replays every mistake. It compares you to everyone around you.
Which brings us to comparison.
At this level, comparison is not just social noise. It is structural. You are fighting for playing time. For attention. For your future. So when a teammate succeeds, the saboteur does not just whisper that they are better. It says you do not belong here. You made a mistake coming to this level. You will never be as good as they are.
And here is what makes it different from earlier in their career: at this level, you start to believe it. That voice becomes a belief. And beliefs are sticky. They shape how you show up. How you respond to opportunity. Whether you take risks or play it safe.
The saboteur is not just commenting anymore. It is authoring your identity.
The transparency principle
Here is where coaching gets interesting. In sport culture, I notice two extremes.
On one side, there are coaches who lean into comparison as motivation. "This is how life works. You're ranked. Deal with it. Prove them wrong." The logic is clear. Comparison is real. Face it head on.
On the other side, there are coaches who hide comparison because they care deeply about their players. They want to protect them from hurt, from feeling less-than. So they avoid ranking, avoid public measures, avoid naming the hierarchy.
But there is a third way. And one of the best examples of it comes from Anson Dorrance at UNC. I was fortunate to spend time there and observe how he works.
He does not hide from comparison. He makes it explicit. He creates a ranking system based on objective metrics tracked during practice. Winners and losers in drills. Performance measured across specific dimensions. The rankings are public. Every player sees exactly where they stand and why.
But here is what separates his approach from cold indifference: he names it, and then he addresses it. The transparency itself is not the coaching. The coaching is what happens next.
There is no ambiguity. No hidden judgment. No room for the saboteur to fill the gap with stories.
And here is what is counterintuitive: that transparency, paradoxically, is less destructive than the stories the saboteur makes up in the dark. When comparison is hidden, the saboteur fills the void. "They don't like me. The coach has favorites. I'm not good enough." But when comparison is transparent and data-driven, the saboteur has to confront reality. And reality, measured against a clear standard, is actually more manageable than the stories we tell ourselves.
Process over outcome
This is where Co-Active coaching enters the conversation. One of the core principles is Process. And Process is not always about moving through. Sometimes it means sitting in it.
Sometimes it means feeling it. And that is okay.
The elite athlete facing comparison does not need a coach who pretends it away. They need a coach who says: yes, this is where you stand right now. This is real. And we sit with that for a moment. We feel what needs to be felt. And then, when you are ready, we ask: what do you control? What do you want to do about it?
That question interrupts the saboteur. It shifts from reaction to choice. From being defined by where you rank to choosing what you do with that information.
The saboteur will always show up. But a coach who understands Process knows that comparison, when named and metabolized, becomes information, not shame. It becomes a catalyst, not a sentence.
Professional sport | The saboteur and individualization
At the professional level, everything is different again.
The stakes are absolute. This is not a dream anymore. This is a livelihood. An identity. A legacy. The saboteur has had decades to entrench itself. It is not a whisper now. It is the loudest voice in the room.
But here is what changes at this level: the saboteur is no longer something you observe in your athletes from the outside. It becomes something you must understand deeply enough to individualize your entire approach.
When Steve Kerr became head coach of the Golden State Warriors, he came with years of experience. He spent time with Pete Carroll at the Seattle Seahawks. And Carroll asked him one question: "How are you going to coach your team?"
Kerr thought he meant the offense. Carroll meant everything else.
Later, Kerr would reflect on what Carroll taught him: "To me the X's and O's, they're an important part of coaching but a relatively small part. Eighty percent of it is just relationships and atmosphere. What your daily routine and culture is."
At the professional level, that eighty percent is where the saboteur lives.
Understanding each player's inner critic
The star player does not have the same saboteur as the role player. The veteran does not have the same voice as the rookie. The athlete who has achieved everything does not struggle with the same internal narrative as the one still fighting for respect.
Your job as a professional coach is not to fix the saboteur. It is to understand it. To recognize it in each player. To see how it shows up differently depending on who they are, where they are in their career, and what they believe about themselves.
The hyperachiever on your team will self-sabotage through perfectionism. Always reaching, never arriving. The pleaser will struggle to speak up when they disagree with a play call. The controller will clash with teammates and systems. The avoider will sidestep accountability.
But here is the thing: these patterns are not character flaws. They are survival mechanisms. And once you see them, you can work with them instead of against them.
Individualization as the ultimate tool
This is where Co-Active coaching becomes invaluable at the professional level. It is not about one-size-fits-all motivation or a single cultural approach. It is about meeting each player where their saboteur lives and helping them see it, understand it, and choose something different.
The saboteur is your map. It tells you what each player actually needs from you.
But here is where it gets important. Identifying the saboteur in your team is not the same as changing it. Understanding that a player's perfectionism is rooted in a survival mechanism does not fix the perfectionism. Recognizing is only the beginning.
Real change does not come from a coach pointing out the saboteur and saying "there it is, now change." Real change comes from within. It comes when a player feels seen and understood, not just analyzed. It comes through the quality of questions you ask, the way you listen, the space you create for them to discover their own path forward.
This is where Co-Active coaching becomes essential. Over this series, we will explore the specific tools, open questions, the leader within, fulfillment, that help you create that space. But the principle is clear: your job is not to tell athletes to change. Your job is to create the conditions where they want to.
When you understand the saboteur in your team, you are no longer just managing talent. You are developing people. You are creating the conditions where each player can perform at their highest level because they are no longer being run by an invisible voice. They are choosing their response.
This is not just tactics. This is the personalization that separates good coaching from great coaching.
Wait. What about you?
After I published the first article in this series, a friend named Kelly reached out with a comment that cracked something open for me. She said something like, "This is helpful for understanding our players. But coaches can't even listen to each other."
And as I sat with that, I realized something important. What I do, what I love to do, is help coaches see the human being standing in front of them. The athlete behind the performance. Because when an athlete feels truly seen, they are happier. And when they are happier, they perform better. That is the ripple.
And on a more personal level, with the coaches I work with one on one, my goal is simple: help them be happier, more grounded, more present in their own lives. Not just as coaches. As human beings.
The sport coaching world is filled with leaders who genuinely want to make a difference. That curiosity, that drive to grow, that desire to have a real impact on the lives of their athletes, is something I find deeply inspiring. Conferences, certifications, frameworks, tactical development. The energy in those rooms is real and it matters.
But there is a question that rarely gets asked in those same rooms.
How are you actually doing?
Not your win-loss record. Not your player development metrics. Your life. Your baseline. If you had to put a number on your well-being on any given day, what would it be? A six? A seven? An eight?
And here is the quieter part: if you have never seriously considered it, how would you even know the difference?
Remember Ted Lasso? On the surface, all joy, all belief, all relentless positivity. And then season two arrived and we saw what was actually happening underneath. Not that he was broken. He was doing his job. He was showing up. But there was a gap between the face he showed the world and how he was actually living.
That gap is what this is about. Not crisis. Not dysfunction. Just the quiet question: are you actually living your best life? Or are you so focused on the lives of your athletes that you forgot to ask that about yourself?
Think about it this way. What would actually change in your life if you moved from a six to an eight? From a seven to a nine? In your energy. Your relationships. Your joy. Your leadership. What becomes possible when you are truly thriving, not just functioning?
And here is what worries me a little. Most coaches, like most people, have quietly accepted that this is just how life feels. That the weight they carry is normal. That the gap between where they are and where they could be is simply the price of caring deeply about their work. They have made peace with the status quo without ever asking whether the status quo deserves their peace.
But what if it doesn't? What if there is more available than you have allowed yourself to imagine?
This series is where those two things meet. It is Co-Active coaching applied to sport leadership. Not choosing between helping you be a better coach or a better human. Both. Because one flows from the other.
So going forward, every article in this series will have a fourth section. Not just youth, elite/college, and professional. But also you. How does this apply to your well-being? Not your coaching. Your life.
That is where the real work begins. I am calling it The Self.
The SELF
Here is the fun part. It is relatively easy to spot the saboteur in others. You can see it in your athletes. You can name it. You can work with it. But recognizing it in yourself? That is different. And changing it? That is the serious work.
There is no better learning than doing the work yourself. If you want to truly understand this and be more impactful with your players, you have to examine your own saboteur. When you are living the work, you pick up on the nuances. The small moments. The ways it shows up. And that lived experience makes you so much more connected to your players as you help them navigate their own.
The Judge and you
Throughout this article, we have focused on the Judge as the master saboteur. The voice that replays mistakes, warns you obsessively about what could go wrong, finds fault in others and circumstances and most relentlessly in you.
If you are a sport leader, the Judge is probably very familiar. It is the voice that runs the postgame film session in your head at two in the morning. It is the one that whispers that your preparation wasn't enough. It is the critic that never quite lets you celebrate a win before moving on to what is wrong.
So here is the invitation: take the free Positive Intelligence saboteur assessment. The link is at the bottom of this article. It takes about five minutes. And it will give you a number. A score that tells you how active your Judge is right now.
What the score actually means
This is important. The assessment is not about finding what is wrong with you. It is about building awareness so you can build tools. It is about moving from a seven to an eight. From a six to a nine.
Here is what the research tells us: when your saboteurs are less active, you live more in the present moment. You experience more joy. You are less controlled by fear and the constant drive to improve or protect yourself. You are simply more available to the people you lead.
And remember what Jill Bolte Taylor taught us. When the saboteur is quieter, you are living more in your right brain. You are present. Connected. Able to see and respond to what is actually in front of you instead of what your inner critic is telling you about it.
The playfulness of it all
There is one more thing worth saying. The most powerful coaches I know do not take this work grimly. They take it playfully. They can name their saboteur. They can laugh at it. They can say "oh, there is the Judge again" and then choose something different. And in that lightness, in that ability to observe the voice without fusing with it, something shifts.
That is when real change happens. Not through willpower or discipline. But through awareness and a little bit of humor about the whole thing.
So take the assessment. See what shows up. And then ask yourself: what would change in my life if my Judge was a little quieter? What would I do differently? How would I show up for my team?
That is where the game really starts. Not in understanding your players' saboteurs. But in understanding your own.
A final note
I write this series because I believe sport leaders deserve support that goes beyond tactics and strategy. You deserve to be coached as a human being, not just as a tactical mind.
If this resonates with you and you want to do deeper work around your own saboteur, around your well-being, that is what I do. I work one on one with sport leaders, typically meeting every two weeks for about six months so we can really go deep. It is a real partnership where we explore what is actually happening inside, then build tools to help you move toward where you want to be.
Not just as a coach. As a human being. As a dad. As a husband.
If you know another coach who might enjoy this kind of work, I would love to hear about them too. Reach out if you want to explore working together.
M-A
Resources
If you want to go further with what we explored in this article, here are the sources I recommend most.
Jill Bolte Taylor | TED Talk: My Stroke of Insight The TED Talk that started it all. Over 26 million views for a reason. A powerful and personal entry point into how our brain actually works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU
Jill Bolte Taylor | Slo Mo Podcast with Mo Gawdat Mo Gawdat is a former Chief Business Officer at Google X and the author of Solve for Happy. He left one of the most powerful companies in the world to dedicate his life to understanding what makes human beings thrive. His conversation with Jill Bolte Taylor is one of the best introductions to Whole Brain Living you will find anywhere. Listen to this before or after reading the book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Af3vWTEUM
Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment | Shirzad Chamine Free. Takes five minutes. Worth every second. This is where your self-work begins. https://positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/
Co-Active Training Institute The framework behind everything in this series. If you are curious about what Co-Active coaching actually is, this is where to start. https://coactive.com
