The Biology of Leadership · Issue 11 · Sent to subscribers 15 October 2026
The short version
When leaders talked about what it had cost them, “I” often became “you”. I noticed that shift in 38 of the 40 leaders I interviewed.
The more painful it is, the less we want to relive it, so we put ourselves at arm's length. That is helpful, short-term.
Try this: catch yourself when you put something at arm's length, and replace it with “I”.
The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve found linguistics interesting. How much you can tell about a person’s psyche by the words they choose to use in any given moment. I didn’t appreciate that window into someone’s mind until I started paying attention to my own. Some of it is conditioned, some erosive, some protective… but always a signal.
I didn’t start my leadership interviews looking for this. It was something I began hearing again and again.
What went well: “I”
What it had cost them: “I” often became “you”
The word they stopped saying was “I”.
The finding
One leader was talking about the energy it takes to hold everything together at work.
"I do put a mask on … that does sometimes take a bit of a toll in that you’re pretending a bit and, um, using energy to look like you’ve got more energy"
“I” → “you”
Another leader described a cash crisis. He had around 25 employees, many of them with mortgages.
"this is kind of all my fault really. I mean obviously not fully but you take full accountability for it"
“I” → “you”
What I hear is reflective pain, retroactive distancing… people are trying to learn, but also ensure there is no judgement attached to it. Because it’s a type of failure, and we’ve learned through conditioning that failure is bad.
The biology
There’s a name for this. Researchers call it the generic “you”, the “you” we use when we mean people in general. A 2017 study published in Science examined it across six experiments and found that people often use generic “you” when making sense of difficult experiences. It helps turn something personal into something more universal.
Personal: “I worked so hard that I lost sight of my health.”
More universal: “You work so hard that you lose sight of your health.”
Both describe the same experience, but the second makes it sound like something that could happen to anyone. And perhaps that’s part of what makes it easier to say.
Related research gives us another piece of the picture.
585
2014 · 585 people across seven studies. When people used their own name or non-first-person pronouns during stressful self-talk, they reported less distress and performed better in certain stressful social situations.
Later brain-imaging research: third-person self-talk could reduce measures of emotional reactivity without increased activity in brain regions associated with cognitive control.
These studies examined different forms of language. What interests me is the role psychological distance can play.
The most beautiful inherent nature of our mind and body is that, more often than not, it’s protective. Coping mechanisms are this exact thing.
A form of coping:
- Eating comfort food
- Drinking alcohol
- Trying to control your life and others
- And often, the way we talk
The more painful it is, the less we want to relive it, so we put ourselves at arm’s length. That is helpful, short-term. But coping is meant to be a short-term stopgap. Resolving is the longer one.
From the interviews
One leader caught herself halfway through a sentence.
"You can’t… I can’t concentrate on anything. And so I just I I faff"
“you” → “I”
It’s a tiny moment, but I keep coming back to it.
When we owned and ran a health clinic for working professionals, my favourite part of 1:1 conversations was the spark in their eyes when a person realised they were shifting their words to ensure the pain didn’t land as hard as it could otherwise. But pain is helpful, and some of the biggest progress I ever made was helping people actually acknowledge the pain, sit with it, and let it be heard.
I know I’ve done this myself. It’s much easier to describe what people go through than to sit with what something has actually cost you.
Try this
Self-awareness is a powerful thing. In this series, you hear me talking a lot about a leader being the weather your team works in. The more aware you are of yourself, the better you can either adjust the weather, or inform your team (and loved ones) about the forecast.
So, the challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to catch yourself when you put something at arm’s length.
If you’re describing something you’ve experienced, listen for “you” and replace it with “I”.
“You just have to push through” → “I felt I had to push through.”
“You don’t really get a choice” → “I didn’t feel I had a choice.”
See how different it feels… and feel it. Let it exist. Try inviting the pain in for a cup of tea, and let it pass when it wants to leave. Zero judgement… just awareness.
There’s nothing wrong with using “you”. Sometimes that distance is helpful. But noticing it is a powerful step to increased body literacy, which leads to becoming a better leader.
One more thing
The interviews have kept another question alive for me. How well do we really understand what’s happening inside our bodies?
I think we’ve all been there. I certainly have. It isn’t until things aren’t working quite as they used to that you ‘see’ the water you’ve been swimming in this whole time. Until it’s poisoned, the clean water was completely transparent. So is our wellbeing. The trickle-down effect plays out in our homes, our work, and our minds.
My interviews haven’t really stopped. I’m still speaking with people, asking them what keeps them up at night and what they think their blind spots are. What keeps bubbling up is making sense of themselves and their data. Most of them own a wearable of some sort… so we decided to pull all this together.
1. Starts with a questionnaire, your wearable data and what’s happening in your life.
2. Luke or I, as your performance scientist, read your whole picture, write you a personal report, and talk you through it.
3. You leave knowing what to change first.
The other signal
The Capacity Wheel is a read on which way your wheel is turning, and on how much you have to spend before you ask yourself to spend it. About three minutes. It is a mirror, not an assessment.
Which way is your wheel turning?
This is Issue 11 of The Biology of Leadership, a weekly note written while I work on Beacon, a book on the biology of leadership. Subscribe here to get each issue a day before it appears on the journal.