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On Monday, we talked about how to shift from judgment to curiosity as a strategy for building your internal coach. Today, we’ll continue by focusing on another skill—creating psychological distance.  

Creating psychological distance is a brilliant complement to your curiosity practice—it’s like adding a zoom-out lens to your leadership toolkit. When you’re deeply embedded in a problem, your perspective naturally narrows to immediate concerns and familiar solutions. But when you step back and imagine coaching a colleague through the exact same challenge, you access a completely different quality of thinking. 
 
This shift to a coaching perspective works because it removes the emotional charge and self-judgment that often cloud our problem-solving. When it’s your problem, you’re dealing with your ego, your fears, and your history with similar situations. But when you’re mentally coaching someone else, you naturally become more objective, creative, and strategic. You ask better questions, see more options, and offer more balanced perspectives. 

The coaching perspective also taps into wisdom you already possess but might not access when you’re stressed. Think about it—you probably give excellent advice to colleagues facing challenges. This practice helps you to give that same quality of guidance to yourself. 
 
A simple way to implement this: When facing a challenge, literally ask yourself, “If [name a colleague you respect] came to me with this exact situation, what would I tell them?” Then listen to your own advice. You can use Sophia to further help you to think through the advice you’d offer a colleague.  

Try This with Your Team  

Here’s a powerful team activity, called The Consultant Exchange, that builds psychological distance skills collectively: 
 
Setup (5 minutes): 

• Divide into pairs or small groups of 3-4 people. 
• Each person identifies a real challenge they’re currently facing (work-related, appropriate to share). 
• Write it down in 2-3 sentences on an index card. 

The Exchange (10 minutes): 

• Pass the cards so that everyone receives someone else’s challenge. 
• For 10 minutes, each person becomes a “consultant” for the challenge they received. 
• They brainstorm solutions, questions, and perspectives as if advising an external client. 
• No discussion yet—just individual reflection and note-taking. 

The Coaching Conversation (15 minutes): 

• Return cards to their original owners along with the consultant’s insights. 
• Get into pairs to discuss: What did the “consultant” see that you missed? What questions did they ask that you hadn’t considered? 
• The original challenge owner shares what resonates and what they want to explore further. 

Debrief (10 minutes): 

• Whole group reflects on the following:  
  • “What was different about your thinking when you were the consultant versus when it was your own challenge?” 
  • “What patterns do we notice about how distance changes our problem-solving?” 

This approach works especially well because it creates real psychological distance while building team trust and collaborative problem-solving skills. People often discover that they have more wisdom than they realize—they just need the right perspective to access it. 

To learn more about how to build your internal coach, join us for the Advanced Supervision Certificate Program. This cohort-based program is free with your membership.