151. You are the GREATEST project that you will EVER work on

You Are the Greatest Project 2026

In this solo episode of The Ways To Change Your Workplace Podcast, Prina Shah explores why you are the most important project you’ll ever work on. She discusses the difference between survival mode and true leadership, the importance of self-development at work, and practical self-coaching strategies to foster personal and professional growth. Brina shares her own weekly self-coaching questions and introduces her free Self-Coaching Guide to help listeners reflect, plan, and lead with intention.

Key Topics:

• Why self-development is essential for workplace success
• The dangers of operating in survival mode
• How personal growth impacts organizational culture
• The myth that self-development is “nice to have”
• Brina’s weekly self-coaching questions and journaling practice
• The importance of reflection, accountability, and intentional action
• How individual change leads to workplace transformation
• Three simple practices to start self-coaching this week

Resources Mentioned:

• Free Self-Coaching Guide (link in show notes)

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to The Ways To Change Your Workplace Podcast with me your host, Prina Shah. And this is a solo episode. Today I wanna talk to you about something that sits underneath every role that you'll ever have, every promotion that you'll ever chase, and every culture that try to influence.

That is that you are the greatest project that you will ever work on. Not the strategy, not the transformation program, and not the culture roadmap. You are the greatest project that you will work on. And before we go any further, I want to pause for a moment, take a breath, because this episode isn't about doing more.

It's about noticing more, and that's the difference. So I wanna set the context. I want you to think about how organizations approach projects. They plan them, they resource them, they track progress, they review what's working and what's not working. They course correct when things are off track, but when it comes to ourselves, we often do the opposite.

We run out on autopilot. We react instead of reflect. We push through instead of checking in, and then we wait until we burn out or conflict happens or. We are just completely disengaged, and that forces us to stop. That's not leadership, that's survival mode. And that survival mode never creates meaningful work.

And I feel that that survival mode has been taught to us from a corporate perspective because the corporation's needs often are far more important than your needs, but you are the one who's gonna be doing all of the stuff. So let's focus on you in this episode. So why this really matters at work, it's an obvious one.

We spend more waking hours at work than we do anywhere else. Our workplaces influence how we feel, who we become, and what we often believe about ourselves. If you're a leader, how you show up sets the emotional tone for your team. If you work in hr, your self-awareness shapes how safe people feel.

Bringing issues to you if you're an employee, your mindset, boundaries, and self-trust influence how you experience work every single day. You don't create organizational cultures by accident, and you don't change workplaces without first understanding yourself. You can only change workplaces to the extent that you are willing to work on the human being doing the work.

And that is you. So the myth that we all need to challenge, there's a myth in workplaces that self-development is a nice to have, that it's personal, not professional, that it happens outside of work hours. That once you're competent, tick, you are done. That thinking is really outdated and it's really costly.

Because unmanaged stress becomes poor decision making. Unexamined beliefs become blind spots, unaddressed values create misalignment, and then creates disengagement within ourselves and cognitive dissonance. The greatest return on your investment you will ever make is not in software, not in frameworks or quarterly targets.

It's in your personal growth, self-awareness, resilience, agility. I prefer agility to resilience. Now, your presence and your capacity to lead from within. When you do work on yourself, your workplace eventually pays the price, which is a good price to pay. So you really need to reframe yourself as a project, and this is something that I've been working on over years, so let's reframe this.

If you were a project, what would you pay attention to? Your energy levels, your triggers, your strengths, and how you actually use them. Your boundaries, your patterns under pressure. We all have 'em. Your definition of success, not the one that you inherited from work. That's a huge different story and a huge different definition often as well.

Most people can tell me their job description, but very few can tell me how they operate at their best. That's the gap, and that gap is where frustration, burnout, and disengagement often live. So, I dunno if you've heard about the concept of self coaching. Self coaching as a workplace skill is what I want to talk to you about.

It's nothing woo woo. It's something that I've been doing for years and actually started it myself, uh, when I was managing stressy large HR teams, when I was working in my corporate days. So self-coaching comes in many ways. Self-coaching is not about fixing yourself, it's about noticing yourself. It's the ability to slow down long enough to check in what's really going on before defaulting to old habits.

It's asking better questions instead of staying busy questions like I do self-coaching every Friday afternoon. So let me tell you the questions that I ask myself every Friday afternoon. I then add it to my to-do list, so I'll explain what I'm doing. The questions I ask myself, it only takes half an hour and I actually like to journal.

Some people can think it through, but I think the act of writing is quite different. So the first question that I ask myself is, what am I learning this week? How am I right now? And how has my week been? What will my wins? And what has felt like success? What were my challenges and triggers this week, and what can I do to mitigate them?

What do I want to be held accountable for next week? That ties into my to-do list, and then we can often BS ourselves so well, so I know I can anyway, so I delve deeper after what do I wanna be held accountable for next week? I then go into what needs planning. What important things have no action steps attached to them?

Do I need help? Do I need to delegate? Who do I need to engage with to make this happen? What is stopping me and how am I gonna celebrate when I've achieved what I need to? Okay. So these are not soft questions whatsoever as you've just seen. They're leadership questions. They're culture questions, they're change questions, and they rarely get asked in the middle of a packed calendar.

But I made time to do this every Friday afternoon. I used to do this in my corporate days. I do this as a consultant being my own boss now every Friday afternoon. So I wanna give you a moment of reflection. For anyone who's listening, let me ask you this. If you managed yourself with the same intention that you manage your work, what would change?

Would you keep over committing? Would you ignore early signs of stress? Would you keep saying yes when your values say no? Or would you finally pause long enough to recalibrate? Presence beats pressure every single time. Not doing more, but doing more of what matters. Okay, so why I created my self coaching guide?

I actually have a journal that you can purchase or I've got a free guide, a freebie all together, which I'm gonna put into the show notes. Okay. Why did I create this? Firstly, it was for myself. 'cause I was stressing out. And I was actually taking work home. So on a Friday afternoon, I used to just, you know, try and wrap up for the week and then do my to-do list for the week after.

But even then, the funk that was in my head stayed with me over the weekend and I really didn't want that. So that's exactly why I created my self coaching guide. So it's not another productivity tool, it's not another wellness checklist, and it's definitely not a PDF that you downloaded. Never open. So check out the freebie.

It's in the show notes. I created it to give firstly me, and now you structure for reflection, for clarity, and for accountability. The Self-Coaching Guide is designed to help you to refocus on how you show up at work. Identify the challenges that keep repeating. It'll help you to create practical and intentional actions, and it'll hold yourself accountable with care and not criticism.

And so many people have extended this to use this from a personal perspective, and they've shared the love with their family and anyone else as well. So you are very welcome to do that as well. It is about guiding yourself week by week towards better decisions and more meaningful work.

So we have to link our self work to the kind of bigger work that we're doing, you know, in your jobs. So here's what I know from years of working with leaders and teams. Workplaces don't change because of your values and your vision and your mission. No, they don't. They change because people change how they think.

People change how they respond. People change how they lead. Once people change. The workplace changes. Okay, so when individuals take responsibility for their own inner work conversations, improve conflict becomes more constructive, trust builds faster, and work starts to feel meaningful again. You don't need a new title to do that.

You just need the willingness to work on the one project that you never escape. That project is you. You, you. So before we wrap up, I wanna leave you with three simple practices that you can start this week. Check in with yourself each morning. What do I need to do the most today? Not what everyone else needs.

What is it that you need to do the most today? A reflection at the end of the day, if you so wish. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I'm too busy, too. What worked, what didn't? What do I wanna do differently tomorrow? But then the biggie, schedule one self coaching 30 minutes, just a half an hour each week. I used to do it on a Friday after lunch.

Um, hand my calendar up and you know, I'm a writer so I like to write 'cause it gets my thinking out. So block it out in your calendar. This is not optional time. It's investment in your clarity, energy, and your own leadership. So. If this episode resonated with you, I invite you to download my free self coaching guide, which is in the show notes.

Use it as your weekly reflection and planning companion because the quality of your work will never exceed the quality of the work that you do on yourself. I'm back and welcome back to the Ways to Change Your Workplace Podcast. You can lead teams, build programs, manage projects, and launch strategies.

But if you neglect the most important project, you, everything else becomes really hard. You deserve clarity. You deserve presence, you deserve growth, and you can start right now. You are not separate from the workplace. You shape it every day through how you show up. So if you wanna change your workplace, change begins with you.

Work on the pro greatest project that you'll ever lead you. Thank you so much for listening. Until we meet again in the next episode. Bye for now. That is over and out from me. Prina Shah, your host.