RESPECT. What a foreign stage reveals about your inner dialogue

How three days of lead time, a foreign language and a single word showed me that communication to the outside always begins on the inside.

The call that set everything in motion

Three days. That was all the lead time I had. Alfredo wrote to ask whether I would represent Austria at the InnovateHer Summit in Sardinia. On a panel. In English. In front of female founders, investors and entrepreneurs from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

I said yes. And in the moment the yes was spoken, it grew loud inside me. Not outside. Inside. There, where no one applauds and no one listens in. In the room I call the inner dialogue in my work.

What happened over the next three days and finally on stage is perhaps the clearest story I can tell about how closely your inner conversation and your outer impact are connected. It is about preparation, about a foreign language and about one word that made an entire hall erupt.

Preparation is not what you think

My first reflex was control. I wanted to be prepared. So I prepared. I wrote myself notes. I laid out figures, phrasings, whole sentences. And because English is not my mother tongue, I even noted down the pronunciation. In my papers, to this day, stands the word Wymen. Not Women. Wymen. So that in the decisive moment I would hit the plural with confidence and not stumble over my own tongue.

That is the Perfectionist in me. One of my inner roles, who, honestly, is usually rather quiet ;) She wants to control every word, close every gap, rule out every mistake before it can happen. She means well. She wants to protect me.

But here is what I truly understood on this trip. There are two kinds of preparation. One prepares the content. The other prepares the stance. The Perfectionist works on the first. She gathers words, facts, certainties. That is valuable, up to a point. Because every stage, every real conversation, every moment with people has one uncomfortable quality. It does not stick to your script.

In Intuistik there is a sentence that has stayed with me since this trip. The highest form of control is trust. That sounds paradoxical, and exactly there lies the truth. The tighter I tried to hold on to every single word, the more brittle my foundation became. Because a memorised sentence breaks in the moment the question is asked differently than planned. What holds is not the perfect sentence. What holds is the inner stance from which I speak.

Preparation therefore does not mean knowing every answer. Preparation means standing so clearly in what you stand for that you can speak even when someone pulls the script out from under your feet.

The foreign language as a mirror

And then there was this foreign language. English is familiar to me, but it is not the home where my thoughts live. In my mother tongue it flows. I do not have to search. The words are simply there before I call them. In a foreign language exactly this automatism falls away. And with it, a protective layer falls away too.

That is uncomfortable. But it is also a gift, if you look closely. Because a foreign language makes visible what stays below the surface in your own. It makes the inner dialogue loud. The moment I was to speak in English, the Critic spoke up. Another of my inner roles. Your English is not good enough, she said. They will hear your accent. You will search for words and everyone will see it.

In my mother tongue this voice whispers more quietly, because the language carries me. In the foreign language it suddenly stands in the middle of the room. That is exactly the point. A foreign language takes the polished tool out of your hand. It takes away the option of hiding behind eloquence. What then remains is not your vocabulary. It is your stance. It is what you truly mean.

And that is good news. Because when the language itself is no longer the safe thing you hold on to, then you hold on to something else. To what you stand for. The foreign language forces you to speak from meaning instead of from phrasing. And meaning is always stronger than a beautiful sentence.

The stage, the pause and a single word

Then came the moment itself. Alessa sat in the audience. She applauded in the middle of my panel, like a proud football mum, and collected a few side eyes for it. It was the loveliest background noise of the day and an anchor I could hold on to inside.

And then Shannon, the master of ceremonies, did the very thing the Perfectionist had feared most. She went off script. She looked at me and asked something that was in none of my notes. What female entrepreneurs really need as support in the Austrian economy. A pause set in.

From the outside it probably looked like a thinking pause. In truth it was an inner storm. My head searched desperately for the right English words. The Perfectionist raced. The Critic judged. And somewhere in between was the Protector, who whispered to me that I could just say something safe, smooth, harmless. In that pause my head was still searching for the perfect phrasing. But the answer did not come from there. It came from deeper. From the gut, from the heart, from what needs no translation.

Then I said it. Loud. From the top of my lungs.

RESPECT. We want respect.

The whole hall erupted in thunderous applause. It was not my perfect English that spoke there. It was not the grammar. It was what lay beneath the language. Clear. Unmistakable. True. That is exactly the kind of outer communication that carries. It does not rest on the largest vocabulary. It rests on a stable inner foundation.

Who is actually leading when you speak?

Now to the core. To what this story reveals about the inner dialogue. In each of us several voices live. I call them inner roles. The Critic, who checks and warns. The Perfectionist, who wants to control. The Protector, who is set on safety. The Visionary, who steps forward and dares something new. None of these roles is wrong. Each has a purpose. The Critic guards me against recklessness. The Perfectionist makes sure I am prepared. The Protector keeps me safe. The Visionary brings me onto the stage. The problem never begins with the fact that these voices exist. The problem begins when it is unclear which of them is holding the microphone right now.

Because when fear is allowed at the microphone, then fear speaks. And then your outer communication sounds anxious, evasive and small. Here comes the decisive part. The roles are the voices. And, SURPRISE, that was not all of it yet, because there is more ;)

Beneath them lies your character. Your character is the part of you that is not taught and not conditioned, but has belonged to you since you were born. Your dispositions, your talents, your core motives, your deep values. Your character is your compass. It does not say out loud what to do. It shows what is coherent with you and what is not.

And then there is something else. The instance that even notices that several voices are talking right now. Conscious awareness. It is what remains when all the roles fall silent for a moment. It observes the Critic without being the Critic. It hears the Perfectionist without obeying her. And it can, in the sense of your character, decide which role now steps to the microphone. Conscious awareness directs. The character is the standard it orients itself by. The roles are the performers.

In the pause on that stage, it was not the Critic who won. Not the Perfectionist. In the moment I noticed the voices, instead of simply being swept along by them, a tiny bit of room opened up. And in that room I could choose to speak from what I truly stand for. Meaning was allowed to speak. RESPECT was said, with no regard for a perfect sentence. Fear was allowed to be in the room. It just did not have to go to the microphone.

Two sides, one coin

There is an image in our work that holds all of this together. The coin principle. A coin always has two sides. They are different, they even face away from each other, and yet they belong to the same coin. Neither is the wrong one.

It is exactly the same with your inner roles. The voice that is cautious, and the one that is bold. The one that wants to control, and the one that trusts. They are not enemies. They are two sides of the same person. The inner conflict does not arise from the two sides. It arises when we hide one of them, deny it or play it off against the other. If you acknowledge both and let them stand side by side, the tension dissolves. The argument on the inside stops before it reaches the outside.

In Sardinia I did not let my cautious and my bold side compete against each other. I gave caution its place, in the preparation. And I gave courage its place, on the stage.

What this means for you

Maybe you will never stand in front of three hundred women in English in Sardinia. But you have your own stages. The difficult conversation with an employee. The pitch in front of people who decide about your project. The meeting in which you want to speak an uncomfortable truth. The moment someone asks you something you have no prepared answer for. In all of these moments the same thing holds.

Prepare your stance, not just your content. Clarify beforehand what you stand for, so clearly that it holds even without a script. Do not let your security hang on the perfect phrasing alone. A true word works more strongly than a flawless sentence. And get to know your inner roles. Not in order to get rid of them. But so that you notice them when they speak, and from that conscious awareness can choose which of them is allowed at the microphone.

Your outer voice is always only as clear as your inner dialogue. Every dialogue begins on the inside.

Something to reflect on

Which two sides do you carry within you that would not actually have to be in conflict at all? If you want to recognise and order your inner dialogue in peace, before your next stage calls, then let us talk. A first conversation shows you where your inner dialogue currently stands.

Life is a dialog. Be one word ahead.