Welcome. The heart of leadership and public speaking.

Do you see me?

Do you care that I’m here?

Am I enough for you, or do you need me to be better in some way?

Can I tell that I’m special to you by the way that you look at me?

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According to Katherine Schafler, these are the four questions we’re all unconsciously asking when we meet another person.

I think that this is completely true.? I also think that these questions are at the heart of public speaking and leadership.? They could be boiled down to a single, even more concise question – “Am I welcome here?”

This is a question that you are almost certainly unconsciously asking of your audience members when you speak to them and that they are asking of you.? It’s a question that those that report to you are probably asking whenever you interact, and at some level we are asking this question of ourselves much of the time.

When we ask it of ourselves, the question could often be phrased as “Am I really OK as I am?? Or is there something fundamentally wrong with me?”

When I first started working with the group of teachers who have been most influential and transformative in my life, I was most struck by this word – “Welcome” and how they used it.? They said it at the opening of every meeting to each of us individually.? They often said it when we made a contribution of difficult feelings, thoughts or emotions.? It was said with an amazing amount of love, care and authenticity.

I had never heard or felt anything quite like it before.? It felt like rain on the cracked parched ground of the desert.? It was the thing that I really needed to hear deep down, that I didn’t realise that I needed to hear.? Over the 16 or 17 years of working with these teachers I have heard it perhaps hundreds of times and it never feels stale or old.? There is something deep inside me that relaxes when I hear it, as if a key core question has been answered.? As if something fundamental in me is being nourished.

Gradually, as I continued to work with this group of teachers, I started to realise that this was something that I was able to do for myself.? To welcome myself, rather than waiting for them or rest of the world to welcome me.? And I started to recognise that this was one of the core components of true confidence.? The ability to know ourselves and deeply accept ourselves as we are.? The ability to welcome ourselves.

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Welcoming ourselves

What does this ability to welcome ourselves actually mean, and more importantly how can we do it?

When I was younger, I used to think that “self love” was the ability to look at a picture of myself in my mind and say “I love you” to that image.? I tried doing it a number of times and wondered why it simply didn’t work.

On receiving the welcome from my teachers, I started to recognise that self-love, or self-welcoming is not a welcome of the image or idea of ourselves.? It is a welcome to how we experience ourselves to be right now.? ?Our thoughts, our emotions and our sensations or feelings.

It’s not a one-shot deal.? We don’t do it once and it’s over with.? It can only ever be done now, in this moment.

Put simply, it involves noticing whatever is happening inside you right now, deeply accepting and welcoming that.

But that’s much easier said than done, for a number of reasons.

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The obstacles to welcoming ourselves

The biggest obstacles to welcoming ourselves are the parts of our psychology that think that whatever is happening shouldn’t be happening.

If you’ve read my previous articles, you’ll know that I find the Internal Family Systems (“IFS”) or Voice Dialogue models to be helpful in explaining how our internal worlds are set up. ? The principle behind these models is that our psyche and personality is not a unified whole, but more of a committee of different parts, that we can get to know and relate with.? In this model, our “true self” (the aspect of us that is not a “part”) becomes the conductor of this orchestra, and on a good day, can help all the parts to play harmoniously together, rather than fighting each other or causing havoc.

The closest analogy is the movie Inside Out, where the different emotions are represented by characters on the screen.? (But in that film, there is no one around the table helping the parts to get along).

In the models I’m working with, it’s not the emotions that are represented by the parts.? Rather the parts are aspects of our minds that relate with the emotions (and have different perspectives and points of view).? I know that it might seem strange to think of ourselves in this way, but in my experience, both with myself and working with clients, it works very effectively.

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Enter the Protectors

In my experience, the parts of our psychology that cause the greatest obstruction to welcoming ourselves, are those that seek to judge the emotional parts, hide them from us, or even attack them.? In the IFS model these parts are known as “Protectors”.

The job of the Protectors is to stop us feeling feelings that (they believe) are too difficult to feel.? This is usually because they believe that the feelings will overwhelm us and (probably) kill us.? This is never true, but we formed these systems when we were very young, so these parts tend to be very emotional and quite dramatic!

Prime examples of the feelings that the protectors don’t want us to feel are vulnerability and fear.? But they can extend to other “negative” feelings too such as anger, shame, jealousy or even sadness.? (It all depends on our family history and how we are “wired”).

So, a typical scenario in a public speaking context, might be standing up to speak in public, our heart beating quickly, mouth dry and a feeling of vulnerably to be seen and potentially judged by those watching us.

The Inner Critic protector might say “You shouldn’t be feeling vulnerable.? You should be over that by now.? Pull yourself together.”

A worrying protector might say “Your heart is beating quickly, what happens if your nerves take over and we crash and burn like last time?”

A fighting protector might say “This shouldn’t be happening.? I’m going to kill the vulnerable part and then it can’t hurt us”.? (When my little boy has scary thoughts at bedtime, he often says to be “I need to kill the scary thoughts with a sword!”? This is the voice of one of his protectors).

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These protection systems are normal

The first thing to recognise about these protection systems is that they are 100% normal. Pretty much everybody (except for some psychopaths) have them. There is nothing wrong with you for entertaining these thoughts. We evolved these protection systems when we were very young, when we didn’t have any other methods of coping with difficult or overwhelming feelings.

To be honest, they are now decidedly suboptimal. But they aren’t going anywhere any time soon. There are some sorts of therapy which propose being able to retrain these parts of ourselves. And that might be a worthwhile endeavour. But for the time being we need to know that they are part of the “internal furniture”, and learn to find a way of working with them rather than against them.

But just because the protectors are normal, it doesn’t mean that we need to take their point of view very seriously. These systems mostly evolved when we didn’t know any better, and they are not very intelligent or sophisticated.? So, in my experience, a useful perspective to have is that these parts are completely normal, they are not wrong (in fact they are well-meaning), but we don’t need to believe what they are saying.

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Embracing our selves

In my experience, the optimal way to relate with all of these parts is to embrace them. Embracing the vulnerable parts and the protector parts. Relating to them with kindness and looking after them, without taking their point of view completely seriously.

In many ways, this is a “self-parenting” exercise.? When we do this, we relate to these parts of ourselves in the way that a kind parent would relate to a distressed child. If a child is saying that there are monsters under the bed, we take their feelings and emotions seriously, without accepting the proposition that they really are monsters there.

To embrace or welcome these parts, we need to listen to them with kindness, empathise with them and validate their feelings, and then (if necessary) offer them kind yet realistic reassurance. ? I call this method the LEVeR method (Listen, Empathise, Validate and then Reassure).? I’ve written about it in detail elsewhere, if you’d like to know more.

If we take the example of the child fearing monsters under the bed, a good parent might say: “I can hear that you are imagining that there are monsters under the bed. I’m sorry, that must be really scary to imagine that. (Listen and Empathise). When I was little, I also was scared of monsters under the bed, so that really makes sense to me that you’re scared of them too. (Validate) But, what I discovered as I grew up, was there were never any monsters under the bed, it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. I’m here, you’re safe, and even though you’re feeling scared you’re okay. (Reassure)”

We can do exactly the same for the vulnerable parts of ourselves – “I can hear you’re worried that the audience are going to judge you, and as a result of that think badly of you, and that’s painful.? I’m sorry you’re going through that. And it really makes sense to me why you’d be worried about that, I can remember this has happened in the past. But actually you really know your stuff, you’ve done your homework, this is a really well prepared talk, and I think there’s a very good chance it will go extremely well”.

Similarly, we can do the same for an angry protector part – “I can hear that you want to kill the vulnerable part that is feeling terrified right now, because you’re scared that its feelings are too much to bear, and might kill us if we feel them, and that really makes sense to me.? You’d feel much safer if those feelings weren’t there.? But we can’t kill the vulnerable part, as much as you’d like to.? But I can be with that part – you don’t have to.? You can just take a rest, and you can come back in if you don’t think I’m doing a good enough job”.

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This makes all the difference

It’s amazing how much of a difference this makes, in my experience, both personally and working with clients. ? There’s a sense of much greater internal peace, much less mental chatter, and the sense of feeling more confident and “joined up” on the inside.

This takes practice, but the good news is that it doesn’t need to be perfect right away. Even a little bit of doing this inexpertly, can start to make a big difference. And when you can feel it helping, that’s an incentive to practise it more.

The best times to practise, initially, will be when you are in a situation of low to moderate stress, and you have time to really listen on the inside. With practice, these tools will be available to you more quickly and more effectively, and can be used in situations of increasing levels of difficulty or stress.

The quickest I’ve ever used these tools was on a prestigious recorded webinar, where I asked the audience to type in the chat how confident they felt in public speaking on a scale of one to five. The first person to write anything in the chat said “I hate these sorts of questions, they’re really stupid!”.

A young vulnerable part of me immediately started freaking out. It said something like “They all hate me! It’s all going to go horribly wrong and I’m going to make a fool of myself in this prestigious international conference!”

I responded by saying (in my head): “I really get it, you’re freaking out because somebody has made quite a negative and aggressive comment, and it’s the first thing that anybody has said. And it really makes sense to me why you’re so worried – we really want to do well in this conference and make a good impression. And this is being recorded, so it would be pretty embarrassing if it did all go horribly wrong…

… and it’s just one person. And he’s not saying he hates you or doesn’t trust your methods. He’s just saying he doesn’t like these sorts of questions. There’s a really good chance that he will come around quite quickly in the webinar. He’s here after all, and he came because he wanted to listen to you, and hear what you had to say. And look – lots and lots of other people have already answered your question. They are in the majority. So even if he doesn’t come around, that’s really OK. I think it’s all going to be fine.”

This entire process took about 3 seconds. (I was able to do it so quickly because I’ve given myself lots of practice, in low and medium pressure situations). I’ve watched this section of the recording back on video and it was completely invisible as a process from the outside. It just looked like I took a pause while I was reading peoples’ answers. Like a swan, I was gliding serenely over the surface of the water, while underneath my legs were doing some furious paddling.

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We can do this for others as well

As a leader or speaker, we can use a version of this process to relate with others and their difficult emotions.

Whether it’s an audience member who is having a heated response to something that you’ve said, or a colleague who has got upset because of something that you’ve done, or they believe you should have done differently, you can listen to them, empathise with them and validate them before offering them a measured response.

E.g. “I can hear that you strongly disagree with the point that I’ve made in my talk, and in fact when you consider what I’ve said it makes you feel pretty angry. Would I be right about that? (If they say yes or nod, you could continue…)? And that makes complete sense to me. What I’ve said is somewhat controversial, and if I’d heard somebody say that a couple of years ago, I might have been incredulous or angry.? And yet I’d encourage you to consider this as another point of view… [Now you can give the questioner your considered response to the challenge].

Before doing this, you will probably first need to manage your own vulnerable parts that are freaking out at being attacked at your own talk. (We always need to put our own oxygen mask on first!)

Notice, that you are implicitly answering the first 3 of Katherine Schiffler’s questions for the questioner:? “Do you see me?? Do you care that I’m here?? Am I enough for you or do you need me to be better in some way?”? You are not making them and their feelings wrong, even though you may ultimately end up disagreeing with their conclusions.? Instead, you are coming over to their side of the fence for a moment, and showing them that you see things from their point of view.? This is enormously powerful.

I run an entire workshop on having difficult conversations, and this technique is one of two or three techniques at the heart of having really good tricky discussions.

There are also entire books about parenting that rely on very similar principles!? This may not come as a complete surprise to you, since we have been discussing choosing to relate with the emotional parts of ourselves and others as if they were children having big feelings.

I may well go into more detail on this in a future article, but hopefully this gives you a direction that you could fruitfully pursue, in relating with others having strong feelings if you want to.

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Summing it all up

It is tempting to try and run away from the difficult emotional parts of ourselves, or our tricky thoughts. But this never actually works. In my experience, the only thing that cuts the mustard is turning around, meeting our demons and embracing them. In that embrace, it turns out that they weren’t demons after all. They were simply aspects of ourselves having strong feelings, and doing their best to manage them as effectively as they could.? The same is true for relating with others.

An example of positively harnessing challenging energy in the world, is in the defensive martial art of Aikido, where “players” embrace attacks from opponents and redirect the energy to their advantage. In other words, they welcome the attacking energy without opposing it. In doing so they retain balance and generate power.? We can use this principle in the realm of thoughts, sensations and emotions.

“Welcome” is one of the most powerful words that we can use for ourselves, and for others.

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As always, do let me know your responses and experiences the comments below.? I love to hear from you!

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Daniel Kingsley is the Director of Presence Training. He helps people to be authentic speakers and leaders.