A photo of Caroline sat at a table, mid-communication with someone off camera. She is smiling, with her elbows on the table and pen in waving hands. In front of her is a notebook and patterned mug.

How do you feel about owning your “I”?

Sharing your perspective, your preferences, your priorities?

Communicating what you need in the moment - or what you’re looking for in the longer term?

Or are you hoping that your expressions, actions or work will speak for you, and the other person will figure it out for themselves?

For many of us it can be really hard to say what we mean or what we want.

Sometimes it’s because we haven’t untangled our thinking and got clear on what it actually is.

Other times it’s because we’re worried about how the other person might respond - based on assumptions, our upbringing or our lived experience.

Or we’ve simply become used to hedging our bets and softening our stance. It’s a habit rather than an intentional strategy - we default to “Shall we…?” when we mean “I’d like to…”.

The good news is that communicating more clearly is a skill that we can all learn and get better at - I speak from experience!

In my own life, and in coaching others, I’ve found a practical framework or structure can be really useful to help us bridge the gap and find our voice (the work and writing of Tara Mohr is my go-to for this).

With this we can start to own our “I” in a number of different ways - to express a preference, make a request, negotiate agreements, design working partnerships, and give and receive feedback more cleanly - and so much more.

Of course, this doesn’t mean it will always go to plan or be an automatic yes - and that’s absolutely fine.

At least we’ve started the process, with the tools to make it easier to try things out, and learn from experience as we go.