When you’re standing in front of someone and wanting to communicate with them, what’s the most important thing?
The message? Yes. That’s incredibly important.
Where that person is at? (Or where your group is at if you’re speaking to more than one). Yes, that’s really important too.
What’s going on with you? Your emotional state, your physical state. Again extremely important.
But I’m going to suggest that there is something that is even more important than all of these.
Your relationship with what’s happening.
At the very most basic level, are you treating this situation as a game to be won, a problem to be solved, or an adventure to be had?
I and thou
Most of us, much of the time, are coming from an egoic place — trying to answer the question “How can I make this situation better for me?”
We are relating to the people in front of us, and indeed to our bodies and emotions as objects. The people need to be persuaded, won over, charmed, mollified. Our fast heart rate needs to be calmed down. Our emotions need to be regulated.
This is an attitude of “I—that”. (Sometimes called “I–it”).
That we are the subject, the “I” and everything else, other people, the environment, and even our feelings and sensations are objects to us, “thats.”
There is nothing wrong with this, and in many ways it’s very human and completely normal. But this perspective has a number of undesirable effects. For us and for everyone else.
The first one is that we start to view ourselves as objects and problems that need to be solved. So we feel alienated from ourselves.
The second is that those we are speaking to can feel us trying to manipulate them into feeling a certain way. And understandably they don’t like that, or trust us.
This is a lose-lose scenario.
What’s the alternative?
To adopt an attitude of what the philosopher, Martin Buber called I—thou. Treating everything we come across as a sacred entity, as valuable and entitled to our love and respect as ourselves. Everything we encounter, we approach from a subject—subject relationship.
Buber was writing in German at the time, and he used the more intimate version of “you”, which translates to the old English “thou”. It may feel strange and archaic to our ears, but we don’t have a word for this way of addressing the world in modern English.
What I love about this framing is that it doesn’t just describe a technique, but a completely different way of relating with the world. When I connect with it, something shifts in me and I start to see the world and everything in it very differently.
The sensations in my body are not there to be changed. They are there to be met. My emotions are not there to be controlled, they are there to be listened to and respected. And those I am speaking to are there to be connected with.
If you sit with the phrase with this understanding in mind, you may start to feel where I’m coming from.
(This way of being also extends to our relationship with the planet, but that’s slightly outside the scope of the conversation for this piece).
Let’s take one of these elements of relationship and look at it as it shows up practically in a speaking or leadership context – our relationship with those we are speaking to.
Letting the connection be the most important thing
One of the planks of The Presence Method, that forms the foundation of my teaching, is Relational Presence.
Relational Presence has three elements: seeing, allowing yourself to be seen, and letting the connection be the most important thing.
All three of these have a link into this attitude of I—thou.
When we see those in front of us, we are seeking to see them as humans, as individuals with hopes, fears, emotions and humanity every bit as important as ours.
When we allow ourselves to be seen, we let down some of our guard, taking the “risk“ to let them into our world. To let them see at least some of us as we really are, rather than what we might try to present. There is a vulnerability in this, and at the same time it is deeply human and connecting.
When we let the felt sense of our connection with the individuals that we are speaking to be the most important thing (more important than the words that we are saying) we open up a channel. This is a channel of receptivity. Even in the moment when we are speaking words, we are listening to the one who is listening to us. And this in turn influences what we end up saying.
We let go of our rigid agenda of saying exactly what we wanted to say in exactly the way we wanted to say it, in favour of this being a relationship in which communication is taking place and we are influencing each other. We are not completely letting go of our ideas, our philosophy or even our structure. Instead, we are slackening our grip and making ourselves just a little bit more permeable.
We are entering a zone of exploration where things are, to some degree, unknown. We both know, and simultaneously don’t know what we are going to say next.
This is a truly alive place to communicate from, and those we are speaking to or with can feel it.
We are speaking more from the heart than the head (although our heads are still very much involved), and those we are speaking to can feel it.
This can feel like a risk, because we are letting go of the safety blankets of our script and our carefully polished social personality. But it’s much less of a risk than we think.
Many times I’ve quoted the poet Maya Angelou as saying that your audience will forget pretty much everything you said, but if you’re lucky, they will remember how you made them feel. Whether you are a leader or a public speaker, this is all about connection. Your connection with yourself, your connection with them, and your connection with whatever it is you are seeking to communicate.
So what if your words lack polished precision, if those you are speaking to can really feel you and “get you“? And you can get them.
There becomes a sense that we are all in this together. Which is true and beautiful, because in reality, we really are.
~
If you’d like to explore this further with me check out our Foundation Courses in London, or via one to one coaching in person or over Zoom/Teams.
- I and Thou:The Secret to Truly Connected Communication - June 4, 2026
- Presence and Self: The same place, different paths - April 9, 2026
- Where we’re coming from. The source of leadership and communication. - March 12, 2026