The Voices Behind Your English
By Richard Marshall
Most professionals who freeze when speaking English at work have more than a language problem. They have a confidence problem.
And I know this because of what happened in a Peruvian bar in central Madrid, when a friend told me my Spanish was a 4 out of 10.
Marcus has known me since 2010. He's from Barcelona, speaks fluent English, and has watched me wade through eleven years of Spanish with the patience of someone who genuinely wanted me to get there. We were having lunch, I was telling a story in English, feeling good, feeling like myself, and then suddenly the expression on his face just changed.
He went a kind of milky white in his complexion and sat bolt upright in his chair.
He looked me in the eye and said, "You know what I've just realised, Richard?"
"No, what?"
"I've just realised that when we're together, you can always be yourself. I mean your actual, true, genuine self. You can be and say whatever you like and you know I'll understand you. That must feel amazing."
I looked at him for a few seconds and asked what he meant.
"It doesn't matter how long we'll have known each other for," he said. "I'll never be able to be me around you. I'll never be able to tell jokes and funny stories the way you can with me. I'll never be able to use the colloquial terms and slang expressions you use when you speak to me in English. Because you won't be able to understand me. Because I have to be honest with you, Richard. Your Spanish isn't as good as you think it is. It's a 4 out of 10 at best. And I'd rather tell you than watch you sit in a group of Spanish speakers wondering why you can't follow what's going on."
Quoting one of my favourite Eddie Murphy characters, Donkey from Shrek, I said "you cut me deep Shrek", then I ordered another beer.
But here's what I've been thinking about ever since, because that moment didn't just sting. It activated something I now recognise in almost every client I work with. Three distinct voices, all arriving at once, all with something to say about what had just happened.
The first voice said: you should be better than this by now. Eleven years in Spain and a 4 out of 10. It was relentless, precise, and it knew exactly where to press.
The second voice said: I knew it. I knew I wasn't enough. It didn't argue with the low score he’d given me. It just wrapped itself around the number and held it there.
And the third voice, quieter than the other two, but still there, said: have another beer. You're doing your best and you can more than get by in this language.
I call these three voices the Controller, the Protector, and the Guide. And if you've ever frozen when speaking English at work, gone blank mid-sentence in a meeting, or felt yourself go quiet precisely when you most needed to speak, you already know all three of them.
The Controller carries every standard you've ever been measured against. Teachers, managers, cultural expectations, the memory of every time you reached for a word and it wasn't there. It's not trying to harm you. It thinks it's keeping you sharp. But when it takes over, your words become rehearsed, your voice hesitates, and somewhere between the thought and the sentence, you disappear. This is the voice behind the professional who can't speak English in meetings not because they don't know the language, but because the Controller won't let anything out until it's perfect. Which means nothing gets out at all.
The Protector remembers every moment you were embarrassed, misunderstood, or dismissed in English. It keeps those memories close, not to torture you, but because it genuinely believes that staying quiet is safer than the alternative. This is the voice behind the executive who goes blank when speaking English under pressure, not from ignorance, but from protection. It would rather you said nothing than risk saying the wrong thing.
The Guide is neither of these. It doesn't demand perfection and it doesn't hide from risk. It's the voice that says: say what you know. You can always clarify. You don't need to impress anyone, you just need to connect. It's the voice that let me sit across from Marcus, absorb a 4 out of 10, and still go home feeling more or less intact.
The work I do with clients isn't about silencing the Controller or ignoring the Protector. Both of them are trying to help, in their own limited way. The work is about learning to notice which voice is leading in the moment, and choosing, consciously, to let the Guide step forward instead.
Because here's what I've come to understand, from my own Spanish and from watching senior executives work through this in English: the reason you freeze when speaking English at work, the reason your mind goes blank mid-sentence, the reason you go quiet in the meetings where you most need to speak. It's rarely about the language. It's about which voice got there first.
Before your next meeting, before your next presentation, before the next moment where English feels heavier than it should, try this. Notice which voice is loudest. Name it. And then ask yourself: what would the Guide say right now?
Because the Guide has a simpler ask than the other two.
Say the thing. Not perfectly, not without the odd stumble, but say it, because the person in the room who has spent years earning their place at that table already has everything they need to be heard.
They just need to let the right voice lead.
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If any of this resonates and you'd like to explore working together, the best place to start is the three-question form on my Work With Me page.
No pitch, no pressure. Just a chance for me to understand where you are before we speak.
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