“The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” – Esther Perel
We all spend a lot of time figuring out how to work better with others. How to influence, communicate, and lead. With others this often involves negotiation, trade-offs and compromise. In leadership, I believe the most important negotiation you’ll ever have is the one happening inside you.
Esther Perel, renowned psychotherapist and relationship expert, reminds us that the quality of our relationships shapes the quality of our lives. While we often interpret this through the lens of our relationships with others, it begins much closer to home. The relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for every other interaction. When that relationship is tense, reactive, or fragmented, it shows. When it’s grounded, compassionate, and led with intention, everything else starts to shift.
You know the feeling of negotiating with yourself. When one part of you wants to step forward. Another pulls you back. One says, “Go for it.” The other says, “You’re not ready.” It can feel like a quiet tug-of-war or, at times, a full internal standoff. Most leaders try to solve this by pushing harder. Silencing the doubt. Overriding the fear. But that approach rarely creates ease. It creates internal tension.
What if the goal wasn’t to win the argument within you, but to lead it?
Introducing your inner community (and why it matters)
In coaching, I often talk to clients about their inner community. The many parts of you that think, feel, and act in different ways depending on the moment.
This idea isn’t new. Carl Jung introduced the concept of archetypes in the early 20th century. Carolyn Myss expanded on them as patterns we live out unconsciously in the 80s. More recently, Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model explains how we’re made up of sub-personalities, each trying to help us survive and belong.
None of your parts are random. Each one has a role.
- A Protector keeps you safe
- A Perfectionist lifts your standards
- An Imposter tries to shield you from failure
The challenge is not that these parts exist. It’s when they take over. When one part gets loud, it can drown out every other part and feel deafening or defeating. You move from choice into reaction. From clarity into noise. This is where your Essence comes in. The calm, steady part of you that can observe without being consumed. The part that leads, rather than reacts. Negotiating with yourself is about letting that part take the lead, and step into the spotlight. I use a technique called Focusing* to help people connect to their essence and parts. This is a somatic (bodily felt sense) to imagine their essence conversing with a part (or multiple parts) to help understand the situation and the way forward better.
The shift: from fighting to negotiating
Many people relate to their inner voice or voices (yes, we all have many!) as something to fix or get rid of. But the truth is, you can’t remove a part of yourself. You can only change your relationship with it. When you stop fighting, something important happens. The tension softens. Space opens. And what felt like conflict becomes conversation.
I saw this clearly with a client, Rochelle. She came to me wanting to “get rid of” her Imposter. Before presentations, her body would tighten. Her thoughts would spiral. She would over-prepare, trying to control the anxiety, but it only made this part persist.
When we reframed her Imposter as a part, everything shifted. Instead of pushing it away, she became curious. What was it trying to do? It wasn’t trying to sabotage her. It was attempting to protect her. Saving her from doing the wrong thing, looking incompetent or at worst, embarrassing herself, in front of influential senior leaders.
From that awareness, she asked a different question, who do I want to be in this moment?
After careful consideration, Rochelle chose her value of adventure to guide the inner negotiation. And conjure up a part of herself that was ignored by the imposter when it took over. Not to eliminate the fear, but to bring a different energy alongside it. The anxiety didn’t disappear immediately but had less of an impact. However her posture changed, and the energy flow in her body shifted to one of spaciousness and possibility. Over time with practice, a calibration occurred where the imposter stopped running the show. And that’s the work of an inner negotiation. Not removal or extinguishing. Rebalancing and recalibrating the place and purpose of your many parts. To help you navigate this technique of understanding and calibrating parts in real time, I developed a framework: Embrace. Energise. Evolve.
A practical tool: The 3Es
Let me walk you through how it works and make it personal to your own experience. In three steps you comfort, manage and negotiate with a part, or multiple parts as they reveal themselves. It’s great to start this process with deep breaths for 2-3 minutes and have your eyes closed.
1. Embrace: This is about acknowledging the part of you that’s present, without judgement or resistance and welcoming it. Even when it’s really challenging and uncomfortable.
Notice the part that’s present. Name it. Describe it. Sense where it lives in your body (or you may get a visual in your mind).
Instead of judging it or trying to avoid it, acknowledge it’s presence, “I sense your presence. Thanks for revealing yourself to me, I know you have something important to share about this situation.”
You can’t negotiate with something you refuse to recognise and acknowledge.
2. Energise: This is about understanding what that part needs and shifting your energy by meeting it, rather than fighting it.
Get curious about what it needs. Is it trying to protect you? Prove something? Keep you safe?
Ask, “What do you need from me right now?”
When you meet the need, rather than resist it – your energy shifts. The tension eases. You move from resistance into dialogue.
Once more get a sense of the feeling you’re experiencing in your body, or visual in mind.
3. Evolve: This is about choosing an aligned response to the part or adopting the useful aspects of the part, rather than letting it take over.
From this more settled place, consider how this part can support you, rather than control you.
Ask, “How might this part serve me in a useful way right now?” or “What would I like to dial up or soften?”
You might choose to bring in a value to guide your next step, like Rochelle did with adventure. Let that value shape how you show up, alongside this part, not against it.
Then take one small, intentional action to evolve your response to the situation. You’re not abolishing the part. You’re working with it. Redirecting its energy in a way that supports who you want to be.
Over time, this is how you build trust within yourself. You stop reacting to your parts and start leading them.
What this looks like in practice
Another client described her “Controller” as a tight grip in her chest. It drove her to over-manage her team, especially under pressure. When she slowed down and worked through the 3Es, she realised the controller was trying to create certainty. It didn’t trust that things would be okay otherwise. What it needed wasn’t more control. It needed reassurance. So instead of tightening her grip, she anchored into her value of trust. She delegated one task. Then another. Her leadership didn’t become less effective. It became more spacious. More empowering. And her team felt it immediately.
Experiment a little…
This exercise is about your own inner negotiation. Shifting from inner conflict to useful dialogue. Creating space to listen to the parts of you that get loud when you’re under pressure. You can use it when you feel stuck, anxious, or pulled in different directions.
Set aside 10 quiet minutes. Sit comfortably or lie down so your body feels supported.
Start with 2–3 minutes of slow, deep breathing. Inhale through your nose, exhale gently. Let your body settle. If it helps, close your eyes.
Embrace: Notice which part of you is present.
- What is it saying?
- How does it behave?
- Where do you feel it in your body, or what image comes to mind?
- Give it a name. Let its personality come through.
- Acknowledge it gently, “Thanks for revealing yourself. I know you have something important to share.”
Energise: Get curious about what this part needs.
- What is it trying to protect or create?
- Ask, “What do you need from me right now?”
- Notice what shifts in your body as you explore this.
- Rather than resisting it, imagine giving it what it needs.
When you meet a part with understanding, your energy softens and dialogue opens.
Evolve: From this more settled place, consider how this part can support you.
- How might it serve you in a more useful way?
- What would you like to dial up or soften?
- You might bring in a value to guide your next step.
- Choose one small, intentional action. Not perfect, just aligned.
Repeat this often. Not just when things feel hard, but as a way of leading yourself day to day.
Negotiating with yourself isn’t about silencing your inner voices. It’s about listening differently. Each part of your inner community is trying to help. Even the ones that feel inconvenient or uncomfortable. As you recalibrate the relationship you have with individual parts, and learn to lead your inner community with clarity, grounded in your values, something powerful happens…
The noise settles.
The tension softens.
And you move forward, not internally divided but aligned.
This is the work I do with leaders every day. Equipping you to navigate the ever-changing landscape of work by building your mindset, skillset, and confidence to lead yourself and others with clarity. And it starts within.
This article builds on an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Recalibrate, where I explore how leaders can stay grounded, clear and intentional in the midst of ongoing change. This book will align your inner clarity with your outer influence. If you’re keen to know when it’ll be launched, please sign up here for the pre-orders.
*Focusing is a guided way of gently turning your attention inward to notice what you’re sensing in your body, not just what you’re thinking. It helps you access a deeper knowing that hasn’t quite formed into words yet. When you give it space, clarity tends to occur on its own.
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