Who Sahd Is Before the Call Begins
Before we hear a single word, we need to understand what Sahd carries into this conversation.
Sahd speaks three languages. Not as a party trick — as a lived reality. He has learned to think, feel, argue, comfort, negotiate, and dream in multiple tongues. That is not a small thing. That is an extraordinary cognitive and cultural achievement that most people on earth will never come close to.
And yet — somewhere along the way — Sahd has absorbed a belief. A quiet, persistent, deeply embedded belief that when he is in an English-speaking space, he is the one who is deficient. That his third language, measured against someone's first, is something to apologise for. That the burden of communication falls on him — the person reaching furthest — rather than on the person who has never had to reach at all.
This is not Sahd's failing. It is what happens when you grow up multilingual in a world that treats English monolingualism as the default standard of intelligence and competence.
The Dialogue — Stage by Stage
Listen to what Sahd does before he says anything of substance. He apologises. Twice. He diminishes himself. And then he reframes his entire purpose in this conversation as a courtesy to Ben — "I am just trying to make you understand."
This is not shyness. It is not politeness. It is something learned — possibly over decades — of being a multilingual person in English-speaking spaces. The belief Sahd has absorbed, somewhere along the way, is this: your presence in this language is a problem you need to manage for the people around you. You owe them an apology for the effort of understanding you.
That belief is so deep it doesn't feel like a belief. It feels like a fact. Notice how Sahd says: "I know that my English is not that great." Not "I worry" or "I feel." He knows. It has been confirmed, in his experience, many times — by impatient expressions, by repeated requests to speak up, by the subtle signals English-speaking rooms give to people who arrive in them differently. This is what makes it harder than ordinary insecurity to shift. It is not a fear. It is a conclusion. And it arrived before the conversation even started.
Sahd mentions it almost as a footnote that completely transforms the picture: this is his third language. Ben files that immediately — not as curiosity, as evidence.
The word "articulate" is deliberate and precise. Ben does not say "clear" or "understandable." Articulate means structured, organised, intelligent. It is a compliment aimed at the mind behind the words, not the words themselves. Ben is already beginning to separate Sahd's intelligence from his linguistic medium — because he can hear they have been fused together in Sahd's self-concept.
Sahd's response — "that is this. Brilliant." — is fractured syntax, but the feeling is delight. He is surprised that his third language qualifies as brilliant to a native speaker. That surprise is data. It tells Ben exactly how low a bar Sahd has set for himself.
This is the frame inversion. The most structurally important move in the entire conversation.
Ben does not say "your English is good enough." That would be a reassurance — a pat on the head that leaves the hierarchy intact. Sahd would still be the person being judged by the English standard, just passing it slightly better than he thought.
Instead, Ben dismantles the hierarchy itself. He relocates the embarrassment — from Sahd, who speaks three languages, to the monolingual English speaker who has never had to reach beyond their own tongue. The person who should feel shame in this equation is not Sahd. It is the person who only speaks one language and expects the world to meet them in it.
This is decolonisation in real time. What Frantz Fanon called the "epidermalization of inferiority" — the internalisation of colonial shame as personal identity — Ben names and inverts in a single breath. The shame is correctly re-assigned to the system that produced it, not to the person who absorbed it.
Sahd is complimenting Ben's British accent — and in doing so reveals the depth of the problem. The accent is not just something Sahd finds beautiful. It is something he hopes to have. He is measuring himself against a standard he does not meet and may never meet: the sound of native English.
Ben registers this as a danger signal. If left unaddressed, Sahd will spend years measuring his communication against a benchmark that is irrelevant to his actual capability. The aspiration to sound British as a marker of communication success is a trap. It ties worth to proximity to Englishness — a colonial standard of correct speech.
Ben does not say any of this aloud. He answers by demonstrating the opposite posture — and then gives Sahd the language to hold it himself.
"You speak more clearly than me." This is not false modesty. It is a precision instrument. By positioning Sahd above himself in the hierarchy of clarity, Ben dismantles the idea that his nativeness confers superiority — and uses his own social capital as the English speaker to elevate Sahd. He is using his privilege to transfer power.
The word "honour" is significant. Ben does not say "be proud of" or "feel good about." He says honour — a word that implies duty, reverence, something that deserves to be taken seriously. He is not asking Sahd to manage his insecurity. He is asking him to treat his multilingualism as something sacred. That is a developmental reframe, not a pep talk.
This is the most politically precise moment in the conversation. Ben names the system. Not "some people are rude" — but a structural critique: English-language expectation is a privilege, and privilege wielded unconsciously is obnoxiousness.
By naming the system, Ben does something therapeutically crucial: he externalises the source of Sahd's shame. The shame was never Sahd's to carry. It belongs to the structure — to centuries of English being positioned as the default tongue of commerce, law, and legitimacy. Sahd absorbed that structure. Ben is removing it from Sahd's body and holding it up to the light for what it is: an artefact of empire, not a measure of worth.
Cultural intelligence and psychodynamic work — in the same sentence.
Ben has shifted from the conceptual to the somatic. He has given Sahd a frame and a worldview. Now he gives him a body. A posture. A script he can inhabit in the room, under pressure, in the exact moment when the shame reflex would normally fire.
"Would you like me to say that again?" is a masterclass in a single sentence. It is calm. It signals competence. It subtly repositions the listener — putting the question of comprehension back on them rather than accepting it as Sahd's failure. And it gives Sahd something to do with his face, his voice — a physical anchor for a new self-concept.
The comedic option — "it's my third language" — is not a joke. It is a dominance tool. Humour deployed with confidence signals you are at ease in the room. It moves Sahd from supplicant to court-holder. Ben is teaching him to hold the space, not shrink in it.
This is the moment of arrival. Clinically precise in what it shows.
Sahd does not say "I feel more confident." He says "I've learned how I can express myself in a better way." That is a different cognitive register entirely. He has not just received a compliment — he has installed a new operational framework. The learning is active. The agency is his.
The phrase "express myself" rather than "speak English" is significant. He has moved from a deficit model — English not good enough — to an expressive one: I have something to say and I know how to say it. In a clinical setting, this arc could take months. It took three minutes and twelve seconds. Because every intervention was aimed at the right level simultaneously.
Ben discloses his background at the end. Not the beginning. This sequencing is not accidental — it is the signature of a transformational leader rather than a credentialist. A credentialist establishes authority first: "I'm a coach, a therapist — so listen to me." Ben does the opposite. He intervenes first, as a human being, and then contextualises it. By the time Sahd hears the credentials, he has already experienced their output.
"I can tell by their dialect where they're feeling about themselves." This is the Justice Minds Process stated in plain language. Dialect — word choice, rhythm, the structure of the apology, the position of the self-diminishment within the sentence — is diagnostic data. Ben reads it like a forensic scientist reads a scene. Most people hear the words. Ben hears the emotional architecture behind them.
"Improvement" implies you are currently deficient. It implies a gap between where you are and where you should be. It is the vocabulary of the apology reflex — the same worldview that made Sahd say sorry before the conversation began.
"Fine-tuning your performance" implies you are already performing. Already capable. Already arrived. You are simply making something already good into something excellent. That is not a motivational reframe — it is an ontological one. It changes what kind of thing Sahd is. He is not a student fixing errors. He is a performer refining craft.
This distinction — improvement versus fine-tuning — is the distilled essence of the Justice Minds Process. Every intervention in this conversation has done exactly that: found what is already working, and made it more precise.
Watch the Whole Conversation
Now watch it from the beginning — with everything you know. Four minutes and forty seconds. One man's transformation, in real time.
If You Recognise Yourself in Sahd
This conversation is not rare. It happens every day — in offices in Dhaka and Dubai, in boardrooms in Lagos and London, in seminar rooms in Singapore and São Paulo. It happens to the Indian master's graduate who apologises for his accent before presenting to a British team. It happens to the Bangladeshi professional who over-explains herself in every meeting, convinced the room is waiting for her to fail. It happens to the Nigerian consultant who speaks five languages and still shrinks in the presence of someone who speaks one [1].
If you are reading this and you recognise the apology — the reflex that fires before the idea, the constant low-grade monitoring of how you land in English-speaking spaces — you are not deficient. You are carrying something that was never yours to carry.
That work is what Ben Mak does. Not in lecture halls. Not with textbooks. In conversation — by reading what you carry in the way you speak, and responding to all of it at once.
Work with Ben Mak
Ben Mak works with international professionals, leaders, and organisations across the UK and globally — applying the Justice Minds Process to communication, identity, authority, and presence in cross-cultural settings.
Whether you are navigating a new culture, building your voice in a second or third language, leading across difference, or developing the next generation of international talent — the work begins with one conversation.
Ben's background spans mindset coaching, therapy, hypnosis, forensic intelligence, and business consultancy. He does not apply a single framework. He reads the full person — and responds to what he finds.
To enquire about coaching, training, or institutional programmes: Contact Justice Minds Forensic Intelligence Ltd directly.
What Sahd Left With
He arrived at 9:03am apologising for being alive in a language that is not his first, second, or third tongue — positioning himself as an inconvenience, a miscommunication waiting to happen, a person who must constantly translate his existence for the convenience of those around him.
Four minutes and forty seconds later:
The Four-Minute Transfer
- His multilingualism reframed: from deficiency to elite capability
- A verbal script for the next room: "Would you like me to say that again?"
- An understanding that the shame was never his — it belonged to the structure
- A new identity: not a student improving, but a performer fine-tuning
- The experience of being fully seen — not managed, not processed, but genuinely met
[1] Research on accent bias in professional environments consistently shows that non-native English accents — particularly from South Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa — are rated as less competent in Western workplace settings, independent of actual linguistic clarity. This is not a communication deficit. It is a perception bias embedded in institutions that treat British and American English as the unmarked standard of professional communication. The Justice Minds Process is developed in direct response to this structural reality — training individuals and organisations to recognise, name, and dismantle accent-based and language-based hierarchies in professional life.