Executive communication moments when there's no second chance

Most of the work I’m focusing on today lives in a narrow, uncomfortable space. It’s the space where decisions are made in public and reputations shift in minutes. Where a room quietly decides whether to trust you, fund you, follow you, or move on without you. And where, more often than we like to admit, there isn’t a second chance. I didn’t learn this from books. I learned it from experience. By watching good work fail because it was poorly prepared and poorly framed. Like a

In high-stakes conversations, you rarely get a second chance to be understood. We’ve all heard this a lot. “Just tell a story.” We’ve all heard the advice at some point. Just tell a story. Easy to say, difficult to execute. Most founders are too close to their project to know which story will land. They will often default to what feels meaningful to them, not what is meaningful to the audience. Without context, a story feels vague. Sometimes it feels engineered. How many time

We’ve all been there. Or close enough. I certainly have. Years ago, I delivered an online training for a UK-based company on material I could teach in my sleep. I had other priorities at the time and assumed that any misalignment with the audience, who were different from my usual clients, could be fixed live. I improvised. I also felt close to the source material. They wanted a training that blended public speaking with internal visibility. A topic I know well. Too well, as

Many of us think leadership progression is blocked by a lack of confidence. It’s a fair assumption. We associate good leaders with confidence and assertive decision-making. But I’m increasingly seeing that this is rarely the issue. The leaders who struggle are often calm, capable, respected, and trusted. They simply assume their value is obvious. The truth is, it isn’t. In my experience, organisations don’t promote potential. They promote readability . So what does that mean?

Photo of an anamorphic portrait of Václav Havel, the former Czech president, created by sculptor Patrik Proško in 2023 at Vàclav Havel airport, Prague. (Taken by me summer 2025). I don’t think I’ve written about a political speech since 2020. That’s about 5 years, according to my calendar. But today I feel compelled to, after listening to a powerful speech delivered by Mark Carney at Davos last Monday. The feelings it stirred weren’t ones of motivation or empowerment. If anyt

Most people think a good pitch means being perfect the first time. It doesn’t. I write this from firsthand experience. I have a stubborn defect around over-preparing. For years, the one thing I tried to do, and was sometimes encouraged to do, was to hit the mark at any cost on the first attempt. More often than not, this showed up as over-delivery. Too many frameworks, too much material and too little space. One example I can think of is when giving a short training session

A few days ago, Mike Novogratz , CEO of $GLXY tweeted something stark: that we may already be living in a world where truth itself feels unstable. Add AI-generated images, video, and deepfakes, and the problem only accelerates. He’s not wrong about the pressure we’re under. But the deeper issue isn’t that truth has disappeared. It’s that our capacity to judge calmly  is being eroded. I mean, how many times have you watched a movie trailer online only to realise halfway throug

By 2026, the real leadership risk won’t be using  AI; nobody's stopping that train. The real risk will be outsourcing thinking to it . I say this as someone who actively works with AI every day. I love working with large language models. The strategies evolve constantly. It feels almost like a gold rush in innovation, learning, and entrepreneurial development. For months now, I’ve used them as brainstorming and sparring partners to: Explore ideas. Stress-test strategies. Remo

Most leadership communication problems today are not about clarity. They’re about competitive volume. We’ve started confusing loud communication  with clear communication . By Michael Rickwood Over the past months, my work on LinkedIn has sharpened something I was already sensing in the media and in leadership rooms long before social platforms made it obvious. There is a growing confusion between loud communication and clear communication. They are not the same. Loud communi

Leadership communication is not a luxury in the age of AI. It is the stabilising force that keeps organisations from drifting into confusion. By Michael Rickwood Something unsettling is happening inside companies in 2025. AI systems are being deployed everywhere, all at once. The promise is efficiency. The reality is disorder. I have not seen disruption at this scale before. The closest comparison is the arrival of the internet in the late 90s (when I was a student), when acc

In today's world, it's time to get curious. Most people treat curiosity as a soft skill. Something we encourage in children and dust off in brainstorming sessions. In my work with founders and executives, curiosity behaves differently. It is not gentle. It is a precision tool. Sometimes it is the only thing that cuts through the noise. And the excuses. When I coach, curiosity begins with a pressure test. Why now? Why this audience? Why should anyone care beyond the features?

The 7-step trust sequence for your pitch. Trust in business is hard currency. More important than talent. More important than trophies. And certainly more important than whatever “innovation theatre” many founders mistake for leadership. Research from Paul Zak’s neuroscience of trust reminds us that trust is not a soft concept. It literally alters brain chemistry. It changes how teams collaborate, how risk is perceived and how decisions get made. In leadership and investment,

Clarity is the most underrated leadership currency we have. I have coached leaders for years, and a pattern keeps repeating. The people who look confident on stage are not always the ones who hold the room. The leaders who truly command attention are the ones who make things unmistakably clear. I learned this the hard way. Years ago in Brussels, I stood in front of sixty executives teaching a vocal-impact concept that had holes I had not seen. Halfway through a slide, I reali

This is the first in a series of articles dedicated to my Tech-focused Pitch Work and the ongoing improvement of my 7-Step Pitch Founder Framework PDF. I have worked with founders for more than thirteen years, and in that time I have watched hundreds of pitches succeed or collapse in real time. The pattern is familiar. The moment a pitch becomes a tour of features, the room quietly disconnects. Innovation alone does not help anyone understand the opportunity in front of them.

Yes, I know its a little late for Halloween, but here are 5 spooky story skeletons for last-minute story telling. Practice, share, rinse and repeat. Last week, I gave a keynote in front of 120 students in Paris on how to put storytelling into action.We had a great session, and what I shared was a simple and memorable way to tell meaningful stories quickly, even under pressure. In our careers, when we try to connect with people around truth and trust, one thing matters above

Layoffs dominate the headlines, but history suggests something else is happening beneath the panic, a quiet renaissance of work itself. Last week, Amazon announced it would lay off 30,000 corporate employees — roughly 10% of its white-collar workforce. They’re not alone. UPS is cutting 20,000 jobs in the US, Nestlé 16,000 worldwide, Lufthansa 4,000 by 2030, and Novo Nordisk 11% of its staff. However you cut it, these are brutal numbers. There’s no sugar-coating that. “Every a

Two weeks ago, I started feeling what I assumed was just a mix of back pain and flu symptoms brought on by overwork and some intense wood-cutting over the weekend. I pushed through it, using ChatGPT occasionally to track how I was feeling, try to get a picture of what was going on, and find small ways to sleep better. Nothing seemed urgent. Just a difficult week, I told myself. And the tips from the AI were helping alleviate the symptoms, too. Then I traveled to Corrèze to h

Uncertainty isn’t the enemy of leadership; it’s the arena where leadership is tested. Over the past few years, I’ve learned that some of life’s hardest moments mirror the same challenges leaders face in business: navigating the unknown with integrity, clarity, and calm. Uncertainty is not a regional issue; it’s a global constant. Whether in the U.S., Europe, or China, leaders today face a world where unpredictability is no longer an exception; it’s the rule. Here in France, w

In 2025, wicked problems are multiplying, but so are the tools to solve them. Article update: 13 October 2025. In 2025, Change rarely...

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