I’ve spent nearly three decades advising leaders on how they communicate – and by extension, how they lead. Across corporate boardrooms, government offices and community organisations, I’ve developed a fairly clear set of convictions about what good leadership looks like, not as theory, but in the room, under pressure, when it counts.
So when I read the work of thinkers like Simon Sinek, Ray Dalio, Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, Marcus Aurelius and Paulo Coelho, I’m not looking for revelation. What I find, consistently, is recognition. These writers, who span vastly different disciplines and eras, keep landing on the same territory I’ve been working in for years.
I’m not claiming credit for their thinking. I’m saying the principles hold, and they hold because they’re true.
This edition of 47 is a reflection on some of the writers and thinkers who have shaped my approach to leadership over the years, and perhaps might add something worthwhile to your own reading list too.
In particular, I’m drawing on:
- Simon Sinek: someone I find myself returning to again and again. There’s a reason he’s so widely recognised. His work focuses on the power of purpose and what builds trust, loyalty and long-term success, and I love Start with Why.
- Ray Dalio: in Principles he shows you how to be systematic and be real, focusing on truth as essential to any good outcome, and my favourite: radical transparency as a tool to learn rapidly and create effective change.
- Stephen Covey: in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People he shares timeless principles for how to function as a human being. A focus on integrity, fairness, honesty and human dignity, and how proactive behaviour, habits and clear priorities lead to effective and balanced lives.
- Jim Collins: through Good to Great and Built to Last, he makes a compelling case that enduring performance comes not from heroic individuals but from the right people, rigorous thinking, and the discipline to focus on what you can be genuinely best at. His concept of Level 5 Leadership where fierce professional will is combined with personal humility is one of the most honest and under-discussed ideas in leadership writing.
- Marcus Aurelius: it is genuinely surprising how much Meditations stands the test of time. I have read and re-read it over the years, pouring over stoic philosophy in practice, thinking about self-discipline, acceptance of what cannot be controlled, and living with virtue.
- Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist might seem an unusual choice alongside business thinkers, but in my experience, the leaders who communicate most powerfully aren’t drawing on frameworks alone. They’re drawing on a sense of personal meaning. That’s his territory. Coelho explores the pursuit of personal destiny, encouraging people to follow intuition and embrace the journey toward a more meaningful life.
Clarity of purpose is not optional – it’s the whole job
I’ve worked with leaders who are technically articulate – clear sentences, good structure, confident delivery – and yet nothing lands. I’ve seen it in media briefings where the journalist walks away unmoved, in all-staff addresses where people leave the room more uncertain than when they arrived, in board presentations where the numbers are right but the room stays cold. Almost always, when we dig into it, the leader hasn’t resolved what they actually believe about the direction they’re asking people to follow. The words are fine. The conviction isn’t there yet.
Sinek’s central argument is one I make to clients constantly: if you’re clear on why, the how becomes navigable. When leaders can’t communicate effectively, the gap is rarely vocabulary. It’s usually a lack of certainty about what they believe. They haven’t done the harder work of getting clear on what they’re actually trying to achieve and why it matters.
Collins adds a useful discipline here. His Hedgehog Concept – the intersection of what you’re deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine – is really a structured method for arriving at that same clarity of purpose. It forces the uncomfortable question: are you pursuing this direction because it’s genuinely yours, or because it looks right from the outside?
Coelho approaches this from a different angle, but he gets to the same place. People move forward not because the path is certain, but because the direction means enough to pursue despite the uncertainty.
This is the core of what I do with leaders: get them clear on their intent, because once that’s there, the language follows.
Your first position is a draft, not a verdict
One of the toughest challenges leaders ask me to help with is communicating a change of position – whether that’s a strategic shift, a policy reversal, or a public stance that needs to evolve. It only becomes difficult when identity has got tangled up with the idea. Once those are separated, the messaging is straightforward: here’s what I understood, here’s what changed, here’s where I now stand.
Dalio built an entire operating system around this idea: you are probably at least partially wrong, most of the time. The response isn’t self-doubt, but structured challenge. Covey frames it more humanly: seek first to understand, including where your own assumptions might be off.
Collins observed the same pattern from a different vantage point. The leaders who took companies from good to great didn’t start with the answers – they started with the questions. They confronted brutal facts about their situation without losing faith in their direction. Collins called this the Stockdale Paradox: holding clear-eyed honesty about current reality alongside unwavering belief in eventual outcome. It’s a discipline I recognise immediately in the leaders I’ve worked with who navigate restructures and crises well – and its absence in the ones who don’t.
I’ve sat across the table from enough senior leaders to know that the ones who get into trouble are rarely the ones who make bold calls. They’re the ones who can’t reconsider them. Who’ve fused their identity with their position, so changing their mind feels like losing.
The strongest communicators I’ve worked with hold their ideas firmly enough to act on them, and loosely enough to improve them. They know how to be prepared, and how to pivot.
Discipline beats emotion, every time
Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations for himself – a private reminder to stay steady, to control what he could, and not let ego run the show. He wasn’t performing leadership. He was practising it.
In communication terms, this is the difference between a leader who responds and one who reacts. One is a choice. The other is a habit you haven’t examined yet.
Collins arrives at something similar through research rather than philosophy. His Level 5 Leaders are not the loudest or most charismatic in the room. They’re the most disciplined about focus, about culture, about not letting short-term pressure override long-term thinking. The ego, in Collins’ framework, is actually the enemy of sustainable performance.
I spend a significant time preparing leaders and organisations for the moments that can’t be scripted. The journalist who pivots mid-interview. The staff member who asks the question no one was supposed to ask. The crisis that lands on a Friday afternoon with cameras arriving Monday morning. Preparation matters, but what matters more is the disposition you bring: steady, clear, honest about what you know and what you don’t.
What I’ve seen derail good leaders is rarely poor strategy. More often it’s reactive behaviour: reacting too fast, holding a position too rigidly, letting frustration leak into the room. Discipline in how you respond, not just what you decide, is what keeps you credible when the situation is difficult.
What none of this fully prepares you for is getting it visibly wrong. And at some point, most leaders do – a decision that doesn’t hold up, a message that lands badly, a call made under pressure that looks different in hindsight. I’ve sat with leaders through genuine crises – not only difficult quarters, but situations where reputation, relationships and organisational trust were genuinely at stake. What determines recovery is rarely the communications strategy alone. It’s character, and then communication that honestly reflects it.
Leaders who recover credibility after a public misstep almost always do the same things: they acknowledge what happened without over-explaining it, they’re specific about what they’ve learned, and they move forward without performing contrition.
Dalio would call it another data point in the loop. Aurelius would say the obstacle is the path. In practice, it’s less philosophical than that – it’s just the willingness to be seen getting something wrong and keep going anyway. That, more than almost anything, is what builds long-term trust.
The environment is your responsibility
One thing that gets underplayed in conversations about leadership communication is that it’s not just about how you show up. It shapes what the people around you feel able to do.
Dalio, Covey, and Sinek all arrive at this from different angles, but the insight is consistent: good decisions come from environments where people can speak honestly and where ideas get properly tested, not just endorsed.
Collins is perhaps the most systematic on this point. His emphasis on getting the right people on the bus – and crucially, in the right seats – is really an argument about environment. Culture isn’t a values poster. It’s who you choose to surround yourself with, and what behaviours you reward and tolerate. Mediocrity in the team doesn’t just limit performance; it silences the honest voices you need most.
The test I keep coming back to is simple. A leader’s communication culture shows up not in what they say, but in what their team feels safe to say back. If the people around you can’t push back, you’re not getting their best thinking – and if you’re not getting their best thinking, the decisions you’re making are based on an incomplete picture.
Communication culture is set from the top, whether the leader intends it or not. The question isn’t whether you’re setting it. You are. The question is whether it’s the one you’d choose.
A simple diagnostic I use with new clients: ask them what the last piece of genuinely uncomfortable feedback was that came up through their team. How long ago was it? What happened as a result? The answers tell you almost everything about the communication culture they’ve actually built – versus the one they think they have.
What I actually believe about leadership
When I put all of this together – the reading, the nearly three decades of client work, the conversations I’ve had in boardrooms and crisis situations and restructures – here’s where I land.
Leadership isn’t about projecting certainty. It’s about being clear on purpose while staying genuinely open to being wrong on execution. It’s about holding confidence and humility at the same time, without letting either tip into arrogance or paralysis.
Most people lean too far one way. Either they’re overly certain – the leader who’s stopped listening – or they’re endlessly questioning without ever acting. The ones who stand out are the ones who can sit in that tension and keep moving anyway.
In practice, that means setting direction clearly and then inviting challenge on how to get there. Making decisions, but revisiting them when new information emerges. Separating your identity from your ideas. Rewarding thoughtful disagreement, not just alignment. And slowing your reactions down – especially when the stakes are high.
It also means building your team and your communication culture deliberately – because when the hard moments come, and they always do, what carries you through isn’t just what you say. It’s the environment you’ve created around you, and whether the people in it feel able to tell you the truth.
None of this is new. That’s precisely the point. These ideas have endured because they reflect something real about how humans lead under pressure.
The difficulty was never understanding them. It’s applying them consistently – especially when it’s uncomfortable.
Leadership is less about having the answers and more about how you handle not having them.
That’s where I focus my work. And that’s where, when I read these thinkers, I feel most at home.
Coelho would call it following your Personal Legend – the idea that meaning isn’t found by waiting for certainty, but by moving toward what matters despite it. I’ve seen that play out in boardrooms as often as in novels. The leaders who communicate with genuine conviction aren’t the ones who have eliminated doubt. They’re the ones who’ve decided their direction is worth it.
