LEAD DIFFERENT

Welcome to Lead Different - delivering strategic communication on the edge of AI and upheaval - helping you shift thinking and mobilise change.

This week in:

• Reputation and Trust - Improve empathy with this simple exercise

• Narrative Power - Turn your Use Cases into compelling stories

• Influence and Framing - Seven steps to shaping the RFP/tender

• Crucial Conversations - How to figure out who’s undermining you

• Internal Comms - Building more productive & fulfilled teams

• Getting Clear - Confusing your audience with messy visuals?

• Ask Edith - Balancing the goals of your partners with clients’ needs

• The Leadership Imprint - Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg

Already subscribed? Great to have you. If not, subscribe to shape bold moves.

Reputation & Trust – how to earn trust or get it back

Practising Empathy – Crucial to Building Trust

Sympathy feels for people; empathy feels with them. Sympathy keeps distance, “I’m sorry you’re struggling.” Empathy closes the gap, “I understand what it’s like, and I see it from your side.”

Leaders who show sympathy may soothe, but leaders who express empathy inspire loyalty, because people feel seen and understood.

In sales, sympathy sounds like pity. Empathy sounds like partnership: “I get your constraints, let’s find a way through.”

Trust grows when you walk in their shoes, not as a bystander, but as someone willing to share the weight of the journey.

👇 Download this simple role-playing exercise to spark empathy and shift perspective.

Narrative Power – The leadership story playbook

From Use Case To Story 

A use case describes how a product, service, or solution works for a specific scenario. It’s functional: the system does this, the user achieves that. Clear, but flat. What makes it compelling is turning it into a story.

Stories introduce tension and resolution. They have heroes and obstacles.

Instead of “The platform reduces processing time by 40%”, say:

A finance team drowns in manual reconciliations (villain). They’re overworked, morale drops. Enter the platform (the hero’s talisman). Stress peaks at audit time - until automation clears the backlog overnight (resolution). Confidence returns.

Here’s a simple playbook to move from use case to story:

1. Name the hero – Who’s at the centre? A customer, a team, a leader?

2. Identify the villain – What’s the obstacle, pain point, or threat they face?

3. Build the tension – Show the struggle and the high-stress moment where stakes peak.

4. Resolve with impact – Introduce your solution and the relief, success, or transformation it brings.

When you shape use cases this way, you shift from explanation to persuasion.

Facts remain, but meaning lands deeper because your audience sees themselves in the struggle and the relief.

Influence & Framing – Small moves, big impact

How to Shape The RFP

Many tech companies sit back and wait for an RFP to land. By then, the rules are set and often stacked against them. The smarter move is to shape the tender before it’s written.

Of course, this only works if trust already exists – built through consistent contact that delivers value such as thought leadership, discovery sessions, workshops, and guidance that demonstrates your expertise. With that in mind, here are small moves that steer big outcomes: 

1. Seed the conversation early – Share insights on industry shifts, regulatory requirements, or emerging risks that will inevitably shape buying decisions. Position yourself as the source of clarity.

2. Frame the problem with precision – Use workshops and discovery meetings to define the challenge in the buyer’s own language. Help them articulate the stakes, impacts, and success criteria.

3. Map complexity to clarity – Simplify their thinking by showing interdependencies (tech, people, process). Decision-makers value suppliers who untangle complexity.

4. Introduce solution language – Subtly use your terminology in discussions and documents. If it shows up in the RFP wording, you’ve already influenced the frame.

5. Shape evaluation criteria – Guide the buyer on how to measure success: security, scalability, speed, cost-to-value. When criteria mirror your strengths, you gain the edge.

6. Validate with value – Share small proof points (mini-case studies, benchmarks, ROI examples) that reinforce why the shaped criteria matter.

7. Be the trusted editor – Offer to ‘sense-check’ draft RFIs or RFPs under the guise of helping them refine clarity. This is often the most direct lever for influence.

The result: the buyer feels supported in writing a sharper, more useful tender, and you’ve subtly tilted the playing field toward your strengths, without ever pushing.

Crucial Conversations – Navigating high-stakes comms

Unmasking the Hidden Saboteur

When you sense you’re being undermined, it’s rarely obvious who’s behind it.

In sales, it might be the unseen influencer killing your deal. In projects, the quiet saboteur slowing progress. In leadership, the colleague undermining decisions.

To unearth them, you need subtle questions that draw out hidden dynamics, like:

1. “Whose opinion tends to carry the most weight in conversations about this?”
   Reveals who has outsized influence, even if they’re not in the room.

2. “If someone were to raise concerns about this approach, who do you think it would be?”
   Surfaces the likely resistor without directly naming them.

3. “When progress slows, whose voice do people wait for before moving forward?”
   Exposes the person creating bottlenecks.

4. “If I wanted to make sure I’ve got everyone aligned, whose perspective would be most important to include?”
   Identifies the quiet power broker shaping outcomes behind the scenes.

5. “Who do people tend to check with informally before making decisions?”
   Points to the hidden influencer - the shadow decision-maker.

What’s really important is to ask these questions with curiosity, not accusation. This allows for the hidden disruptor to reveal themselves - not through confrontation but through the patterns others point you toward.

Internal Comms – How to connect, not just inform

When Teams Win, The Business Wins

Research links stronger teams to stronger companies. For example, teams that feel psychologically safe, where people freely take interpersonal risks, show higher learning, efficacy, and productivity. Gallup research also shows that boosting employee well-being can raise individual productivity by around 10%.

If your goal is to build stronger, more productive, and fulfilled teams, try these quick, psychology-backed exercises:

1. Active Listening Rounds – Each person speaks for two minutes; others only paraphrase back. Builds empathy (Carl Rogers).

2. Strength Swap – Share one strength you see in a teammate. Reinforces positive regard.

3. Two Truths and a Struggle – Adds authenticity, lowering barriers.

4. Future Visioning – Teams describe “a great year ahead” together - perfect to prepare for 2026. Anchors alignment (positive psychology).

Nurturing productive, creative teams is a superpower - and it directly impacts profitability.

Getting Clear – Communication that cuts through 

Visuals That Speak, Not Confuse

A chart, graph or diagram is only useful if it says something. If you need to explain it, it’s not helping.

When adding short descriptions or titles to visuals, make them meaningful, like “Revenue up 15% after Q2 launch” versus “Q2 Revenue.”

Strip the noise: fewer bars, simpler colours.

Visuals should speed comprehension, not slow it down.

And always ask: what’s the takeaway? If there isn’t one, the visual doesn’t belong.

Ask Edith - Your communication challenges, answered

Balancing Clients and Partners Without Losing Either

Q: We’re a partner for a tech vendor’s premium solution. Some of our major clients are now seeking more affordable alternatives with similar rich functionality. We can support those, too, but we don’t want to damage our partner relationship. How do we manage the delicate balance of staying on good terms with our major partner and with clients?

A: The key is transparent framing. Position yourself as client-first and partner-loyal. With clients, emphasise your role as a trusted advisor: “We’ll guide you to the right solution for your needs, even if that includes alternatives.” With the vendor, highlight your continued advocacy: “Our priority is long-term client retention, which keeps them in your ecosystem where possible.” Avoid secrecy. Both sides need to feel you’re invested in their success. Done well, this maintains trust on both fronts.

Got a communication challenge you want answered in the next issue of this newsletter? Reply to this email with your question and I’ll give you my perspective.

THE LEADERSHIP IMPRINT

30-second read on what great, and not so great, leaders reveal about communication: what to emulate, what to avoid and what to apply today.