LEAD DIFFERENT - Issue 24

Welcome to Lead Different - rethinking communication for strategic minds in B2B tech.

This week in:

• Reputation and Trust - The Trust gap: what tech needs to fix in 2026

• Narrative Power - Transform stale narratives into ‘living’ stories

• Influence and Framing - What we can learn from persuasion masters

• Crucial Conversations - Improve skill navigating hard conversations

• Internal Comms - How to get teams to act fast

• Getting Clear - If you don’t practise what you preach, clarity is lost

• Ask Edith - How to summarise a technical roadmap to non-techies

• In The News - Australia’s AI and clean energy moment - Nvidia and Apple investments

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

The Trust Gap: What Tech Needs to Fix in 2026

2026 will be the year trust becomes a competitive advantage – not because the word is trendy, but because the gap between what tech companies say and what people believe is widening faster than most leaders admit.

On a positive note, business remains the most trusted institution globally, but trust in leaders, AI companies, and data use is falling. People like innovation; they just don’t trust how it will be governed, tested, or explained.

Across the next five issues, we’ll unpack the trust levers that matter for tech leaders next year:

1. Data stewardship

2. Transparent trade-offs

3. Real evidence over hype

4. The perception gap between executives and the market

5.  Giving people a meaningful ‘say’ in innovation, shapes adoption.

This week’s insight: Before year-end, get together with your team and start by naming your trust gaps – the places where your confidence in your capabilities exceeds your customers’ and employees’ belief in them. Until you see that gap clearly, nothing else works.

Next week: We’ll examine why data stewardship has become the new currency of trust.

Narrative Power – The leadership story playbook

Transform Stale Narratives into Vibrant Stories

In 2026, leading tech companies won’t only differentiate through well-crafted capability statements and thought-leadership claims, they’ll differentiate through narrative power - the ability to tell stories that feel real, reveal something refreshingly true, and help people understand who you are, what you value, and where you’re going.

Across the next 5 issues, we’ll break down the elements tech companies need to master in storytelling. They are:

1. Authenticity

2. Transparency

3. Rich detail

4. Narrative variety

5. Multi-channel storytelling

These are the fundamentals that separate a polished message from a story that lands with impact!

This week’s insight: Begin by auditing your stories. Are they neat, tidy, and forgettable, or do they contain the texture, tension, and difficult truth that make people believe you and believe in you?

And now a rant: Powerful storytelling starts by refusing to sanitise the truth. Unfortunately, too many B2B tech stories are polished into blandness, while business audiences spend their personal time immersed in rich, hyper-personalised content on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. They may want business insight from you, but they expect it to be crafted with the same raw authenticity and emotional pull as the consumer content they already trust.

To that end, next week we’ll break down why authentic stories are the bedrock of credibility.

Influence & Framing – Small moves, big impact

The Five Persuasion Masters We Can Learn From

If we want to be persuasive and influence how people think, feel, and act, we must first understand how people make decisions, interpret information, and decide who to trust.

Over the next five issues, we’ll break down insights from some of the most important thinkers in modern influence: Robert Cialdini, Chris Voss, Oren Klaff, Daniel Kahneman and Nancy Duarte.

Each of them brings a different lens:

• Cialdini explains the psychological triggers that shape behaviour

• Voss shows how influence works under pressure and tension

• Klaff teaches how to reframe assumptions and flip entrenched narratives

• Kahneman reveals how biases distort thinking and why framing matters

• Duarte shows how story structure moves groups, not just individuals

This week’s insight: Influence isn’t a single skill – it’s a system. When you understand the psychology, dynamics, framing, narrative, and biases, your communication becomes harder to dismiss.

Next week: We’ll unpack Cialdini’s principles and why influence begins with predictable human behaviour.

Crucial Conversations – Navigating high-stakes comms

A Skill to Master: Engaging in Difficult Conversations

Crucial Conversations is one of the most important books on communication I’ve ever read. It shaped how I approach difficult conversations – the ones that feel risky, emotional, high-stakes, or politically delicate, yet carry enormous consequences.

What makes the book powerful is its dual relevance: the principles apply just as much in business as they do in personal relationships.

At its core, the book teaches one truth: when the stakes are high, emotions run strong, and opinions differ, your ability to communicate determines whether you make progress or fracture trust.

Most people avoid these conversations. The best communicators learn to navigate them.

Across the next five issues, we’ll unpack the skills that matter most:

• Creating psychological safety in tense moments

• Recognising when a conversation turns ‘unsafe’

• Keeping dialogue open when emotions spike

• Speaking honestly without damaging relationships

• Making it easier for others to share the truth

This week’s insight: Crucial conversations don’t get better with time. They only get harder. Being in control or having control begins the moment you choose to step into the discussion rather than back away from it.

Next week: We’ll explore how to recognise the early signs that a conversation is becoming unsafe, and what to do immediately.

Internal Comms – How to connect, not just inform

How To Get Teams To Act Fast

Employees do their best work when direction is unmistakably clear.

Ambiguity slows execution, increases rework and erodes momentum.

Easiest way to achieve this is to stick with the essentials: what, how, when, where, who and why.

Sure it’s fundamental but as we get pulled into the end-of-year frenzy and chaos, we often forget to communicate the whys and wherefores of what we’re trying to achieve.

This week’s insight: Every message should answer the six essentials. If it doesn’t, the work will stall.

Next week: How clear language boosts confidence and sparks stronger performance.

Getting Clear – Communication that cuts through 

Communication Gets Muddy When Actions Don’t Match Words

Clear communication isn’t just about the words your choose to use. If what you say doesn’t match what you do, people stop believing even if your communication skills are exceptional.

Over the next five issues, we’ll explore:

• The clarity formula that gets your audience to trust and respect you

• The danger of over-explaining facts or exaggerating claims

• Why clear thinking makes for clear communication

• Clarity is about anchoring your ideas to one theme

• How clarity protects your boundaries and decisions

This week’s insight: Your message only works when your actions reinforce it. Alignment builds trust; misalignment destroys it instantly.

Next week: It’s not just about using simple words to explain complex ideas. There’s one more ingredient.

Ask Edith - Your communication challenges, answered

Summarising a Complex Technical Roadmap

Q: What’s the best way to present a technical roadmap for non-technical executives?

A: Translate complexity into consequence: “Here’s what we’re building, here’s why it matters, and here’s the business risk if we don’t.” Use three anchors: impact, investment, and timing. Skip the architecture; highlight decisions. Executives don’t need the how. They need the why this, why now, and what changes because of it.

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.

IN THE NEWS

A weekly look at tech leaders and companies in the news, how they communicate, and my verdict on whether they nailed it or missed the mark.