“Can you hear me, Major Tom?”

I bet you’ve heard this David Bowie masterpiece at least once in your life, haven’t you?

Well, we’re all Major Tom now.

Except our space is made of back-to-back Zooms where half the room is on mute, Slack threads that nobody reads past the first line, and LinkedIn posts that get 3 likes from bots. Everyone’s transmitting. Nobody’s receiving.

The problem isn’t your confidence. It’s your signal.

Most communication advice assumes you’re scared. That you need to believe in yourself more, speak up more, and be bolder. But the founders, coaches, and executives I work with? They’re not lacking confidence. They’re lacking cut-through.

Your message gets scrambled somewhere between your brain and the world. Speed scrambles it. Pressure scrambles it. Trying to be everywhere at once scrambles it. And then there’s this strange modern paranoia about sounding “too salesy” or “too much”, so you water everything down until it tastes like nothing.

And the paradox is that the more advice you read, the less you believe in your ability to deliver. Well, they all know better, don’t they? Who am I to try?

Throw in the avalanche of AI slop coating every platform, and your audience has developed a sixth sense for detecting BS. Vague promises trigger their gag reflex.

In 2026, loud won’t win. Clear will.

Strategy 1: Become boringly specific

Specificity is the new charisma.

Sounds wrong, doesn’t it? We’ve been conditioned to cast wide nets. Keep it broad. Don’t narrow your market. Stay flexible.

But broad is background noise. Broad is elevator music. Nobody remembers it, and nobody hums it later.

Try this:

Instead of: “I help leaders improve communication.”

Say: “I help founders have the hard conversations that stop teams from falling apart.”

Or: “I help coaches stop explaining what they do and start selling it.”

The brain needs a box to put you in. Something concrete. When someone at a dinner party says, “Do you know anyone who can help with X?” your name either surfaces immediately or it sinks.

Specific doesn’t shrink your audience. It sharpens your signal. People see precision and think: if they can name the exact problem, they’ve probably solved it before.

And I’ve received a gazillion questions on how can I narrow myself down? Often, some topics and ideas feel so dear it feels like we cut a part of ourselves, and we feel we need to write about that “crochet course we took and were proud of 13 years back” because it’s a part of us. Well, the good news is you don’t need to cut it all—you may need to reframe and refocus your stories because they are not just about you; they are a bridge between you and your customer’s heart.

Strategy 2: Lead with a point of view, not a résumé

“Your MBA doesn’t matter anymore. Your opinion does.” But it depends. If you’re trying to find a job or work with corporates, your PhD matters more than your MBA—still. But it’s no longer just a paper. You need to have a personal brand if you want to be a leader. You need to be capable of delivering your points confidently and helping people hear your message and hopefully implement it. Because as a leader, you delegate, connect teams, and impress stakeholders. And I know as a founder, you know your coding or creative part, as a coach, you love working with your clients, and both of you, along with executives, don’t like content creation, but hear me out: you need to build it to stand out. They need to know you are there to be able to invite you to that collab, job, gig, stage—you get me.

All the research on trust and thought leadership says the same thing: people stopped caring about credentials around 2020. Now they want to know what you think. What you’ve noticed. What you’d bet money on.

Your LinkedIn bio with its alphabet soup of letters after your name? That’s wallpaper. Decorative but forgettable.

A point of view isn’t a hot take or a Twitter provocation. It’s a defensible belief you’ve tested in the real world and can explain without jargon.

Here’s the framework:

  • What you keep seeing (observation)
  • What it’s costing people (the damage)
  • What to do instead (your fix)
  • Proof it works (a real example)

Like this: I keep seeing leaders dodge pricing conversations because it feels awkward. This trains clients to expect discounts and creates resentment on both sides. I teach people to state the number first, then justify it second. Last month, a client used this to close £45K without flinching.

That’s a point of view. You can defend it. You can repeat it. It’s unmistakably yours.

Strategy 3: Use comments to gain an unfair advantage for your visibility

Everyone posts. Almost nobody engages. Well, yes, we all love to show up and be a star, but nobody listens or engages in comments. Guess what? Try it yourself: engage, connect, build relationships. Not just meaningless “I like it”—give a point, debate, disagree, but do it strategically.

They treat LinkedIn like a megaphone. Shout into the void, hope someone hears. But the algorithm doesn’t reward broadcasting anymore. It rewards conversation.

The data from 2025 is clear: outbound engagement—leaving real comments, starting actual conversations—is one of the highest-leverage activities most leaders completely ignore.

What this looks like:

  • Comment on posts where your people already gather. Not “Great insight!” but something that adds a layer.
  • Reply with mini-stories, not emojis.
  • Message people directly without being a pest about it.
  • Collaborate instead of competing in silence.

One smart comment on the right post will get you more traction than a month of shouting alone on your timeline.

Most people won’t do this because it feels like homework. Perfect. That’s your edge.

Strategy 4: Master the “hard line” sentence

The best communicators can draw a boundary without drama.

No rambling explanations. No apologising for having limits. No passive-aggressive softening.

This matters because your calendar is a crime scene. If you can’t protect your attention, your message will always be reactive, scattered, half-formed.

Three scripts worth memorising:

  • Priority script: “I can do X or Y this week. Which one matters more?”
  • Clean no: “I’m not available for that. Here’s what I can offer instead.”
  • Clarity check: “Let me think about what you’ve said, and then I’ll respond.”

These sound almost rude in their simplicity. That’s the point. Complexity is where boundaries get negotiated into nothing.

Practise saying them out loud until they feel normal. Then watch what happens. People respect you more, not less. They stop testing you. They engage with your ideas instead of nibbling at your edges.

Strategy 5: AI should sharpen your voice, not replace it

Do you know people scroll through obviously AI-created content, and it receives 70% less engagement than content created by a human? Well, at least that’s what I heard at a networking event recently. But it seems true to me because I do this. AI is everywhere now. Most professionals use it daily. Your advantage isn’t avoiding it. Your advantage is using it without sounding like everyone else’s chatbot. The AI fatigue is inevitable—I’ve been talking about it for the last five years. I know you were excited to get the latest iPhone, but you are no longer excited to have a camera, computer, music center, internet, and communication device in one relatively small, light device. Because smartphones are no longer a miracle—they are day to day now. AI will be the same soon. It’s a tool you need to understand.

Use AI to:

  • Turn rambling voice notes into structured outlines
  • Generate ten counterarguments so your thinking gets stronger
  • Create headline variations so you pick the sharpest one
  • Spot logical gaps in your reasoning
  • Research and brainstorm but give it a fact check later

Don’t use AI to:

  • Write your personality
  • Invent your opinions
  • Smooth out the weird bits that make you interesting

The goal isn’t to sound polished. It’s to sound like you, but with the thinking time you don’t actually have. AI is my team for my agency. When I was a Creative Director, I delegated to people; now I delegate to AI, which is far more effective at replicating me. But when I’ll need an independent thinker, designer, or a real human to do admin, I’ll hire them, not AI.

A weekly practice that changes everything

Here’s the assignment I can give every leader:

Pick one conversation you’ve been avoiding. Pricing. Boundaries. Someone underperforming. A brewing conflict. Feedback that needs giving.

Before you have it, write three things:

  1. Your goal in one sentence
  2. The one line you absolutely cannot dodge
  3. Your closing question

Then go have the conversation.

Don’t wait for perfect conditions. Don’t rehearse it to death. Just go.

Leadership isn’t a talent. It’s repetition. Communication isn’t a gift. It’s a skill you build by doing the thing that scares you until it stops scaring you.

The people who seem like natural communicators have just had more uncomfortable conversations than you have. That’s the entire secret.

What happens next

If you want a shortcut, take the free “Find Your Communication Style” quiz. It’ll tell you which skill to build next. No fluff. No twelve-step programme. One clear move.

If you want the full system—the frameworks, the scripts, the mental maps that make this easier—the book is How to Talk to Anyone Like a Leader.

Because the leaders who’ll win in 2026 won’t be the ones with the biggest budgets or the loudest voices. They’ll be the ones who can say what they mean, hold the line when it matters, and make people feel something real when they speak.

So take control of your self-presentation, make yourself heard and noticeable. Don’t be a stranger.

Fix your signal. The rest follows.

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