Diplomatic Dispatches A Diplomat's Guide to (Ethical) Power & Influence I’ve been thinking long and hard about this newsletter. Some of you might feel uncomfortable with the topic - and I get it. But here’s the reality: if you want to create meaningful change in your career, organisation, or community, you need power and influence to do it. Every form of positive transformation requires disrupting the status quo. If change was going to happen organically, it would have happened already. Power...
20 days ago • 3 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches Out-thinking Chaos: Playing the Infinite Game The Secret Service Agent: Ho... Sep 11 · How to Diplomat - storie... 39:24 The first episode of the How to Diplomat Podcast is now live! Listen to my conversation with John Constantine, US Secret Service agent, where we talk about leadership under pressure, cultural diplomacy, and how to redefine your identity when the uniform comes off. This week marks 19 years since I commissioned as an army officer from the Royal Military...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches The Diplomatic Skill That AI Can't Replace I once watched my ambassador deliver flawless arguments. Logic, persuasion, charm - textbook diplomacy. Our host nodded politely… and refused to budge. Only when I asked, "What would it take to change your mind?" - and listened - did we make progress. That moment stayed with me. For years, I've believed diplomacy was about mastering the "big five": Negotiation. Influence. Public speaking. Reporting. Listening. Get good at these...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches Flattery, Power and the Fine Line We all Walk I didn’t make it through the whole thing. About 10 minutes into the Trump Cabinet praise-fest earlier this week, I tapped out. By the time someone was declaring him the most deserving Nobel Prize winner in the history of the award, I was a bit sick in my mouth. And I say that not as someone who thinks flattery has no place in leadership. Quite the opposite. In diplomacy, charm is strategic. We’re incorrigible. Even now I...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches ↓& very special VIP only preview below ↓ I’ve been thinking about how uncomfortable we’ve all become with complexity. We want our people and our problems neatly labelled: right or wrong, good or bad, us or them. It’s tidy. It’s easy.And it’s killing our ability to solve anything. But the delicious irony is that...humans are messy. We speak in oxymorons: → Virtual reality → Unbiased opinion → Fake news → Controlled chaos → Act naturally → Minor catastrophe We're all a...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches The Trial that Built the Dream Team It started with (yet) another human rights trial. I was sent to observe and report back - textbook diplomacy. Getting into the courtroom was... less textbook. The courtroom was chaos. A space barely the size of a kindergarten classroom. Defendants in cages along one wall. Journalists, family members, police officers, lawyers shouting over each other. I squeezed in just before the doors locked. At Tora prison, mid-trial. Yes, I talked...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches Speak Human, Not Gibberish Have you ever sat in a meeting and thought: "I know these people are technically speaking English (or my mother tongue). I understand the words individually... but they’re using familiar words to construct sentences that make absolutely no sense whatsoever." Then comes the second thought: “Is it me? Am I suddenly not fluent anymore?” I saw an Insta reel the other day that answered that very existential questionand made me snort coffee out my...
3 months ago • 2 min read