Diplomatic Dispatches The Confidence Trick of Leadership In 1849, a well-dressed gentleman approached respectable New Yorkers with a simple request: “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” Astonishingly, many did. They handed over their valuables to a complete stranger who then completely disappeared. This was William Thompson - the original “confidence man”. And he became famous not for his charm, but for something far more interesting: his understanding that...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches How to think when thinking becomes impossible. There's a moment in The Fort - the gripping BBC podcast about a 2007 rescue mission in Afghanistan - where you realize something profound about human decision-making under pressure. Picture this: British forces have just assaulted a heavily fortified Taliban stronghold called Jugroom Fort. The firefight was brutal. When the dust settles and they're forced to withdraw, they discover Lance Corporal Mathew Ford is missing -...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches: The Ethics of Influence The Bewildered Child In the spring of 1968, ten-year-old Daryl Davis marched down a tree-lined street in Belmont, Massachusetts, his Cub Scout uniform pressed and perfect. He was the only Black child in his troop, but that detail seemed irrelevant to him. What mattered was the parade, the crowd, the sense of belonging. Then the rocks started flying. Bottles. Soda cans. "I had no idea what was happening," Davis would later recall. "I thought those...
2 months ago • 6 min read
Diplomatic Dispatches Why Real Influence Is the Enemy of Visible Power (And How Diplomats Solve It) I shared a personal story on LinkedIn earlier this week about negotiating the release of a mistakenly arrested journalist overseas. It was a significant achievement. Career-defining, even. The kind of diplomatic breakthrough that should have fast-tracked my next promotion. But the only people who knew about it were our host nation Foreign Minister and my ambassador. Neither of whom were on the...
3 months ago • 4 min read
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...
3 months 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...
4 months 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...
4 months 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...
4 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...
4 months ago • 1 min read