Improving Executive Communication: Why They Stop Listening

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

The Room Stops Listening When The Boss Talks. Here Is Why.

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach in Amsterdam. This article is about improving executive communication for senior leaders. You will learn how calm delivery, generous context, audience translation, and honest vulnerability determine whether your message lands.

You know your stuff. You have the numbers. And yet you see it happening: the attention in the room fades while you are talking.

The higher you get, the heavier your words become. A single sentence from you can keep a team busy for a week. Or shut them down entirely.

The content is usually fine. The delivery is where it breaks down.

Calm Is Your Strongest Signal

People read your state before they hear your words.

Speak fast and the room feels rushed. Speak calmly and the room feels you have time. That you are in control.

Speak slower than feels natural. Much slower. What feels painfully slow to you sounds exactly right to your audience.

Use silence. A pause after an important sentence gives people time to let it land.

And vary. In tone, in pace, in volume. A voice that sounds the same the entire time loses people. Variation keeps them with you.

Give More Context Than You Think You Need

You have been deep in this topic for months. Your team is hearing it for the first time.

This is the curse of knowledge. The better you understand something, the harder it becomes to imagine what it is like to not understand it yet.

You skip steps. You use abbreviations. You start in the middle of your own story.

Give more background than feels logical. Explain where something comes from, why it matters now, and what the next step is. What feels obvious to you is rarely obvious to anyone else.

Translate Your Message Into Their World

Everyone is tuned into the same radio station: WIIFM. What is in it for me.

Say you walk in full of energy with a plan to increase earnings per share by four percent. To you, that is big news. To most people in the room, it means very little.

Translate it. Four percent growth means room for new roles. Better chances for promotion. Potentially higher salaries. More challenging work.

That is what people listen to.

Connect what you say to a bigger goal. And immediately tell them what that goal means for the person sitting across from you.

Nervous? Redirect Your Attention

Nerves almost always come from the same place. You are focused on yourself. What do they think of me. Am I going to mess this up.

As long as your attention is on yourself, the nerves feed themselves.

Redirect your attention to the impact you want to make. What do you want these people to walk away with? Why does that matter?

The moment your focus goes to the message, the nerves settle on their own.

It Is Okay To Say You Do Not Know

At senior level, doubt quickly feels like weakness. So many leaders pretend they have an answer to everything.

People see through that. Almost always.

"I do not know, let me find out" does something different. It shows you are honest. That you take yourself seriously without making yourself bigger than you are.

Those who dare to be vulnerable often come across as more competent. Confidence that is real carries more weight than confidence that is performed.

Say It More Often Than Feels Right

You have shared your core message three times now. You are tired of it. And that is exactly when it starts to land for everyone else.

Leaders underestimate how often a message needs to be repeated before it sticks. What feels like endless repetition to you is the first time it truly registers for your organisation.

It Starts With You

Good communication follows from who you are when you stand in front of the group. Calm, clear, and focused on the other person.

You learn this in practice. By doing it, stumbling, and watching yourself while you do. In executive coaching we work on this directly. We look at how you come across, practise the conversations that matter, and find the leader you want to be when the room is listening.

Want to take this wider across your organisation, for your entire management layer? A leadership track is a logical step.

Curious whether this fits? Plan a free introduction. Zero obligation.

Coaching for CEOs | The Leadership Team Sets the Tone

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

The Leadership Team Sets the Tone. Whether You Like It or Not.

David Buirs is an executive coach based in Amsterdam who works with senior leaders and executives. This article explores why more organisations are investing in coaching at the executive level, which themes come up most frequently, and how friction within the leadership team affects the entire organisation.

When an executive team isn't functioning well together, the rest of the organisation feels it faster than you'd expect. Decisions become unclear. Priorities keep changing. Team leads receive conflicting signals. And slowly, an undercurrent of uncertainty builds that nobody names out loud, but everybody senses.

The reverse is equally true. An executive team that collaborates well, communicates clearly, and moves in the same direction creates a stability that ripples through the entire organisation. People know where they stand. There's direction. And that alone makes teams more effective.

It's no surprise, then, that more organisations are investing in coaching at the executive level. 39% of CEOs currently work with a coach. And 87% of organisations that invest in coaching report a positive ROI. The complexity at that level calls for a confidential space to think freely. A sounding board that sits outside the internal dynamics and politics.

Three Themes I Keep Seeing as Executive Coach

Communication

It sounds basic. But at executive level, how you communicate has an outsized impact on how well your organisation performs.

I see two patterns. The first: executives who think faster and see more than the people around them. They communicate too briefly. Too concisely. In their mind, everything is crystal clear. But for the organisation, it feels like jumping from one thing to the next. The result: teams disengage or start charting their own course.

The second pattern: vague, woolly communication. No clear direction. No concrete expectations. After a meeting, people walk away with different interpretations of the same conversation.

Both patterns are recognisable. And both can be resolved with deliberate effort.

Strategy and Vision

Having a vision is one thing. Translating it into something people understand and can execute is another. Many executives think in broad strokes but struggle to make it concrete. How do you translate a strategic ambition into quarterly goals for your teams? How do you prevent your strategy from becoming a nice document that sits in a drawer?

This is where it helps to think alongside someone who stands outside your system. Someone who doesn't go along with the assumptions that have become normal inside your organisation.

Delegation

Recent research confirms what I see in practice: delegation is the most common theme in executive coaching. Not because executives don't understand the concept. But because letting go runs counter to everything that made them successful in the first place.

You reached this position because you're good at what you do. Stepping in feels productive. Doing it yourself feels safe. But at executive level, that approach stops working. Your impact is determined by how well the people around you perform. And that requires something different from you than operational excellence.

A Logical Step for Executives Who Are Growing

Most of the executives I work with are performing well. They're being coached because more is being asked of them. Because their role is expanding. Because they want to actively steer their own development rather than leaving it to chance and experience alone.

Do you have an executive on your team who is ready for that step? Or do you sense that something at executive level isn't quite working, but you can't put your finger on it? I'd be happy to schedule a no-obligation conversation to explore whether executive coaching fits the situation. No pressure. Just an open conversation. Plan your free introduction here.

People Pleasing as a Manager | Why It Costs You Respect

Leadership & Executive Coach | David Buirs

People pleasing as a manager. Why being kind and people pleasing are two very different things.

David Buirs, leadership coach in Amsterdam, explains why people pleasing as a manager costs you respect and energy. This article covers the difference between genuine kindness and people pleasing, and offers practical guidance for leaders who want to be clearer without losing connection with their team.

We all want to be liked. There is nothing wrong with that. It is not a weakness or a character flaw. It is simply how we are wired.

As a child, you learn quickly: if I adapt, if I am easy to be around, if I do not cause trouble, people will like me. And it worked. At school, in your friend group, at home. It kept you safe and included.

As an adult, you carry that pattern with you. And in the workplace, especially as a manager, it seems to work too. You say yes when someone asks for something. You postpone difficult conversations. You bend when there is pushback. And people do like you.

But somewhere, it starts to wear on you.

The difference between being kind and people pleasing

There is a distinction here that many managers miss.

Being kind is genuine. You help someone because you want to. You consider others because you care about them. There is no hidden expectation attached.

People pleasing works differently. People pleasing is transactional. You do something for someone with a hidden expectation: I am nice to you, so you will be nice to me. I avoid this difficult conversation, so you will think I am a good manager. I take over your work, so you will be grateful.

And when the other person does not return the favor? You feel frustrated. Disappointed. Sometimes even angry. While they probably did not even know there was a deal on the table.

People pleasing is almost a form of manipulation. Unconscious, well-intentioned, but it places a hidden claim on the other person. And that makes the relationship unequal.

Why we all do it

Let me be honest: recognizing this is easy. Stopping it is hard.

Most managers I coach have a strong drive to help others. That is a wonderful quality. It is often the exact reason they are good at their job. They are empathetic. They sense what is going on. They want their team to do well.

The problem starts when that helpfulness is no longer a free choice, but an automatic response. When you say yes while meaning no. When you swallow feedback because you are afraid of the reaction. When you let someone's poor behavior slide because you do not want to disturb the peace.

A study by Kuang et al. (2025), published in PsyCH Journal, examined people pleasing behavior in over 2,200 participants. The researchers found a clear link between strong people pleasing tendencies and lower mental health. Think higher levels of neuroticism, lower self-esteem, and a persistent sense of emptiness. People who please a lot, it turned out, build their sense of self-worth almost entirely on external validation. And that is a fragile foundation.

What people pleasing costs you as a manager

As an individual, people pleasing drains your energy and self-respect. As a manager, the consequences are bigger. Your team notices. Maybe not consciously, but they feel it.

A manager who never addresses anything slowly loses authority. Someone is consistently late to meetings. You say nothing. A deadline is missed without any communication. You fix it yourself. Someone delivers work that is clearly below standard. You quietly adjust it.

At first you think you are protecting your team. But what you are actually communicating is: rules do not really apply here. And the people who do follow through on their commitments see that. They lose trust. In you, and eventually in the team.

Research by Georgescu and Bodislav (2025) confirms this pattern. They found that managers and employees who struggle to say no are more likely to become targets for colleagues who take advantage of that. People pleasing makes you vulnerable in a work environment where results matter, and it makes you less effective as a leader. (The Workplace Dynamic of People-Pleasing, Encyclopedia, 2025)

The fear underneath the pleasing

Why is it so hard to address someone's behavior? Because there is almost always a fear underneath.

Fear of being rejected. Fear of being seen as authoritarian. Fear of damaging the relationship. Fear of no longer being liked.

That fear is understandable. Especially if you have always learned that your worth depends on how others see you. But in a leadership role, that fear works against you.

As a manager, it is your responsibility to create an environment where people can do good work, feel heard, and know where they stand. That means sometimes having a difficult conversation. Addressing someone who is consistently late. Giving feedback when a deadline is missed. Being clear about expectations. Precisely because you care about your team.

Clear and caring at the same time

Less people pleasing as a manager goes hand in hand with being warm and honest at the same time. Giving feedback when it is needed. Setting boundaries when someone consistently does not meet expectations. And doing that from a place of respect, in the moment, instead of from built-up frustration three months later.

A few concrete situations where this plays out.

A team member is regularly late to meetings. The people pleasing response: say nothing and quietly compensate. The clear response: "I have noticed you have been coming in late to our meetings the past few weeks. I want to check in and see if everything is okay, and at the same time, it is important that we start on time."

Someone misses a deadline without communication. The people pleasing response: pick it up yourself and say nothing. The clear response: "I expected this yesterday and did not hear anything. What happened? And how do we prevent this next time?"

A colleague delivers work that does not meet expectations. The people pleasing response: rewrite it yourself. The clear response: "This is not where it needs to be yet. Here and here I see room for improvement. Can you take another look?"

In all of these cases, the message is the same: I take you seriously enough to be honest with you.

Start by noticing

Less people pleasing does not start with becoming tougher. It starts with looking honestly at yourself.

Where do you say yes when you mean no? Which conversations do you postpone? With whom do you adapt more than necessary? And what do you hope to achieve by doing that?

That last question matters most. Because if the answer is: "I hope they will like me," then that is people pleasing. And then you also know where the opportunity is.

It does not have to happen overnight. You do not need to have a confrontational conversation with your entire team tomorrow. Start small. Say something you would normally keep to yourself. Give feedback you would normally swallow. And notice what happens. Usually, the answer is: much less than you feared. And you feel a lot lighter.

Being kind is a choice. People pleasing is a habit.

The leaders I work with get noticeably better at this. Not overnight. But session by session, conversation by conversation. They learn that clarity and warmth go together. That you can address someone's behavior in a way that still makes them feel seen. And that is something you can learn. Every conversation gets a little easier than the last one.

It starts with the honest realization that being liked and leading well do not always go hand in hand. Sometimes you have to choose. And the best managers choose clarity. Not because they enjoy it. But because they know their team deserves it.

If you notice that people pleasing is a pattern that holds you back as a leader, it can help to look at it with someone. In leadership coaching we work on exactly these kinds of patterns. You learn to set boundaries without losing connection. For leaders at director level, executive coaching for directors is a natural next step. And for organizations that want to support their leaders in this structurally, management training delivers measurable results.

Sounds familiar? Or just curious? Let's talk. Zero obligation, just a good conversation.

How to Connect With Your Team Through Real Listening

David Buirs | Leadership Expert

How to Really Connect With Your Team

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach based in Amsterdam. This article explains why most managers think they’re listening to their team while their team experiences it differently. You will read about the gap between reactive and real listening, what that gap costs you, and which concrete questions open up the conversation.

Your team has noticed something about you that you haven’t.

In most of the conversations you have with them, you’re not fully there. Not gone. Just somewhere behind your own eyes, three sentences ahead, ready with your answer. They feel it. Most of them won’t say it.

That’s the gap between thinking you connect with your team and actually doing it.

Two monologues pretending to be a conversation

In most workplace conversations, two people take turns talking about themselves.

Someone tells you something about a project. You wait politely until they’re done, then jump in with something similar from your own experience. Or worse, with a solution they hadn’t asked for. Or worse still, with the next agenda item you had ready before they walked in.

Everyone has talked. Everyone has the impression a conversation took place. Nobody has learned anything.

Why you think you’re listening when you’re not

Listening is a skill almost everyone thinks they’re good at. In practice, most managers listen mainly to respond. Actually understanding comes second, if it comes at all.

The difference is where your head is. With real listening, you’re with the other person. With reactive listening, you’re with your next sentence. With your judgment. With the solution. With how it fits into your schedule.

To you, both feel like listening. To the other person, only the first feels like being heard.

What it costs your team

People only bring problems to someone who actually listens.

If a team member tries three times to put a vague beginning of something in front of you, and you keep responding before they’re halfway through, they won’t try a fourth time. They’ll tell you when it’s too late. Or not at all.

Same goes for feedback about you. For doubts about a decision. For the real reason someone has quietly been putting less energy into the work over the past few weeks.

What a team doesn’t tell you is almost always the most important thing happening.

What listening actually is

Real listening is different from being quiet while someone else talks. Being quiet is waiting your turn. Listening is emptying your head and letting the other person in.

That doesn’t work when you’re thinking about three other things. That doesn’t work with a phone on the table. That doesn’t work when you have to be in the next meeting in two minutes.

It requires a kind of slowness most work environments don’t reward. But it’s the basic condition for everything that falls under leadership.

Questions that open up the conversation

A few questions I often give people:

What makes that important to you?

How did you end up there?

What would a good outcome look like for you?

What are you actually trying to say?

That last one is underrated. Someone comes to you with a long build-up. You feel something underneath it. Ask.

What happens when you practice this

In the beginning, not much. A conversation runs a little longer. Someone doesn’t consciously notice you’re different, but they tell you a bit more.

After a few months, something happens. People come to you with problems earlier. They’ve sensed somewhere, without consciously thinking about it, that it’s worth talking to you.

The senior person on your team starts pushing back at you. They used to do that only with peers. Now they do it with you too, which actually means you’re being seen for the first time as someone who can handle it.

Someone comes to you about workload pressure two weeks earlier than they normally would. That saves you a good employee.

What it asks of you

An uncomfortable amount of slow attention.

You’re not going to make it to your next meeting through your one-on-ones anymore. You’re going to have to let moments of silence stand without immediately filling them. You’re going to have to sit in something uncomfortable sometimes, without smoothing it over with a quick “yeah, got it, so what you can do is…”.

What you build over time is a kind of calm inside yourself. Techniques don’t get you there.

How you develop that calm internally is a different story. I wrote a separate piece about how to develop leadership presence from a quieter internal place. For this article, what counts is this: the decision to listen better, and the practice of it, does more than any communication course.

The leaders I work with through management coaching often struggle with exactly this. Their team describes them as solid communicators. The real work sits deeper. They have never learned how to actually be present in a conversation. For organizations that want this addressed across their leadership layer, leadership training offers the team version of the same principle.

Plan a free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Why Can’t I Switch Off From Work? A Coach’s Perspective

Incompany Management Trainer | David Buirs

Why Can't I Switch Off From Work?

David Buirs is an executive coach based in the Amsterdam region, working with senior leaders on identity, pressure, and authentic leadership. This article explores why many leaders cannot switch off from work, even when their external workload is reduced. It covers the difference between outside pressure and inner patterns rooted in identity, and what tends to help in each case.

A manager I worked with cancelled her sabbatical twice. The third time she actually went. She came back after eight weeks rested, and within two weeks was working the same hours as before. Same emails at 11pm. Same restlessness on Sunday afternoons.

It puzzled her. The break had been genuine. The rest had been genuine. So why did the old pattern come back so quickly? Why couldn't she switch off from work, even when she finally had the chance?

Workload pressure or inner pattern?

I've seen this from both sides of the table. As a leader, I've absolutely given people more than they should have had on their plate. Workloads creep, deadlines collide, and you don't always notice until someone is drowning. When that's the cause, the fix is clear. Take work off the plate, redistribute, hire, adjust expectations. The relief arrives quickly.

But I've also seen people where reducing the workload didn't help. Where their managers genuinely tried. Where the calendar opened up and the pressure stayed. Where the person filled the new gaps with more.

That second pattern is harder. And it's the one I want to talk about here.

The doer identity

A study from INSEAD, recently published by Preeti Varma and Jennifer Louise Petriglieri, looked at knowledge professionals who described themselves as working excessively. The researchers specifically sought out people who said: I'm doing this to myself, at least partly, and I don't know how to stop.

What they found is worth pausing on.

Every person in the study carried what the researchers call a "doer identity." Being someone who is always doing something. Not for the money. Not for the promotion. The doing itself had become part of who they were.

And in almost every case, this identity has its roots in childhood, where the researchers identified three patterns.

Three roots in childhood

The first came from homes where doing was held up as the supreme virtue. Hard work was the family value. Nobody said "you must achieve." They modelled it, lived it, talked about people who didn't work hard with a small note of disapproval. Children in these homes learned: I am worthwhile when I am producing. Stop producing and something is wrong with me.

The second came from harder environments. Homes where emotions weren't safe, where children learned early that they were on their own. Doing became a way to escape feeling. Books, schoolwork, projects, anything to be functional rather than vulnerable. As one participant put it: work became a hiding place.

The third came from homes with explicit expectations. The 8 out of 10 that needed explaining. The grandparents whose achievements you were measured against. The recognition that came when you delivered and felt absent when you didn't. Children in these homes learned: I am visible when I perform.

None of this is about blaming parents. The researchers are careful about that, and so am I. Most caregivers in these stories were doing their best with what they had, often working through their own versions of the same patterns.

The point is what the doing did. In childhood, it worked. It helped a child manage distress, feel safer, feel seen, feel adequate. It was a genuine adaptation to genuine conditions.

But what works at six doesn't always work at thirty-six. The pattern stays. The need underneath it stays. And it puts you in workplaces where you produce constantly, achieve consistently, get praised regularly, and still can't relax on a Sunday. Eventually this may lead to burnout.

How to tell which one you're dealing with

So how do you know which one you're dealing with? Workload from the outside, or pattern from the inside?

A useful question to ask yourself: have you experienced this feeling only in your current job, or has it been a constant throughout your career? If reducing your hours, taking a holiday, or moving to a calmer team brings genuine relief that lasts, the pressure was probably mostly external.

If none of that fully works, something else is going on. The vacation feels uncomfortable. The praise gives a brief lift and then dissolves. A quieter week creates anxiety rather than relief. You catch yourself manufacturing the next thing to be busy with.

Most senior leaders I work with are dealing with some mix of both. The workload is genuinely high AND there's an inner driver making it feel even heavier. The job needs adjusting AND the inner pattern needs attention.

Why a lighter workload isn't always enough

Here's the hard part. If the inner pattern is part of why you can't switch off from work, your manager cannot solve it for you. A lighter workload won't reach it. Better policies won't reach it. They might give you breathing room, but the same pattern will fill it.

What does help, in my experience, is work that goes a layer below the behaviour. Coaching that examines where the doing comes from, not just how much you do. Honest conversations with people who can see what you cannot. Sometimes therapy, depending on how deep the roots go. Mindfulness and reflection practices that help you observe the need to constantly produce with a bit of distance, which is hard to do when you're caught up in it.

And underneath all of that, the slower work of disentangling your sense of self and self-worth from your productivity. Of learning that you are a person before you are an output.

It's slow work. But definitely worth it. For yourself, for your company, and your team. You start being able to do a lot AND stop. Which, for many of us, is the harder skill.

If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear what you recognise in your own story. For senior leaders looking at this pattern in themselves, executive coaching is the kind of work that goes a layer below behaviour. For organisations where this shows up across the management layer, management training can address the wider culture of always being on. Either way, if you'd like to talk about what tends to help, plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

The full research paper by Varma and Petriglieri is available here on ScienceDirect.

Are you better at strategy than your CEO? You might be.

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Are You Better at Strategy Than Your CEO? You Might Be.

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach based in the Amsterdam region, working with senior leaders, directors and executive teams. This article walks through Richard Rumelt's four-part framework for real strategy and offers a short test for assessing your own company's strategy. It is written for executives who want to sharpen their strategic thinking.

By the time you finish reading this, you'll know.

Most strategies that boards and executive teams produce have one big problem.

They're not strategies.

Then what are they? Often, a list of goals, a wishlist really, dressed up in fluffy, strategic sounding language.

You've seen them. "We will become the market leader by combining operational excellence with customer focus and an innovative culture. We will invest in our people, strengthen our technology, and build sustainable partnerships."

Sounds substantial. But look closer. There's no analysis of what's actually happening. No real choice. No mention of what the company will refuse to do. And no specific obstacle to break through first.

What you're left with is a list of good intentions, written in language that sounds strategic and complex. Sometimes even packaged in a 50-slide deck.

What real strategy actually looks like

Richard Rumelt, the UCLA strategy professor and one of the world's most respected strategy experts, wrote a whole book about this called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. His point fits in one line. Most "strategies" are just wishlists, wrapped up in fluffy language. And that holds for most strategy for executives produced at board level today.

So what is a real strategy then? At its heart, a real strategy is a creative way to focus your limited resources, your time, money, attention, and energy, on overcoming the one obstacle that matters most.

Rumelt argues that to do that well, a strategy needs four parts. Miss one, and what you have isn't really a strategy.

I'll walk you through the four parts, using the example of Southwest Airlines.

A diagnosis. This is an honest and accurate analysis of what's actually going on. For Southwest, the diagnosis was that flying short distances within the US wasn't working well for most travelers. The big airlines were all built around long-haul flights, and they routed most passengers through a few large central airports, forcing you to change planes along the way. So a short flight between two nearby cities was often expensive, slow, and full of layovers. A clear picture of what was actually wrong with the market.

An obstacle. Within every diagnosis sits one core problem you have to break through before anything else works. Rumelt calls it the crux. For Southwest, the crux was a tough one. How do you make short flights cheap and fast enough to compete with cars and buses, when every existing airline's cost structure makes that essentially impossible?

A guiding policy. This is the approach you'll take to overcome that obstacle, before any concrete actions. Southwest's was simple to state. Be the cheapest, fastest airline for short US flights. Just one sentence, and yet look at everything it quietly rules out. No long-haul. No business class. No in-flight meals. No partnerships with other airlines. No making passengers connect through large central airports.

Coherent actions. Finally, a handful of moves that reinforce each other and flow from the policy. Southwest flew only one aircraft type (737s) to keep maintenance and training cheap. They used secondary airports with lower landing fees. They had no assigned seating, which made boarding faster. They cross-trained ground crews for 20-minute turnarounds. Point-to-point routes only, no connections through central hubs. Every action made the others work better, and none of them contradicted the policy.

That's a strategy. Compare it to something like "innovate faster and cut costs and improve customer focus and shrink every department by ten percent". One is a set of clear, reinforcing choices designed to overcome a main obstacle. The other is what an executive team produces when it's avoiding the work of actually choosing.

Want to try it for yourself?

If you have access to it, look at your organization's strategy statement or document.

Then ask yourself three questions. What specific problem is this strategy solving? What's the approach we've chosen? And what are we explicitly refusing to do?

If you can't answer in single sentences, you're probably holding a wishlist.

And honestly, you're in good company if that's the case. Research from MIT Sloan found that only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could name three of their company's top priorities. Older HBR research from Kaplan and Norton suggested fewer than 5% of employees understood their company's strategy at all.

Which means the people running organizations often struggle to put into words where they're actually trying to take them.

This isn't really their fault

Strategic thinking is rarely taught explicitly. A handful of MBA programs cover it well, but most don't. Most senior leaders pick up bits of it on the job, if at all.

And the executive role already asks a lot. Operations, people, stakeholders, the board, market changes, the next earnings cycle. Strategy work tends to happen in whatever gaps remain after everything else has been handled.

So it's no surprise that most strategy documents come out looking the way they do.

Which is exactly the opportunity

This isn't a niche problem either. Big corporations do it. Governments do it too. Multi-billion-euro national plans that, on closer read, turn out to be mostly lists of intentions with budgets attached.

Which is precisely what makes real strategy such an advantage. Strong strategy for executives is rare enough that getting it right pulls you ahead of most of your peers by default.

The whole point of strategy is concentration. You have limited resources, whether that's time, money, attention, or your team's energy. A real strategy points all of them at the one obstacle that, once broken through, makes everything else easier. That's where outsized results come from.

Most organizations end up spreading their resources thinly across a dozen vague ambitions that don't reinforce each other. Small wins everywhere. Real progress nowhere.

An executive team that actually concentrates its resources on the right obstacle pulls ahead in ways that compound, year after year, while the competition keeps trying to do operational excellence and innovation and customer focus and three other things all at the same time.

The companies and leaders who get this right become very hard to catch.

Where you go from here

If you've read this far, and you've started mentally running your own company's strategy through Rumelt's four parts, that's actually a really good sign. That instinct, the slight discomfort about whether what you're calling a strategy actually is one, is exactly the right starting point.

From here it gets more interesting. The harder part is bringing this thinking into your executive team in a way that opens up the conversation, rather than putting people on the defensive. That's where most leaders find they need a thinking partner.

For senior leaders who want to sharpen their strategy for executives, my coaching for senior leaders is built for exactly that work. For organizations that want to bring this clarity to a wider management layer, management training applies the same principles across teams.

What did you find when you tested your company's strategy?

Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

AI and the Future of Leadership

EY - Future of Work Event Amsterdam

Recently I joined the "What Can't Be Replaced by AI" event at EY's Amsterdam office. Hosted by Maarten Lintsen, with sharp insights from Anna van den Breemer-Kleene, Isabel Moll-Kranenburg, and Rina Joosten-Rabou.

I went because I'm fascinated. Sometimes a bit scared too, honestly. The pace at which this field is moving is dizzying. And as a leadership coach, I can't ignore the question of what this means for managers, for work, and for meaning.

Here's what I took away.

1. The meta-view

A theme that came up in the panel, and in a side conversation with Marielle Willemse: leaders need the capacity to zoom out. Stay away from AI tunnel vision. Look at your strategic goals, and find creative ways to make AI work for you.

Take recruitment. If efficiency is the only aim, you automate CV screening. But CVs predict roughly 3 percent of actual job success. Faster, not smarter.

The better question: how does AI help you find people who can transform and innovate your organization? Use AI to assess skills and potential. Not to count how many times someone wrote "stakeholder management" in their CV.

2. Leadership and adaptation

Only leaders who adapt fast enough will remain relevant. That requires AI literacy. Not learning to code, but understanding how to deploy the technology strategically.

And it's your job as a leader to make experimenting safe. If your team is afraid to try things, adoption stalls across your organization. Where there's fear, nothing happens.

3. From knowing to interpreting

Knowledge is rapidly losing its value at the individual level. AI gives us access to collective intelligence. Value moves from knowing to interpreting. And to asking the right questions.

Meanwhile, productivity growth in Europe is stalling. How do you use AI and agents to turn that around? Not a rhetorical question. A concrete challenge for every manager.

4. Culture and data-driven choices

Culture is how we create meaning together at work. It often feels intangible. AI can make it concrete. What is your culture today? Which behaviors fit where you want to go? How do you monitor progress?

Less guessing, more knowing.

5. Empathy and perception

The common idea is that AI can't show empathy. Yet a study showed that patients rated AI doctors as more empathetic than human ones.

Fair point: an AI has unlimited time, a doctor is under pressure. But it does make you think about your own human interactions. How often does someone at work get your full attention? Really? Or do you sneak a glance at your phone in between.

6. The value of human connection

Within a few years most of us will have a personal AI agent. It plans your meetings, analyzes data, executes tasks. My prediction: in writing, voice, and video they'll be nearly indistinguishable from humans.

So what's left that's uniquely human? In my view, primarily physical encounter. A real conversation. A coffee together. Looking someone in the eye and sensing what's going on under the surface.

That sounds simple. But it's exactly what many managers already skip. Too busy, too many meetings, firing off a quick message instead of walking over. Once everyone has an AI that fires off messages more efficiently than you, all that remains as your real added value is your personal contact.

7. Meaning beyond productivity

When AI and robots do tasks faster and cheaper than humans, we'll need new sources of meaning. Sources that don't depend on productivity alone.

This isn't new. Philosophers have wrestled for centuries with the question of what gives our lives meaning. The difference: AI forces us to take that question seriously, finally. No longer a philosophical luxury for the weekend. A core question for your career and your team.

Keep developing the qualities that make us human. Creativity. Curiosity. Empathy. Connection. Courage.

8. 2030 and beyond

The impact of AI in the coming decade will be faster and bigger than most of us realize. I'm probably underestimating it too.

The question isn't whether AI replaces us. The question is whether we keep evolving fast enough to stay meaningfully human alongside it.

9. Fewer people, more responsibility

My take: companies will hire fewer people in the years ahead. One person who can direct AI agents well achieves more than an entire team without AI. That holds for marketing, for development, for analysis, for finance.

What does this mean for managers? Also fewer. Smaller teams, flatter organizations. But more responsibility per person. And probably better paid, because the impact of that one person becomes much larger.

There's a flip side. Anyone who doesn't keep up with this development falls outside the circle. The middle ground that can still hide behind a team today won't have a place tomorrow.

For those who want to remain, this means: keep investing in yourself. In your communication. In your ability to bring people along through change. In your technological literacy. And in the human qualities AI can't reach: judgment, connection, courage.

Anyone thinking "I'll just wait and see" is losing the race before it's started.

What this means for you as a leader

Here's the core for me. AI raises the bar on what you need to bring as a leader. AI takes over the tactical work. What remains is exactly what good coaching and development build.

Real listening. Seeing beneath the surface of a conversation. Having difficult conversations without backing away. A vision that moves people. A team where people feel safe to experiment, including with AI.

These are no longer soft skills. This is your craft.

Want your managers to be ready for the years ahead? AI adoption is woven into the leadership programs I design and deliver. And it comes up in the 1-on-1 leadership coaching I offer to ambitious early-career managers. Schedule a free introduction call via the contact form. I'd love to tell you more.

Self-Awareness In Leadership: The Real Foundation

Incompany Management Trainer | David Buirs

Leadership Begins With Self-Awareness

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach based in Amsterdam. This post explains why self-awareness is the foundation of every form of leadership development and why trainings without that foundation often fail to stick. The reader learns about the role of self-inquiry in lasting behavioural change as a leader.

There are managers who take a new leadership training every two years. They know all the models. They can draw Covey's quadrants from memory and explain how feedback works on paper.

And yet on Monday morning, they do exactly what they always did.

Why? Because the foundation is missing that all that knowledge is supposed to land on.

Knowledge versus self-knowledge

Leadership is only a small part knowledge. It's mostly about knowing who you are when the pressure rises.

A manager who finds feedback difficult doesn't need a new feedback model. What she needs first is insight into why feedback feels so heavy. Is it an old belief that conflict is dangerous? A conviction that being liked matters more than being clear?

Without that insight, you learn a technique. With it, you learn to recognise a pattern.

Know thyself

Above the entrance of the oracle at Delphi stood the words "know thyself". Centuries later, Jung put it more sharply. The person who doesn't look inward keeps wondering why the same problems follow him around.

Every experienced leader recognises this. The manager who doesn't know her triggers keeps reacting instead of leading. The director who doesn't know where his insecurity sits covers it with political games.

Those patterns can change. Just not before you see them.

The paradox of self-awareness

Here is where things get interesting. Organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich ran a multi-year research programme on self-awareness involving thousands of people. The finding was striking. Around 95 percent of people believe they are self-aware. In reality, only 10 to 15 percent actually are.

This connects to something more familiar from psychology: the Dunning-Kruger effect. The less you know about something, the more you tend to overestimate your ability in it. Not from arrogance. Simply because you are not yet skilled enough to see what you cannot see.

For leadership, this is uncomfortable. The one skill that makes the biggest difference is also the skill we most often misjudge in ourselves.

This is no reason for cynicism. It is a reason to stay curious. A leader who keeps questioning herself and actively asks for feedback belongs to the small group that genuinely grows.

Why so many trainings don't stick

This is why many leadership trainings fade within a month. Participants learn skills and apply them on top of patterns that were never examined. A thin layer of varnish on old wood.

A good leadership training starts with self-inquiry. What are your blind spots? When do you fall back into old patterns? Which beliefs about authority, conflict or success sit so deep you barely notice them anymore?

Once those questions are answered, feedback models and coaching conversations get real traction. They become extensions of who you are.

What this means for organisations

The same applies to an entire management team. An organisation that invests in leadership development without self-awareness as a foundation is investing in technique without context. The training itself can be solid. Without serious self-inquiry, behaviour change stays surface-level.

For organisations looking to work on leadership structurally, a leadership development program that integrates self-inquiry is a sensible choice. For individual managers, coaching for managers offers the space to do this work one-on-one. For directors at board level, executive coaching amsterdam is a natural place to ask the same questions at that level.

An invitation

Self-awareness is not a destination. You learn who you are by acting, bumping into things, looking back, and moving on.

If this speaks to you and you're curious what this work could look like for you or your team, a free introduction is a good first step. No sales. Just a conversation.