Influential Communication for Leaders Who Want to be Heard, Trusted and Followed

Influential communication coaching with Nicky Anstey helps founders, executives and senior leaders master the verbal and non-verbal signals that build followship, close deals and build trust in high-stakes rooms. Nicky is a Master NLP Transformation Coach and Executive Psychotherapist who has delivered this work as one to one coaching and as workshops for corporate teams and SME leadership groups across the UK, drawing on communication psychology, NLP and many years of clinical and coaching experience since 2011.

Interestingly, presenting and good communication starts earlier than your career. It started in childhood, where speaking up gave different reactions by others. Negative or misconstrued experiences, curb someone’s ability to communicate naturally and positively throughout life, as their mindset and nervous system has learned to keep them safe by introducing a behavioural pattern, that now is simply unhelpful and limiting. This is what Nicky changes first, so that when we install the positive skills and strategies, they feel natural and comfortable to do so.

Before you can manage what you are transmitting, you need to know what you are actually transmitting. Perfectionism, people-pleasing, imposter syndrome and unmanaged pressure do not stay contained internally. They leak into tone, posture, pace and facial expression, and the room reads them whether or not you intend it. A leader running quiet anxiety about being found out often unconsciously broadcasts hesitancy exactly when authority is required. A leader over-managing the room’s comfort softens language at precisely the moment directness would build more trust, not less.

This is why influential communication work inside the REWIRE Method™ begins with the same foundation as everything else, understanding your own unconscious patterns, before moving on to technique. You cannot reliably manage a signal you are not aware you are sending.

To understand where your communication, leadership and presenting may be being held back, visit the Diagnosis Room to learn more about yourself and what could be hindering you.

Emotions transfer between people largely outside conscious awareness, a phenomenon sometimes called emotional or behavioural contagion. A leader who walks into a room carrying tension, distraction or irritability transmits that state before a word is spoken, and the room’s biochemistry shifts to match it. A leader who walks in genuinely calm, curious and engaged produces the same effect in the other direction.

This is why influential communication is inseparable from the nervous system work underpinning the REWIRE Method™. Managing your state is not a soft add-on to communication skill. It is one of the most powerful communication tools available, and it cannot be faked convincingly for long, people’s unconscious minds are remarkably good at detecting the difference between a genuine and a performed expression.

Within the REWIRE Method™, Nicky uses a framework called KPA, Kind, Productive and Appropriate, to help clients pressure-test any piece of communication before it is delivered. Is this kind, to yourself first, and to the other person? Is it productive, does it actually move things forward? Is it appropriate, to this person, this relationship and this moment? Communication that meets all three tends to land as intended. Communication that fails on one of them, however well-intentioned, tends to produce exactly the misunderstanding or resistance it was trying to avoid.

Research way back by Albert Mehrabian, drawn from two 1967 studies, found that liking and trust judgements toward a communicator were driven roughly 7% by the literal words used, 38 percent by vocal tone, and 55 percent by facial expression and body language. Research on emotional contagion has found that emotional states transfer between people largely below conscious awareness, shaping how a room responds to a leader before any content is delivered. Research by Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School found that psychological safety, closely tied to how communication lands inside a team, was the strongest predictor of team performance across the industries studied.