SPEAK LIKE A CEO

Many leaders sound inauthentic, robotic or fake.

It’s true: As a leader, it’s hard to sound authentic – to be real, relatable, and trusted. Some messages may come across as too corporate, others as too casual. 

The result is the same: there’s a gap between what you want to say and what your people hear. 

To close that gap, I’m joined by David Shelley, CEO of Hachette Book Group, one of the biggest names in global publishing, with more...

Is everything we know about leadership… wrong?In this eye-opening episode, Jon Levy, behavioral scientist and bestselling author of Team Intelligence, joins Oliver to challenge some of our most deeply held assumptions about what makes a great leader – and what truly drives high-performing teams.Forget charisma and vision. According to Jon, the real reason we follow someone isn’t their MBA or their skills checklist – it's the fe...

Bad communication costs businesses $37 billion a year, and chances are, it's costing you too. 

Celeste Headlee is one of the most watched TED speakers ever and a global authority on conversations. 

And today, she's going to show you how to save money by communicating better. 

Plus: she exposes the bad advice you’ve been given by so-called experts.

Timestamps

00:00 The Cost of Poor Communication

01:19 The Inefficiency ...

Have you ever struggled to explain what you do, or find it hard to cut through? And no, it’s not about refining your elevator pitch or polishing your LinkedIn bio. It’s about making one crucial decision: what are you not?Because in a noisy world, people don’t remember nuance. They remember contrast.Global brand and positioning strategist Laura Ries argues that the clearest way to stand out as a leader or a company is to pick the ri...

To influence someone, we have to change their minds – or so we have been told. But what if that’s exactly why your message keeps falling flat?

In this episode, you'll learn why changing minds is overrated – and how to be influential in today’s world.

Our guest is Steve Martin, one of the world’s top minds in behavioral science and longtime business partner of Robert Cialdini, the godfather of persuasion. 

Steve has spent 20+ years...

This episode reveals why most teams underperform and how to fix it fast.

I sit down with Dr. Colin M. Fisher – Harvard-trained management professor, former jazz musician, and author of the brand new book The Collective Edge – to dismantle the myths most leaders believe about collaboration, trust, and leadership.

Forget forced fun, trust falls, and bloated org charts. 

Fisher explains why most teams are too big, too unclear, and too fo...

Meet the man who scaled Kindle and turned McDonald’s, Volvo, and MGM into truly digital businesses. 

Atif Rafiq has helped reshape some of the world’s biggest brands by challenging how organizations make decisions and execute bold ideas. 

As the first Chief Digital Officer in the Fortune 500 and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Decision Sprint, Atif believes the true competitive edge lies not in execution alone, but in ma...

What makes someone unforgettable in today’s noisy, distracted world? Oliver Aust sits down with Lorraine K. Lee – author of Unforgettable Presence, globally recognized keynote speaker, LinkedIn Learning instructor with over 300,000 followers, and former editor at LinkedIn – to explore the art and science of becoming someone people remember, trust, and want to work with.

Lorraine shares her deeply personal and professional journey fr...

What if machines could read us better than people can? Blake Eastman is on a mission to make that a reality – and to ensure it serves humanity, not replaces it.

Blake is the founder of The Nonverbal Group, a former poker pro and psychology professor, and now a pioneering builder at the intersection of human behavior and AI. 

Blake pulls back the curtain on his decades-long obsession with decoding people, from micro-reactions and smil...

Can you win every pitch? No, but The Pitch Guy’s blueprint gets you close. 

Danny Fontaine aka The Pitch Guy is the author of “Pitch: How to Captivate and Convince Any Audience On The Planet” and host of the Pitch Masters podcast. 

Danny has redefined what it means to pitch an idea, product or business – not as a PowerPoint deck, but as an emotionally charged, strategically choreographed experience that makes people lean in, feel som...

Oliver’s TEDx talk, “AI-Powered Leadership: Why Supercomputers Need Supercommunicators” just dropped. 

It sets the stage for a real talk on what AI means for leaders. 

Oliver and his bestie, serial founder Gerrit McGowan explore how emerging tech is reshaping communication, leadership, and trust, and how leaders can use AI without losing authenticity.  

From voice cloning to deepfakes, from 3D avatars to AI writing assistants to human...

Oliver’s TEDx talk, “AI-Powered Leadership: Why Supercomputers Need Supercommunicators” just dropped. 

It sets the stage for a real talk on what AI means for leaders. 

Oliver and his bestie, serial founder Gerrit McGowan explore how emerging tech is reshaping communication, leadership, and trust, and how leaders can use AI without losing authenticity.  

From voice cloning to deepfakes, from 3D avatars to AI writing assistants to human...

What's the difference between a leader and a manager? Why should we avoid the industrial age-style race to the bottom? 

This week we are sharing a brief moment of Oliver’s conversation with Seth Godin, 21-time best-selling author and one of the leading business thinkers in the world.

Check out episode 263 for the full conversation.

Make sure you’re subscribed to the Speak Like a CEO newsletter to become a top 1% communicator: ...

If you don’t have a point, everything you say is pointless.

Oliver speaks with Joel Schwartzberg, communication expert and author of “The Language of Leadership” and “Get to the Point” (updated edition out this month).

Let’s face it, there is too much rambling and hot air in business. 

Joel shares concepts such as the “I Believe That” Test and the “XY Test” that help leaders ensure they have a clearly defined point before they speak. 

...

This week Oliver is a guest on the Amplified Leadership podcast hosted by Oliver Degnan. 

They discuss what it truly means to "Speak like a CEO", how to make your story sticky, how to create a compelling vision, how to communicate better as a team, how to build trust, and much more.  

This is a value-packed half an hour with lots of actionable advice! 

Get the 21 Storytelling Structures every leader should know: https://e...

Drowning in Zoom calls and Slack threads? No energy left at the end of the day? Zoom fatigue is real. So is information overload. 

To understand science-backed strategies that get better results from your virtual communication while preserving your energy, Oliver speaks to Andrew Brodsky. 

Andrew is a management professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of "Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communicati...

What if an algorithm could read your personality better than your best friend? 

In this eye-opening episode, Oliver sits down with Dr. Sandra Matz – Columbia Business School professor, computational psychologist, and author of Mindmasters – to explore how our digital footprints reveal far more than we think.

Sandra unpacks how AI tools can accurately infer our Big Five personality traits, mental health, and values using everything fr...

Leaders who use humor are seen as more confident, competent and get better results – if they do it the right way. 

Andrew Tarvin is the CEO of Humor That Works and author of the book by the same name. 

He shares how leaders can use humor as a serious tool for better results. But it’s not about being haha funny or being a slap-on-the-back kinda boss. 

It’s about bringing lightness to leadership that increases performance, status and – ...

Scott Walker is a world-class kidnap-for-ransom negotiator who deals with hostage takers, pirates and cyber-attacks. 

Scott has successfully negotiated more than 300 such incidents using the principles he shares in his best-selling book ‘Order Out of Chaos’.

The New York Times called it “a masterclass in communication excellence”.  

Now Scott is back with his follow-up, ‘Eye of The Storm’ – a book that lifts the curtain on how we make...