As an Executive Mental Skills Strategist, my work starts from a simple truth: most leaders don’t struggle because they lack information. When they experience struggle, it’s because they aren’t able to access their ability to stay clear, grounded, and adaptive. They may be challenged with a political situation that tests their interpersonal savvy. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, complexity, and rapid change, your competitive edge is no longer what you know — it’s how powerfully human you can remain when things get difficult.

Practical Human Intelligence is the operating system I use to help leaders build that edge. It’s a disciplined approach to developing the mental capabilities that drive real-world performance under uncertainty. The framework is built around four pillars — each representing a different way you shape the world around you.

• Interpersonal Effectiveness — How you shape others:
  Power, influence, connection, and trust-building in high-stakes environments. This is about skills like presence, persuasion, principled networking, and difficult conversations. The ability to shift a room, align people, and build durable relationships is essential for leaders at all levels.

• Personal Mastery — How you shape yourself:
  Self-awareness, emotional discipline, agency, action orientation, and peak performance mental skills. This is the inner infrastructure of effectiveness. It’s the capacity to regulate your internal reactions, override unhelpful narratives, stay intentional under stress, and move in alignment with the long game. Without this pillar, every other capability collapses under pressure.

• Judgement — How you shape ideas and decisions:
  Original thinking, intellect, resourcefulness, and non-reactive wisdom. In a world of noise and algorithmic answers, leaders must think independently. Judgement is the mental skill that separates reactive decision-making from intelligent action. It is the ability to see clearly, connect insights, and choose well when the stakes are high.

• Adaptability — How you respond to uncertainty:
  Intuition, mindsets, positioning, decisive action, your ability to create luck, and knowing how relationships can enhance options …these are some of the capabilities of adaptability. They are built through deliberate and disciplined practice. It’s how you stay effective when the conditions shift, when information is incomplete, and when the path forward is not obvious.

Practical Human Intelligence is not abstract philosophy. It’s a set of trainable mental skills that allow you to operate with clarity, influence, and resilience in environments that are unpredictable. When you strengthen these four pillars, you reduce unnecessary struggle, increase your strategic impact, and lead with a steadiness that others depend on.

This is the work:

Shaping yourself, shaping others, shaping your thinking, and shaping your response to uncertainty - so that no matter what happens around you, you can perform at your best!