Tone and Leadership — A leader's communication style sets what's important by aligning objectives, creates organizational culture, and determines whether people surface difficult truths in time to act.

As I argue in The Authentic Leader, authenticity is not mood or mystique -- it's observable behavior: human language, owned responsibility, and promises kept. When combined, ethics and tone go a long way in deciding how your company allocates power and earns (or erodes) consent.

Your people are listening and cataloging how you speak and communicate in Town Halls, one-on-one meetings, to others, and in media outlets. Thus, tone...like power...is a topic that leader's should constantly be thinking about across settings.

In a visibility-first economy, authorship is the fastest path to durable authority. Slides expire and posts evaporate, but a book endures—codifying your point of view, sharpening your leadership brand, and traveling into rooms you haven’t entered yet. Writing forces strategic clarity: What problem do you solve, for whom, and why now? That discipline becomes the spine of your thought-leadership platform and aligns message, market, and milestones.

A book also operationalizes influence. Chapters become reusable assets for keynotes, bylined articles, media appearances, investor narratives, and recruiting content—the content vault you draw from for years. Pair authorship with an intentional platform (owned media, selective PR, webinars, executive social) and you improve discoverability across search engines, AI summaries, and human gatekeepers. Measure it like any growth initiative: influenced pipeline quality, speaking demand, media velocity, share of voice on priority themes, inbound board seat interest, and hiring lift.

Common objections—time, writing skill, fear of the blank page—are solvable with a professional editorial team. The real risk is silence: letting competitors and algorithms define your story. Build the book once; scale your authority indefinitely. For executives intent on commanding a category and shaping what’s next, authorship isn’t a vanity play—it’s the operating system of your influence.