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I have always been fascinated by meditation. Mostly because the idea of actually controlling  my brain sounded like a superpower. Nowadays, the tech bros call this "biohacking," but back then, I just called it "desperately trying to force-quit my internal browser" (Alt+F4 does not work with the brain - yet!). The Things I Tried (and Failed At) After my autism and ADHD diagnosis, I did what any incredibly stubborn, data-obsessed person would do: I tried to fix my brain through

Introduction Hiring a coach is a meaningful professional investment. You are committing not just financially but with your time, your attention, and a degree of personal openness that most professional relationships do not require. Getting this right matters more than most people realise before they start. One of the clearest ways to assess whether a coach is the right fit before you commit to a full engagement is the quality of the conversation you have before your first pai

Introduction There is a particular moment that many senior leaders recognise. You are experienced. You are respected. You are by most measures successful. And yet something is not quite working the way you need it to. Maybe the team dynamic has become harder to navigate. Maybe you have stepped into a new role and the skills that got you here are not enough for where you need to go. Maybe you are making decisions that feel right in the moment but you are not as confident as yo

Introduction There are a lot of coaches out there. The market has grown considerably, credentials range from rigorous to decorative, and price is no reliable guide to quality. For a senior leader who has decided to invest in coaching, working out who to actually work with is both important and genuinely complex. Not every coach is right for every leader. And not every leader is ready for every coach. When the match works, coaching is one of the most valuable professional inve

Psychological safety is one of those concepts that sounds obvious until you actually try to build it. It describes something every leader recognises when they see it: the quality in a team where people feel genuinely able to speak up, challenge assumptions, admit what they do not know, and take risks without fear of embarrassment, blame, or retribution. I have worked with leaders who genuinely believed they had it, only to discover their teams had been quietly editing themsel

Am I getting a mullet now?? As I write this, I am caught in the hottest days of the year in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The air is clear in the mountains, a stark contrast to the heavy thoughts I have been carrying. I’m sitting at a beautiful resort, surrounded by the herby and meaty dishes and a symphony of cicadas and frogs (which, like I child, I promptly run after to see if I can catch them!). I took this time off to heal: partly to nurse a lingering, self-inflicted cigarette

Hi everyone, Last week, I shared the at times terrifying, at times fantastic story of how I left the corporate world to become an executive coach, only to accidentally start a tech and training company along the way. Remember those little software tools I mentioned creating because I couldn't find anything good enough for my coaching clients? The ones that people started asking if they could use on their own? Today, I am pulling back the curtain - all for you to try. Here is

Hi everyone, A few months ago, I officially started working for myself. A big step into the unknown, I know, but I’ve been preparing for this for at least two years: daily social media posts, back to university, writing books. All so that one day I could be a solopreneur helping other people achieve their goals. Goodbye corporate life; hello uncertainty. In the beginning, my goal was to start my executive coaching practice. With eight years of experience in the banking world,

I built an AI LinkedIn Scoring Tool. And you get to try it free for 7 days. Hey there, I've been thinking for a while that The Human Spikes Labs would start using AI to give you better, faster, more precise tools. Well. It's happened. This week I'm opening up a brand new tool to the public for the first time: the LinkedIn Profile Audit . How it works Here's the idea. You upload your LinkedIn profile as a PDF, enter your SSI score (the Social Selling Index that LinkedIn gives

Hey, Most coaching — and most corporations — assume everyone runs on the same operating system. File down your quirks. Flatten your peaks. Shore up your weaknesses. In other words: be average. But the world doesn't reward average anymore. It rewards specialization. The "well-rounded" leader who's decent at everything and exceptional at nothing? That model is failing — quietly, expensively, and everywhere. The future belongs to what I call the Spiky Profile : people with dispr

Welcome to your weekly system update. No fluff or corporate 'wellness'—just the manual for running your high-performance brain on standard MacOS infrastructure. Hey - Welcome, This week marks the Chinese New Year—the Year of the Fire Horse. Traditionally, this sign represents power, speed, and resilience. I was going to write a newsletter on the Year of the Horse, but then my ADHD kicked in, I got distracted and I realized you’d much rather have the 3-minute "Spiky" version i

Hello all, Let me tell you my experience with the workplace environment. Since the corporate world realized that people could WFH and they could save money by decreasing the office space and introduce "hot-desking", the office environment and dynamics have never looked the same. But, for someone like me who has a different - ehrm,   special  - brain, my experience has been absolutely horrible. Any office space with hot desking literally fills me with   physical pain and deep

For many years, I believed that to be a successful executive, I had to be perfect at everything. I tried very hard to fix my weaknesses. I hid my struggles, but by doing this, I accidentally limited my greatest strengths. Every year, my performance reviews were the same: "You are excellent. You bring results that no one else can. But your communication style is too... direct." I felt disappointed. Why didn't the company appreciate my honesty and transparency? I didn't know it

Willpower sucks! I am fascinated by change—specifically why I struggle so much to kick my own bad habits. We are often told that if we just push harder and apply enough "motivation," we can override decades of hardwired behavior. But following a fascinating lecture at Cambridge this week, I’ve realized that relying on willpower is like taking a long position on a depreciating asset - it is a losing investment from the start. Think of it this way: You are trying to install a C

The most dangerous decision an executive can make is a "Rage Pivot."

1. My tribe I know my brain works differently. I have been aware of it since I was a child, and the diagnosis of autism and ADHD (or AuADHD) confirmed that I have indeed a special way of connecting dots and examining the world in front of us. In my coaching practice, I truly enjoy when I coach my neurodiverse clients: the conversations are always unexpected and engaging, with a wide range of thoughts and emotions that make me proud of being part of this wonderful, albeit at t

Ever feel like the standard "9-to-5" playbook wasn't written for you? For many of us, traditional workplace advice—like "sit still," "follow the process linearly," or "multitask"—doesn't just feel unnatural; it feels impossible. But here is the truth: Your brain isn't broken. It just has a different operating system. Whether you identify as neurodivergent (ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, etc.) or simply know that you process the world differently, it’s time to stop looking at your tr

If you are reading this, you might be stealing a quiet moment away from the relatives’ storm. If you are hunting for a moment of peace, I’m right there with you. We are often told that Christmas is about "connection." But for an autistic brain (and many with ADHD), the holidays are often an Olympic sport in sensory endurance  and social performance . Valtellina with its vineyard climbing up the mountain. (And since the Winter Olympics are actually being held in my home area o

Good job! Have you ever stopped to think about what truly makes a   good   job? ·       Not the job title. ·       Not the LinkedIn description. ·       Not the shiny compensation package. What I mean here is a   good role   — one that feels right, that makes sense for who you are today and who you want to become tomorrow. When I look at a job, I always rate it across three things: 1. The People Do you like them?  Do you trust them?  Do you respect them? You spend 8–10 hours

There is a question that is very popular in   neurodiversity coaching : however, you do not need to have one of the 4 Ds (Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia), Autism or ADHD to benefit from it! It is quite simple, but it completely changes your perspective, which is often what you need to get to a result. “For this to be successful, what would have had to happen?”   This is the   miracle question . (Source: "Neurodiversity Coaching: A Psychological Approach to Suppo