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Hi everyone, Let’s be brutally honest for a second. If my life depended on writing a single line of Python, I wouldn’t be here writing this newsletter. My smart fridge is currently outsmarting me, and I’m pretty sure my toaster is judging my life choices (yes, I can toast a scone, don't judge me). Yet, despite my complete inability to communicate with machines (but never say never!), my clients keep landing major promotions, scoring fantastic new jobs, and taking on massive n

Nobody warns you about this part. You work hard, you earn your place at the table, and then one day — often unexpectedly — you realise you feel stuck. Not in a career-crisis way. Not because things are falling apart. Just… stuck. Like you're running the same loop, showing up but not truly growing. For senior leaders, this is more common than most people admit. And in a city like Hong Kong, where ambition is the baseline and standing still can feel like falling behind, this fe

Every leader wants a high-performance team. But when you ask most leaders what that actually means, the answers get vague quickly. Fast? Efficient? Hardworking? Yes — but those things alone don't define high performance. A team can work long hours and still consistently underdeliver. They can be technically excellent and yet unable to collaborate effectively. Through years of executive coaching work in Hong Kong, Daniele Forni has seen clearly what separates teams that truly

There's a moment that almost every experienced leader eventually faces — you've climbed the ladder, you're managing a team, hitting targets, keeping the ship steady. And yet something feels off. You're busy, but not fulfilled. You're productive, but not inspired. You're managing, but not truly leading. Sound familiar? You're not alone. And the good news is, this isn't a dead end. It's actually a doorway — the doorway to becoming a visionary leader. At Daniele Forni's executiv

Your personal brand already exists. The question is whether you've built it intentionally — or whether it's been built for you by default. Every leader has a reputation. People around you — colleagues, direct reports, peers, board members — have a clear sense of who you are, how you show up, and what you stand for. That impression is your personal brand. And whether you've thought about it or not, it's influencing your opportunities, your relationships, and your impact every

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 dispro

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."