Psychopaths. Dolphins. Military environments. Elite sport. Leaders under pressure.
Executive coaching for business leaders, grounded in behaviour, psychology and high-stakes environments.
The tone you set is the tone you get.
Photo credits: Kristian Jacobsen
The Invisible Assassin, the new book by Dr Nashater Deu Solheim.
The most powerful influence in any room is often the one nobody notices: tone
Before you have time to weigh the words, tone is already shaping whether an interaction feels safe, believable, threatening, or true. Tone can make a stranger seem trustworthy, a leader sound convincing, a friend’s voice bring relief, or a politician’s speech stir loyalty or fear.
Most people think results come from strategy, talent or technical skill alone. They do not.
Results are also shaped by what happens between people.
By tone. By trust. By pressure. By what gets reinforced. By what becomes normal and by the behaviour others learn to expect from us. That is true in organisations and elite sport. It is true in military settings. It is true in classrooms, friendships, couples, communities and politics.
This perspective lets you see the hidden drivers that shape your results. When you understand them, you build stronger cultures, sharpen execution and develop better outcomes.
That is what sets this approach apart.
What do psychopaths, dolphin trainers, military environments and elite sport have in common?
They all reveal something most leadership advice misses.
Skill is never the full story.
What matters is how people behave under pressure. How do they read signals? How they influence others. How they adapt in real time. How they manage risk. How they execute when conditions shift, and not everything is predictable. Those worlds may seem far apart. They are not. They all expose the same human dynamics.
That is the lens I bring to my clients.
Not generic leadership coaching. Not generic performance coaching. A sharper understanding of how human behaviour shapes culture, execution and results.
Culture is not what you say you value. It is what people learn to expect.
Every leader sets the tone. Every team normalises behaviour. Every organisation trains people, consciously or unconsciously, in what gets rewarded, ignored, tolerated or repeated.
That is why culture is never abstract.
It lives in signals. In standards. In reactions. In how pressure is handled. In how conflict is dealt with. Whether people get trust, clarity, fear, silence, honesty or defensiveness in return.
The tone you set shapes the results you get.
And the behaviour you repeat becomes the culture others live inside.
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Services overview
Explore my range of services designed to help you move forward with confidence, wherever you're headed next.
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For leaders who want to change the results they get from others. This is high-trust, high-challenge work — built around what's actually getting in the way, not what's comfortable to discuss. Expect clarity on the patterns you've stopped noticing, and a practical path forward.
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For teams that want stronger alignment, a healthier culture and better execution under pressure. Real team performance isn't about trust exercises — it's about what people say and don't say in the room, and why. This work surfaces those dynamics and turns them into durable change.
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Distinctive talks built around psychopaths, dolphins, military environments, elite sport and the hidden drivers of outcomes. Nashater draws on decades of research and real-world leadership experience to leave audiences with ideas they can't stop thinking about. These are not motivational speeches — they're perspective shifts.
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Facilitation that keeps people honest — and the conversation moving. Whether it's a panel, a leadership summit or a difficult strategic session, Nashater brings the presence and precision to hold the room and draw out what matters. The result is a conversation people remember — and act on.
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Alongside my commercial practice, I work with young people and early-career adults on the same fundamentals that shape outcomes throughout life: how to think clearly under pressure, how to communicate with confidence, and how to influence others without losing yourself.
This work is pro bono. It is also, I believe, some of the most important work I do.
Let’s work together
nashater@progressingminds.com
Mob: (47) 904 77 520
C201 115 Øvre Strandgate
4005 Stavanger, Norway.
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Tone is not about volume or intent — it is about the signals leaders consistently send. Those signals teach people what to expect, what to normalise, and how to behave in return. Culture is the accumulated pattern of what gets reinforced, tolerated and repeated. The tone a leader sets shapes all of it.
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Results emerge long before outcomes appear. They are shaped by the behaviours leaders model, the standards they reinforce, and the responses they draw from others. Behaviour creates the conditions for culture. Culture determines what execution looks like under pressure. That chain is why behaviour-focused leadership work produces measurable results.
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Dolphin trainers cannot use punishment, authority or position to change behaviour. They must rely entirely on timing, clarity, reinforcement and consistency. These are precisely the tools that shape behaviour in human organisations. The dolphin training lens strips leadership down to its behavioural essentials: what you reinforce, when, and how consistently.
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PIN defines what effective leadership looks like. ABC is how you put it into practice.
ABC is a practical system for applying leadership skills in real interactions. A stands for Approach and Advanced Preparation — the thinking, research and goal-setting done before any significant conversation or meeting. B stands for Body Language and Behaviour — the non-verbal signals that shape how others experience a leader before a word is spoken. C stands for Conversation — the specific dialogue techniques that make persuasion, influence and negotiation effective.
Together, ABC turns intention into impact. Leaders who prepare deliberately, show up with the right presence, and use the right language consistently get better results from the people around them.