”Tomorrow’s leaders must master what machines can’t: human connection.”

This insight from a change leadership for AI adoption course led me to start Pure Gold Guidance, rooted in authentic connection and trust building from within and with the tools we use. 

For 15+ years in IT/tech business development and advisory, including co-building a digital transformation consultancy, I’ve worked alongside exceptional minds. Engineers turned leaders who could architect complex solutions in their sleep. Yet I witnessed a pattern: perfectly logical plans met vague resistance. Deals that should close didn’t. Their blind spot? Missing emotional undercurrents and connection gaps. 

I recognized this intimately from my father, a brilliant, globally respected radio expert. When promoted to leadership, the weight of people decisions drove him back to the expert role. The human complexity was exhausting.

Perhaps this is why I became a “translator” in many workplaces. Executives pulled me aside to decode meeting dynamics, employees shared real frustrations. The pattern: emotional disconnect or broken trust. Exactly what makes talented people leave.

Back to the change leadership course. Writing my final paper on resistance, I recalled a Fortune 500 digital transformation project where I’d been asked to ”tell a story” in the presentation. But how could I apply creative writing principles to a 55-slide, fact-heavy deck? The client was satisfied, but I realized that in a less tech-ready organization, it could have triggered the exact resistance I was now studying.

When I researched how stories address resistance, the evidence was clear: storytelling is the fastest route to connection, trust and engagement. I developed a framework matching story types to resistance categories, then realized that leaders need both the craft of storytelling AND the inner capacity to make it credible. One without the other fails.

This is my work: helping leaders discover a deeper connection to themselves and uncover what holds them back. Self-connected leaders become more authentic. And authenticity builds the trust that competence alone never can. Strategic storytelling amplifies that trust into influence, creating leadership that is as human as it is brilliant.