Rohit Bassi
Senior leaders are asked to hold composure, persuade boards, and protect relationships through restructures, contested decisions, and difficult conversations. Most are technically strong but communicate from habit, not intent, and the cost shows up in lost trust, stalled deals, and disengaged teams. The gap between what a leader says and what their team actually hears is rarely diagnosed before it becomes a retention or revenue problem.
Rohit Bassi is a leadership communication coach and founder of ROI Talks whose Speak Like A W.I.S.E. CEO method prepares senior executives, sales leaders, and teams for the high-stakes conversations that decide credibility, commercial outcomes, and team trust.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Rohit Bassi
- Three decades of cross-cultural coaching across 21 countries, with named engagements at the World Bank, Oracle, Honeywell, PwC, Bank of America, Canon, and Emirates NBD.
- A named method, Speak Like A W.I.S.E. CEO, that maps four bearings to four disciplines: words with courage, intention with clarity, silence with conviction, and energy with compassion. It gives leaders a repeatable structure for the specific conversation in front of them.
- A Gulf-based perspective on executive presence that translates between Western corporate norms and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Southeast Asian leadership cultures, useful for organisations with distributed senior teams.
- A practitioner record spanning keynote speaking, sales communication coaching, and authorship of Living Through Self Compassion, which lets him work credibly with commercial leaders and people leaders in the same organisation.
Biography highlights
- Founder of ROI Talks, the coaching and training practice he established in Dubai.
- Creator of the Speak Like A W.I.S.E. CEO framework for high-stakes communication.
- Author of five books including Beyond Words on mindful public speaking, Soul of Sales on ethical selling, and Living Through Self Compassion, plus contributing author of Success Mastery alongside Jack Canfield.
- TEDx speaker, “The Miracle of Compassion” (TEDxCCQ), hosted on the TED platform.
- Executive Contributor at Brainz Magazine, and member of the National Academy of Best-Selling Authors.
- Three decades of speaking, coaching, and training across more than 21 countries, with named engagements including the World Bank, Oracle, Honeywell, PwC, Bank of America, Canon, and Emirates NBD.
Biography
Most leaders are not promoted for how they communicate. They are promoted in spite of it, and only at senior level does the cost surface, in a board that loses patience or a deal that quietly stalls. ROI Talks, the practice Rohit Bassi founded in Dubai, was built for that gap.
His method, Speak Like A W.I.S.E. CEO, rests on four bearings. Words carry courage, intention carries clarity, silence carries conviction, and energy carries compassion. Drawn from a long study of mindfulness, it applies to the situations leaders face: executive presence, persuasion under pressure, conflict that has turned organisational, and the daily habits that build or erode trust.
He has worked across more than 21 countries with named clients including the World Bank, Oracle, Honeywell, PwC, Bank of America, Canon, and Emirates NBD. His writing runs along the same lines as the coaching. Beyond Words sets out his approach to mindful public speaking, Soul of Sales makes the case for trust-based selling, and Living Through Self Compassion tells the personal story behind the method, a return from depression and self-sabotage. He is also a contributing author of Success Mastery alongside Jack Canfield, and his TEDx talk, The Miracle of Compassion, sits on the TED platform.
Known to clients as The Communication Wizard, he coaches senior leaders across Western, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Southeast Asian cultures, and writes as an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine. For organisations with leadership teams spread across those regions, that cross-cultural read on executive presence is rare in the category.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership communication and executive presence
- Persuasion and influence in high-stakes conversations
- Mindful communication and emotional intelligence
- Sales communication for senior leaders
- Conflict, difficult conversations, and trust repair
- Resilience and self-leadership under pressure
- Public speaking for executives
Ideal for
- CEOs and business unit heads preparing for board, investor, or all-hands communication, including investor pitch coaching
- Sales leadership and commercial teams running high-stakes, value-based B2B conversations
- Heads of L&D, talent, and executive development commissioning leadership communication programmes
- Senior leadership teams in multinational and Gulf-based organisations with cross-cultural workforces
Audience outcomes
- The four bearings of the W.I.S.E. compass in language they can use in the next difficult conversation
- Specific handling for high-stakes moments: persuasion, conflict, trust repair, and assertive listening
- A read on what each high-stakes conversation puts at stake: financial value, time, risk exposure, and the authority carried into the next room
- A working approach to composure under pressure that applies the next working day
Talks
One keynote on high-stakes communication, read through three lenses for leaders, sales teams, or cross-functional teams.
Key takeaways:
- The four bearings of the W.I.S.E. compass, applied to the conversation the audience actually faces
- For sales audiences, the shift from price-based to value-based persuasion, and handling objections in high-value deals
- Silence and pacing as an untaught source of authority in the room