Julian Fisher
Senior leaders are paid to influence people they do not control, often in rooms where the stakes are uneven and the information is incomplete. Most leadership training teaches communication frameworks; very few teach how trust, recruitment and elicitation actually work when the other side has reason to withhold. The gap shows up in board negotiations, in stakeholder management across borders, and in the quiet failure to build alliances that hold under pressure.
Julian Fisher is a former British intelligence officer and author of Think Like a Spy who teaches senior leaders the human-intelligence skills behind influence, persuasion and alliance-building.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Julian Fisher
- He brings a working practitioner’s account of how influence is actually built, from twenty years inside diplomatic, military and commercial intelligence operations, not a second-hand interpretation of the field.
- His nine HUMINT skills and six “Spy-Style” archetypes give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for the parts of executive work that usually go unnamed: reading rooms, recruiting allies, eliciting information without interrogating.
- He has done the corporate translation already, running security intelligence for HSBC and leading Aegis Defence Services’ Africa practice, so the material lands as commercial practice rather than war story.
- His book with Headline (Hachette UK) and his lead-trainer role on Channel 4’s Spies give him a public reference point that clients and audiences recognise before he walks into the room.
Biography highlights
- Author, Think Like a Spy: Master the Art of Influence and Build Life-Changing Alliances, Headline (Hachette UK), 2024.
- Lead trainer, Channel 4 series Spies, 2017.
- Founder, Africa Integrity Services Ltd, a private intelligence boutique covering the African continent.
- Former Head of Africa, Aegis Defence Services.
- Former Head of Security Intelligence, HSBC.
- Former British Diplomatic Service, with operational postings in East and Southern Africa; PPE, Oxford University.
Biography
Influence is the part of senior leadership that rarely gets taught directly. Boards and executives are expected to win allies, read intentions and extract honest information from people whose interests do not align with theirs, without the structure of a formal hierarchy to fall back on. The intelligence world has spent decades studying exactly this problem, under conditions where getting it wrong has consequences.
That is the body of practice Julian Fisher draws on. He served in a specialist branch of the British Diplomatic Service, with postings in East and Southern Africa, before running operations for Aegis Defence Services as its Head of Africa and leading security intelligence for HSBC. He later founded Africa Integrity Services, a boutique that builds human-source intelligence networks across the continent for corporate and government clients.
His 2024 book with Headline, Think Like a Spy: Master the Art of Influence and Build Life-Changing Alliances, sets out the nine skills of Human Intelligence in a form designed for civilian use. The argument is that espionage at its core is relationship work: recruiting, persuading, eliciting, holding trust under strain. Fisher worked through the same material publicly as the lead trainer on Channel 4’s Spies in 2017, putting sixteen members of the public through the recruitment and assessment process.
For corporate audiences he reframes that practice as a leadership discipline. Reading a room, identifying the right ally before a vote, asking the question that surfaces the real objection, holding composure in a negotiation where the other side has information you do not, these are the moments his frameworks address, and the moments that decide most senior outcomes.
Key speaking topics
- Influence and persuasion in senior leadership
- Human intelligence (HUMINT) tradecraft for business
- Alliance-building and stakeholder negotiation
- Geopolitical and security risk for boards
- Elicitation, questioning and reading people
- Africa-focused political and commercial risk
- Resilience and decision-making under uncertainty
Ideal for
- C-suite leadership teams and boards working on negotiation, influence and stakeholder strategy
- Sales, business development and partnerships leaders building long-cycle relationships
- Heads of security, risk and compliance briefing executive teams on geopolitical exposure
- Senior leadership programmes covering executive presence, persuasion and judgement under pressure
Audience outcomes
- A practitioner’s vocabulary for the parts of leadership that usually go unsaid: recruitment, elicitation, alliance-building.
- The nine HUMINT skills as a working framework, not as theory, with examples drawn from real operations.
- The six “Spy-Style” archetypes as a tool for matching influence approach to counterpart.
- A sharper sense of how to ask questions, listen and hold composure when interests are not aligned.
- A first-hand read on how intelligence services think about risk, trust and information, applied to the boardroom.
Talks
A keynote translating Fisher’s nine HUMINT skills into practical influence and leadership tools for civilian audiences.
Key takeaways:
- How professional intelligence officers build trust and recruit allies in adversarial conditions
- The nine skills of Human Intelligence, with applied corporate examples
- How to apply elicitation and rapport techniques to negotiation and stakeholder work
A C-suite session applying spy tradecraft to executive influence, persuasion and decision-making under pressure.
Key takeaways:
- How senior leaders can use HUMINT principles to read counterparts and rooms accurately
- The six “Spy-Style” archetypes and how to deploy each in real leadership situations
- Composure and judgement when the other side holds information you do not
A keynote and after-dinner format introducing the six Spy-Style archetypes of influence and persuasion.
Key takeaways:
- The six personality types Fisher identifies in influence work
- How to recognise your own default style and the styles of those you are trying to influence
- Practical adjustments leaders can make to read and shift dynamics in real time
A geopolitical and security risk briefing translated for board and executive audiences.
Key takeaways:
- How intelligence services frame political, security and reputational risk
- Africa, China and Russia exposure as practical board concerns
- Building organisational resilience to threats most leadership teams do not see coming
A working session on the conversational mechanics of influence and information-gathering.
Key takeaways:
- The structure of elicitation as practised by intelligence officers
- Question design, listening discipline and rapport under pressure
- Application to negotiation, partnership and internal stakeholder work