You know the feeling. The meeting was warm, engaged, maybe even overran by twenty minutes. Everyone left smiling. You sent the follow-up that evening. Then silence. Not a cold silence. A polite one. Which, as it turns out, is harder to read. The situation A British consultant I know — senior, exp...

There is a phrase that became a kind of shorthand during the pandemic years, when every meeting moved online and every delegation that used to fly into London started joining from a screen instead. ‘Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever applies to you.’ I heard it dozens of time...