What is actually happening
The standard answer is more language training.
It is usually the wrong diagnosis.
For many of the people I work with, VPs at Deutsche Bank, founders raising capital from London investors, senior product leaders at global SaaS companies, executives running international teams entirely in English, the language is not the whole story. Often it is not even the main one.
When the stakes rise, your nervous system responds. Thinking speeds up, breathing changes, the body tightens. This happens to everyone under pressure. But when you are operating in a second language, the effect compounds.
Language and identity are not separate things. The warmth, the humour, the authority, the spontaneity, these are tied to how safe and at home you feel in yourself in that moment.
When the nervous system is dysregulated under pressure, you retreat to what feels controlled. In a second language, that means smaller expression. Careful sentences. The version of you that is monitoring itself rather than just speaking.
The real you stays behind.
The translation that needs to happen is not only linguistic. It is internal.
The programme
Speak with Authority.
The only programme of its kind.
Not because there are no other coaches working with international professionals. Because nobody else is combining what this combines.
Inner state work
Mindset and anxiety work that addresses the root of what compresses under pressure. Nervous system training drawn from professional performance.
Subconscious rewiring
Mindset exercises and guided visualisation that rewire the associations underneath the anxiety, not just the surface behaviour above it.
Presence coaching
Communication coaching built for your specific high-stakes moments, the pitch, the board, the negotiation, in the language you have to perform in.
What changes when this work is done is not just vocabulary or fluency.
Investors feel your belief in what you are pitching, not just the logic of it. Your team does not just receive your message, they feel led. The room does not just understand you. They trust you.
About Jade
Eighteen years as a professional actor at Channel 4, HBO and Sky. Twelve years working privately with senior leaders and executives operating at the highest levels in a second or third language.
Which means everything in this programme comes from real performance, tested in real conditions. Not theory. Not rehearsal. The actual work of being fully present and fully yourself when the stakes are genuinely high.
The programme is built entirely around you, your language background, your level, your specific moments, your goals.
"Working with Jade wasn't about improving my English at all. It was about learning to think and lead in English, structuring my ideas so they landed decisively and speaking with authority rather than over-qualifying everything I said. I don't feel like the non-native speaker in the room anymore. I feel like the person leading the conversation."
Mateusz K. · VP of Engineering, Series B Fintech · Berlin · Polish national
The next step
The gap was never only
between your English and theirs.
When it closes, everything changes.
I work with a small number of clients at any one time. Three ways to begin.
Most thorough
Submit a private application
Tell me about your specific situation. I read every application personally and respond within 48 hours.
Not sure where to start
Take the free diagnostic
Five questions. A personalised breakdown of where your gap is and a clear plan for what we would address first.
Ready to speak now
Book a discovery call
A free 20-minute conversation. No commitment. Just a conversation to see if this is the right fit.
I work with a select few clients at any one time. Currently accepting applications.
Jade Matthew. Performance and Communication Psychologist. The work that closes the gap between who you are and how you come across, in any room, under any pressure.
Work with me
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