Communication & influence specialist · Author · Now booking keynotes for 2027Communication and influence specialist · Author of Cracking The Influence Code · Now booking keynotes for 2027
When communication breaks down at the top, everything breaks down.
David Watts helps South Africa's most ambitious organisations master the hidden psychology of human influence — and wrote the book on it.
Now booking keynotes for 2027
David, recorded at his own microphone, Watts Involved, 7 July 2026.
Read the transcript
When I was four years old, plastic tube went through the roof of my mouth and tore up the back of my throat. The surgeons told my parents I might never speak properly again. My gran refused to accept that. Every day. Every single day. She sat with me and we practised sounds, words, sentences. A small boy and a stubborn woman rebuilding a voice one syllable at a time.
19 organisations David has trained or worked with
Training partners
Is your organisation paying the cost of broken communication?
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Toxic Team Friction
Inter-departmental conflict erodes productivity, stalls innovation, and drives your best talent out the door — often before leadership even notices.
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Conversations That Never Happen
Difficult conversations get avoided, diluted, or handled so badly they make things worse. Problems fester. Culture suffers.
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Negotiations That Leave Value Behind
Your best people walk away from deals having conceded too much — not from lack of intelligence, but lack of psychological insight.
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Change That Never Lands
Restructuring, strategy pivots, and new initiatives die not because of bad strategy, but because leaders can't communicate through the fear they trigger.
David Watts has spent 30 years on the psychology behind these problems — and built the frameworks that address them.
The Book at the Heart of It All
Cracking The Influence Code
Mastering Advanced Communication and Negotiation with NLP, Neuroscience, and Behavioural Economics
One field guide that brings NLP, neuroscience, and behavioural economics together, for anyone who has to move people — without manipulation. Built on thirty years in NLP and influence, and the book behind the keynotes.
Thirty-two chapters. Four parts. Thirty-two frameworks drawn from NLP, neuroscience, and behavioural economics — the same system behind every keynote on this site.
The Blueprint
Not opinion. A repeatable system.
Every framework David teaches is drawn from the same engine: three sciences, decoded into one method, expressed as five named frameworks your people can actually use. This is the Influence Code Blueprint.
- NLP
- Neuroscience
- Behavioural Economics
The method The Influence Code
- The Influence Code Cracking The Influence Code
- R.E.S.O.L.V.E. From Friction to Fusion
- P.A.T.H. + D.E.A.L. Beyond the Bargaining Table
- C.A.L.M. The Lighthouse in the Storm
- L.I.S.T.E.N. Whispers to the Mind
The Keynote Suite
Five targeted solutions for the communication challenges that cost the most.
- Signature Flagship
Cracking The Influence Code
The Signature Keynote, Built on the Book The Influence Code - Conflict Resolution
From Friction to Fusion
Resolving High-Stakes Corporate Conflict with Integrity R.E.S.O.L.V.E. - Advanced Negotiation
Beyond the Bargaining Table
The Hidden Psychology of Win-Win Negotiation P.A.T.H. + D.E.A.L. - Crisis Leadership
The Lighthouse in the Storm
Communicating Through Crisis and Change C.A.L.M. - Executive Masterclass
Whispers to the Mind
The Art of Hypnotic Language in Leadership L.I.S.T.E.N.
The Origin
The boy nobody told he might never speak.
David Watts knows what it means to lose your voice — and to fight to get it back.
At a young age, a severe accident involving a plastic tube shredded his soft palate. The surgeon told his mother there was a very real possibility he might never speak again. Nobody told David. With his gran's patient coaching, his speech came back. Unaware of his supposed limitations, he lay awake listening to the presenters on Springbok Radio, practised their voices relentlessly, and made a decision that would define the next thirty years of his life.
He didn't just learn to speak. He spent the next three decades studying human communication — until he understood not just how to use words, but how words create worlds inside the minds of the people who hear them.
When David Watts tells your leaders that communication can change everything — he means it in ways most speakers cannot.
From Chapter 1
“How could vibrations in the air paint pictures and stir feelings?”
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