About Dr. Nashater Deu Solheim
An executive coach and clinical psychologist based in Norway, with a different lens on leadership, culture and human behaviour.
My work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, behavioural psychology and human behaviour under pressure.
What sets it apart is the range of environments it draws on: leadership, military settings, elite sport, psychopaths and dolphin training. These worlds may appear unrelated. They are not. All of them involve pressure, uncertainty, adaptation, trust, risk, behavioural precision and the need to influence outcomes in real time. All of them show, in different ways, what shapes the results we get from other people.
That is the perspective I bring to leaders, teams and organisations.
The training behind the work
I trained as a clinical psychologist, specialising in two distinct fields: neuropsychology and forensic psychology.
In neuropsychology, working with patients recovering from brain injuries, I learned how to train the brain to build new skills and change old patterns of behaviour. The brain is not fixed. Neither is the way people lead, respond or relate to others, if you know how to work with it.
In forensic psychology, I developed investigation and persuasion techniques while working with dangerous, highly change-resistant individuals. These are not abstract disciplines. They are the practical foundations of everything I now do with leaders.
I later studied at Harvard Law School's Programme on Negotiation, which sharpened the strategic and interpersonal dimensions of this work. Persuasion, influence and negotiation, the PIN of what became The Leadership PIN Code, are not soft skills. They are precise, learnable, and critical to outcomes. I also studied dolphin training, and it remains one of the most instructive lenses I bring to leadership work. Dolphin trainers cannot use authority, punishment or position to change behaviour. Every result depends on timing, clarity, consistent reinforcement and the quality of the relationship. That discipline cuts through to the behavioural essentials of leadership: what you reinforce, when, and how consistently, and why those signals shape what becomes normal.
25 years. Multiple worlds
Across more than 25 years, I have worked in clinical settings, executive leadership, cross-cultural consulting and leadership development. I have coached senior leaders across energy, technology, finance, healthcare, government and elite sport, in small local businesses and large international organisations. I have spoken at the Financial Times Women's Forum, at major conferences across the energy and technology sectors, and on platforms from Norway and around the world.
In 2001, I founded Progressing Minds AS, a Norway-based consultancy built on the same principles that guide my personal practice: that better behaviour produces better results.
In 2020 I published The Leadership PIN Code, a practical framework for persuasion, influence and negotiation that became an Amazon bestseller, endorsed by Forbes and recommended by the Harvard Business Review. My TEDx talk, What Working with Psychopaths Taught Me About Leadership, brought one of those central ideas into the public conversation.
My second book will go further. It explores the hidden system around tone, why it matters so much, how it shapes responses and how it affects leadership, culture and outcomes at every level of life.
“The brain is not fixed. Neither is the way people lead, respond or relate to others — if you know how to work with it.”
What the work is actually about
I do not approach leadership as a matter of motivation, charisma or abstract theory.
I work on the deeper forces that shape what actually happens between people and inside systems:
How pressure changes behaviour
How tone shapes trust and response
How standards affect outcomes
How behaviour spreads through teams
How leaders shape culture
How risk affects decision-making
How execution is strengthened or weakened by human factors
This is why my work applies not only to business and elite sport, but also to classrooms, communities, relationships and politics. The same human dynamics are at work wherever people influence each other.
“What interests me is not just what people are capable of. It is what makes them respond the way they do.”
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Frequently asked questions
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Nashater Deu Solheim is a clinical psychologist, Harvard-trained negotiator and executive advisor based in Stavanger, Norway. She specialises in forensic psychology, neuropsychology and behavioural leadership, and has worked with senior leaders across energy, technology, finance, healthcare and elite sport for over 25 years. She is the author of The Leadership PIN Code, endorsed by Forbes and recommended by the Harvard Business Review, and gave a TEDx talk with over 1 million views entitled “What Working with Psychopaths Taught Me About Leadership”
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Psychopaths are highly skilled at reading social signals, projecting confidence, managing perception and influencing others without reciprocity. Studying these dynamics reveals what most leadership advice leaves out: the mechanics of how people actually influence each other, where trust breaks down, and how behaviour spreads through a system. Those insights apply directly to how leaders manage teams, set culture and handle power responsibly.
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Her approach draws on three distinct professional disciplines: clinical psychology, neuropsychology and forensic psychology, combined with direct field experience across military environments, elite sport and high-stakes organisational settings. Unlike most executive coaches, who come from business or HR backgrounds, Nashater has also been an executive leader herself — she knows the pressures, the decisions and the dynamics from the inside, not just as an observer.
That combination gives her an unusually precise lens on what drives results between people: grounded in how behaviour actually forms and changes, under pressure, in extremis, across very different contexts — and tested in the real environments where leadership is most demanding.
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Dysfunctional beliefs are the assumptions leaders hold about how influence, authority and communication work, assumptions that feel reasonable but consistently undermine results. Common examples: that authority alone commands compliance; that projecting confidence substitutes for preparation; that good intentions produce good outcomes; that intelligence is sufficient for persuasion. The problem is not that these beliefs are irrational; they are widely shared. The problem is that they disconnect leaders from the signals they send and the responses they elicit. Identifying and challenging these beliefs is often where the most significant leadership change begins.