Michael Ehlers

Michael Ehlers gave his first rhetoric seminar at 18. Since then he has trained people whose sentences carry consequences: board members, politicians, professional athletes, founders. "If you have something to say, you should be able to say it." He treats impact as a craft. Even in people who have written themselves off.

For Germany's public broadcasters and the news magazine Focus, he analyses political performance under pressure: chancellor debates and press conferences after a crisis. He runs his institute in Bamberg, teaches rhetoric at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and directs the Center for Rhetoric at SGMI Management Institute.

Nine books, all in German. In 2014, writing as Hein Hansen, a Hamburg fishmonger, he won Trainer Book of the Year with "Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf" (The Fish Rots from the Head). "Rhetorik. Die Kunst der Rede im digitalen Zeitalter" (2018) is treated by many readers as the standard work on the subject.

His podcast has been running since 2008. Over 168,000 people follow him on Instagram, more than 7,500 subscribe to his LinkedIn newsletter. Not bad for a man who started out in 1990 with a flip chart.