CEO As Chief Communicator: Why Leadership Communication Is Now A Core Executive Skill
By Pam Abrahamsson, CEO, PRA Public Relations, delivering global impact for technology, financial services and social good leaders.
If you’re a CEO, I have some good news—and bad.
The good news is that you, your voice, is a key driver of success for your company, and your words carry heavy weight. The fact is that CEO communications strongly influence company stakeholders. Not only that, but as McKinsey explains, employees and other stakeholders depend on you to have the communication acumen to navigate difficult situations.
What does this mean? As a CEO, your words carry great power. But this power is a double-edged sword. CEO communication is powerful, yes. However, research from Edelman shows that not everyone trusts what you have to say.
Why A CEO’s Voice Is Vital in Today’s World
The days of the silent CEO are over, hard stop.
Thanks to the digital age, customers, prospects and internal audiences all expect CEOs to be highly visible. Commerce never sleeps, and since today’s business world is always on, CEOs need to be too. As a result, today’s increasingly sophisticated audiences want a steady flow of rapid, accurate and on-point information.
Five Factors Driving The Always-On Demand For CEO Voice
I believe this increased demand for communication-savvy CEOs is the culmination of five key factors:
Rapid changes and responses:
The adage advises us that “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” Today, this warning is more relevant than ever. The digital world’s ability to share information around the globe almost instantaneously means misinformation can travel at lightning speed. Companies must be ready to respond to this reality; the CEO's voice is crucial to correcting the record.
Employees:
Since employees are a company’s most valuable asset, long gone are the days of treating employees like disposable assets to be ground mercilessly for maximum productivity. Employees will no longer tolerate a pre-Christmas Ebeneezer Scrooge, so thoughtful communication is needed to nurture employee loyalty. Understanding, alignment and productivity all hinge on effective communication—and they go a long way toward fostering a healthy workplace culture.
Purpose and place in the world:
To build a company beyond the bottom line, you must have a set of principles guiding the business. Having a vision and communicating it effectively helps nurture high-performing employees—ensuring they’re committed to the mission and contributing to the company’s long-term success.
Crisis management:
A crisis can spring up anywhere, at any time. A swift, confident intervention from a trusted expert and leader can quickly extinguish the flames of disaster. Strong messaging and a strategic crisis communication plan are essential to this type of firefighting mission.
Investor outlook:
While numbers are involved, investment decisions are also driven by investors' emotions and perceptions. As a CEO, you can build investor confidence and drive growth opportunities through accurate, confident and consistent messaging.
Being An Effective Communicator: Natural-Born Versus Practice-Made
Maybe you’re a natural-born communicator. Maybe communication isn’t exactly your strong suit. Either way, you need training that sharpens your communication, strategic message development and crisis management skills. Even CEOs with natural speaking talent need training, strategic focus and the ability to respond effectively under pressure to succeed. Not your strong suit? Practice and preparation are your tools for success.
With waning brand trust and missteps living online forever, you don’t want to risk long-lasting damage to your company’s reputation by playing the communications game by ear.
Great communicators aren’t (always) born; they’re made—and these tips can help.
Be clear on mission and business practices. Our team has regularly entered enterprises to prepare PR plans and has greatly contributed to their overall business plans and missions. Messaging and mission go hand in hand, so I’ve found that it’s impossible to create strong communications without a strong business plan. An accurate, up-to-date plan is the growth engine for your business, and the communication strategy is the fuel that gets you there.
Understand your audience. Knowing what you want to say is only half the battle. You also have to know who you’re saying it to. A conversation with AI-savvy tech leaders and engineers at a conference will be very different from one with a prospective customer or employee. Understand not only your company fundamentals but also what matters to your stakeholders and how to speak to them.
Know the facts. If you’re an overly confident speaker or a very nervous one, you may feel tempted to blue-sky it. But this may cause you to forget the number one rule of good communication: No one knows everything. Instead of speaking on the fly, have a reference sheet handy to accurately cite key facts. If someone asks a question that you don’t know the answer to, don’t pretend that you do. You’ll make a much better impression if you tell the truth and promise to get back to the person with the information—then actually do it.
Establish yourself as an expert. One common mistake leaders make is adopting an “always be selling” mentality—particularly when speaking to the media. When dealing with journalists, it’s much more effective to be educational and interesting while exhibiting that your expertise extends beyond your products.
Journalists don’t want to act as an extension of your sales team, but they do want an expert in your industry who can help them fill in the blanks of a story. The more you get quoted by journalists, the more the world will view you as an expert. In the digital world, this means you can showcase your knowledge and have your expertise spread across the web through SEO, backlinks and answer engine optimization (AEO).
Effective communication is not glib, polished or noncommittal. It’s about showing up as a caring and involved leader and an expert in your industry. I’ve found that this brand position can turn CEO communications into swift market responsiveness, employee loyalty and expanded horizons for investor, partner and acquisitor opportunities.
As Seen In Forbes
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