Golin: Leadership visibility isn’t always translating into trust

Internal communicators have spent years pushing leaders to be more visible to employees, working on the assumption that more transparency leads to stronger trust. But even as employees hear from leadership more often, may not necessarily buy what they hear.

Golin’s latest CEO Impact Index shows that as CEOs pulled back on engagement, they lost nearly 3 trillion earned impressions year over year. This reduces their ability to consistently shape how they’re perceived and puts more pressure on the moments when they do communicate.

For internal comms teams, that means employees are hearing fewer messages and that they’re paying closer attention to the ones that do come through. Every message from leadership then needs to work harder to explain what’s happening, why it matters and how it affects employees directly.

When communication is less frequent or less consistent, employees might fill in these gaps themselves. For instance, if leadership messaging doesn’t line up with an employee’s day-to-day experience, it can quickly lose credibility. That puts the onus on communications to ensure that messages from the top are clear and reinforced over time instead of leaning on one-off statements.  For communicators, this means beginning any AI-related leadership message by answering a few big questions:

• What’s happening with AI right now at our company?
• What does it mean for employees in the near term?
• How might teams or workflows shift with AI in the picture?
• What are employees expected to learn?
• What happens next and when can employees expect updates?

Providing answers to these queries in your leadership messaging makes both AI comms clearer and leadership more credible when they speak on the subject. If employees can connect the dots on how AI will interact with their day-to-day work from the jump, there’s a better chance they’ll trust the leader sharing the news.

Employees are paying attention to how leaders react to sensitive issues

Beyond AI, credibility issues also arise when CEOs are forced to respond to hot-button issues. Based on Golin’s analysis of CEO visibility and sentiment across media and public engagement, 68% of CEOs had social or policy issues factor into how they were perceived overall. In addition, leaders who were viewed as reactive in their decision-making saw their negative sentiment more than double.

While the data reflects external perception, those narratives don’t stay external. Employees see how leaders respond to these moments and interpret what it says about their priorities and decision-making. They can tell when their CEOs and leaders are responding to pressure rather than sharing a clear perspective in their communication. In addition, when messaging feels reactive to employees, it may raise questions about a leader’s true feelings on an issue. This where credibility can begin to slip.

When CEOs do respond to these issues, there needs to be a clear focus on anchoring the message in employee culture and business strategy. There needs to be explanations about why decisions were made when applicable, the connection to the organization’s values and what it means for employees. If this is absent, employees might draw their own conclusions — and that’s not a good thing for trust or culture.

Internal communicators need to know that there’s more to leadership communication than making a CEO visible or even easier to understand. It’s about making them credible in front of an audience of employees through specific and reinforced messages that reflect what employees actually experience on the job.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.